Getting Started, Documentation, Tips & Tricks

ok my v6 showed up tonite and appears to be working fine, but I forget how to go about upgrading the OS to handle it. IIRC there was a how-to but I can't find it now...

also I read here I need a minimum xbow rev of 1.3 but mine is 1.2; since it says that MXI also needs 1.3 I suppose I can ignore this? It runs fine with the old mxi and so far the new v6.

Did you managed to install the drivers for odyssey? I have to reinstall the OS to get mine working, my disc was clean to began with.

I figured it might be easier with a clean install, which is something I've been meaning to do for a while now anyway since a bit of file system corruption....

Though I really haven't had time to fool with it tonight, I presume step one is to put the MXI back in for now to get it to boot the OS again. Although, should it be able to boot in single user mode without graphics drivers? Because it hangs at the prom screen (could be related to the aforementioned fs problems)

If you can connect via the serial port you can just install the needed Odyssey software packages and remove the "conflicting" impact ones. It's fairly straight forward.

As long as you have a fairly recent PROM revision your Octane, the V6, and the PROM will get along just fine. You can run inst from the PROM menu and install the necessary upgrades from there. The Octane/Octane2 Workstation VPro Graphics Upgrade Kit Installation Guide on TechPubs has a walk through of the process. I've linked the section that deals specifically with your question: http://techpubs.sgi.com/library/tpl/cgi ... ml#id18610

You can also check man inst for additional details on running inst from the PROM as well as the keep * and install fresh commands.

sybrfreq wrote: ...I presume step one is to put the MXI back in for now to get it to boot the OS again. Although, should it be able to boot in single user mode without graphics drivers?

Seems like it should, but SGIs need to have some graphics support for the graphics console textport to work. The PROM graphics driver doesn't work once IRIX loads. As Wolflord pointed out, a serial connection will work.

Yeah, you probably need a terminal cos the octane won't boot into prom after the graphic swap. If you don't have the terminal then clean install is the other way...

The other thing you can do is boot a miniroot and install the necessary files (keep *, install hardware [I believe]) from the miniroot, which provides the necessary drivers/microcode to use the graphics console textport. Just make sure you have an "installation tools and overlays" disk from a version of IRIX that supports Odyssey.

You will need to swap back or use a terminal if your Octane has a very old PROM that doesn't have Odyssey support. Flash the PROM to a newer version and then reintall the V6.

I wound up doing a fresh install, as I didn't have the proper overlay cds to upgrade my current installation.

I have a similar story; hopefully, somebody can give me some pointers on what I did wrong. Apologies for the long post--I'd rather be too detailed than waste anybody's time with suggesting things I've already done.

I have a recently-acquired Octane, with Xbow 1.3, Cherokee power supply, and IRIX 6.5.22 (and the corresponding PROM patch). The system came with SE graphics (which left me underwhelmed), so I Googled a bit, was led to this and other useful pages (including the installation guide mentioned by recondas), checked to make sure I met the requirements, found a V6 for sale, ordered it, and put it in. I stopped the boot at "Starting Up The System", went into Command Monitor, and saw GRAPHICS: ODYSSEY. Great! I booted IRIX 6.5.22 across the network from my Indigo (note: using 10base to serve your boot images is probably not the way to go), "open"ed the other three parts of 6.5.22 and every 6.5 CD I could think of, did "keep *", "install fresh", "conflicts" (no conflicts) and "go". Some time (and surprisingly, only about 3 CDs) later, it claimed to be done. I proceeded to "quit", restarted, and got to the wonders of:

"The system is coming up." And nothing further.

I left it that way for about half an hour in case it was doing something clever. No luck. Just to double-check that everything seemed correct, I booted into Install System Software across the network again, opened up everything it had asked for before, checked to make sure it saw the Odyssey graphics, did "keep *" and "install fresh", and "list"ed what files it wanted to install. It didn't want to install any, presumably because it thought they were already correct for the V6. This is the same problem I had when I upgraded my Indigo from Entry to Elan graphics, but I sidestepped that problem by upgrading to 6.5. This time, I'd rather not wipe the disk and reinstall, since I know I shouldn't have to and that there has to be something I'm just missing.

So, what am I doing wrong here? Would somebody who has done this successfully tell me if there's an extra step I wasn't aware of? Is there a way to see exactly what's happening during the boot process, rather than just "The system is coming up"? Alternatively, is there a way to completely reinstall the system without losing what's in /etc (other than tarring up /etc, saving it elsewhere, and untarring once I've rebuilt the system)? I'm pretty new to IRIX, so maybe these are the kinds of things that you "just know" from using it for a while.

Thanks for any help!

Vyk wrote: Is there a way to see exactly what's happening during the boot process, rather than just "The system is coming up"?

I'd suggest booting with a serial terminal connected to serial port one <disconnect the keyboard and mouse before you power up the system>. You may be able to boot the system when it's headless, and even if not, it's likely you see error and/or diagnostic messages you won't when booting headed mode.

If you use another computer with a serial terminal emulation program, set a very large scroll back buffer and save the session output as a text file.

I have yet to attain Inst guruhood, but would the command sequence you entered (keep*, install fresh, go) do the "install hardware" (which tells IRIX to reexamine the hardware and install any newly necessary files) part of it?

I've always seen the sequence as "keep *, install hardware, go"

Recondas, thanks for the help, although it turns out that I have the right cables for any kind of null-modem connection except if it involves a DE-9 connector... However, I did discover the "setenv showconfig istrue" command in the Command Monitor. It was useful for figuring out a few things, including telling me that sash was fine, /unix was not, and a bunch of executables were not.

SAQ, "install hardware" was something I hadn't heard of--I was following the instructions in the Silicon Graphics® Octane®/Octane2™ Workstation VPro™ Graphics Upgrade Kit Installation Guide . I think there's a command in the admin menu that tells it to look for new hardware; I did run that before trying to install a second time, but it apparently was already looking for Odyssey graphics--it showed nothing new to install. I tried doing it again with "install hardware," and, sure enough, it listed new things to install. It showed some extra things to install that I didn't figure I'd need, so I did "keep same" (I think--I didn't write it down), let it go, and now I have a working system! Thanks!

I do have one pesky issue that has shown up--when I log in, there is a long delay between when things start to come up and when I actually get desktop icons and a responsive system. I believe that this is new since I installed the V6 and did the "install hardware". The error I get in the console and syslog is "unix: XATTR0 getxattr failed for server localhost (nsd): Timed out". I checked nsswitch.conf, as advised here , but everything looks fine. I didn't find any hints from searching the forum. Any ideas?

Hi,

Wonder if anyone knows what software packaged to install if i want to downgrade the system from Vpro graphics to mgras graphics?

Reverse the process?.

Install the MGRAS board, stop in the PROM install menu, feed it the install disks and

SAQ wrote: "keep *, install hardware, go"