Getting Started, Documentation, Tips & Tricks

[Ooops, so sorry guys, I should've started a new thread instead of appending to the old conversation.
Forgive the duplicate posts.]

I know it's a year and half later but something's missing. I'm only now thinking of using DINA
for a re-do of my O2 before I lose internet (I'm unemployed so I'm looking for info before I get
cut off, again).
Tried DINA in VMware Player and have it set up in Virtualbox.
There's mention that it works in Vbox but no pointers or info as to what or how.
I had to do a search and found a small tidbit by tingo about changing the NIC. Otherwise, nothing.

My problem in both vmware and vbox is I have no idea if networking is working. I've set it up
in all kinds of ways but am not able to ping anything.

VMware sets up two networks with IPs of 192.168.169.1 and 192.168.224.1 (shown on my desktop
via Sysinternals' BGInfo).
Vbox has a network of 192.168.56.0.
The VMware nets don't show in my list of trusted/untrusted networks.

All of my vbox machines as well as VirtualBSD (a vmware machine that works great in vbox) all
have networking usable "out-of-the-box" regardless of what IP subnet they use.
Never used vmware 'til this week in hopes of using DINA.
I don't know exactly where the various IPs are supposed to point to (DNS, gateway, etc.).
I've tried settings for NAT, bridged, etc.

Also, X doesn't seem to work in vbox so I had to use Midnight Commander to edit the file to change
from swedish to us (couldn't figure out what key generates a forward slash on the command line).

So I beg and plead, where's the howto/tutorial for using DINA with VirtualBox.
Plus some pointers on DINA's networking in either environment.

Thanks a bunch,
Marc

Edit: Oh, I see why X didn't work. In XF86Config I see that the driver used is 'vmware'.

Sorry, I haven't seen a write-up for using DINA with VirtualBox. But there is a Wiki article describing how to setup DINA under VMware player - if you review the steps maybe it will help show where you might be having a problem with your setup.

Using DINA for network installation of IRIX

Thanks. The wiki is what I was originally working from. I had followed the steps and everything but
something just wasn't right with regards to networking. However, just this moment I got it working
but not in VMware Player.

[Backstory: I broke VirtualBSD by using a provided update script. VirtualBSD is FreeBSD 9.0. The updated
programs are linked against the libc included in 9.1 which includes something like _ThreadLocale (or
something like that). Thoroughly broken I decided to create a new FreeBSD 9.1 vm. Mostly so I could build CDE.]

While installing FreeBSD I noticed that during setup it used my router's IP address for DNS (in the
192.x range) but the OS wound up with IP in the 10.x range. It all worked.
That pointed me to how to setup DINA's networking. I still used the tips from the wiki with the only
diff that I use my router's IP for DNS but use gateway as used by VirtualBox (10.0.2.2).
That all works. I can ping the outside and tested by ftping to both my NAS as well as to an outside
site. Netmask is 255.255.255.0.
Oh, and using NAT instead of Bridged.

I'll have to dust off the O2 and get that setup to see if it'll connect to DINA as per the wiki.


Since X won't work in vbox due to probably needing the virtualbox drivers (guest additions) I'll now
go back to vmware player and apply similar network settings.

Tick tock...

Back in VMware I get no joy. Can't seem to get networking working.
Tried Bridged in auto mode as well as selecting one of the two choices, my Intel NIC or Vbox's virtual
network adapter (again, for some reason vmware has no entries in my firewall's list of zones/neworks).
No go with NAT either.
In VirtualBox I knew I was getting close when my firewall popped up asking to allow connections (which
only happens with DINA, not the other vms).
Anyhind, I just can't get anything to work in vmware. Any ideas on what settings to use in the
hardware tab?
Also, after a few minutes a message shows on the screen that 192.168.224.2 is not on the local network
even though I haven't used it in the settings I'm trying.

If X isn't needed and things work out on VirtualBox then I may have to use that instead.
Assuming I can a) sync nekoware and b) have the O2 connect to DINA.
We'll see.

Marc

Man, the VMware networking was giving me a pain. I had worked on it for what seemed like hours
before getting one of those "you gotta be kidding me" moments.

Won't go through all the details but nothing seemed to work.
I checked the vmware adapters in control panel and noticed that both had the bridge drivers unchecked
but that didn't help anyway.
I figure maybe I'd add the networks to the firewall's list of zones but the vmware adapters don't
show up in the dropdown list (only physical NICs and the vbox adapters).
Decided to look at the vmware config files for any hints. I see what the NAT gateway IP is which I
did use once but would get arplookup notices sometimes.

Then I figured out what the deal was. I had to use IP addresses as in the vmware adapter.
I know that sounds like "Well, duh!" but since that wasn't the case with VirtualBox I just didn't get it.
So once I used 192.168.224.x for IPs (and my router's own IP for DNS) everything worked.

Now it'll be a matter of seeing if it can be seen outside of the host. I did a test with my old
Arch Linux laptop. Pinging DINA didn't work at first as it tried to go to the internet.
Tried a local ping (ping -I <archnetinterface> -r <dina ip> which I think worked but anyway, once
I put it in my hosts file it pinged up fine.
It can also be added as another LAN in the router which also worked.

Tried a quick nfs and smb test but that didn't work out.
I better hurry and get this and O2 working before I lose net connection. First thing up is nekoware sync.

Marc

Well, I'm glad progress is being made. You don't need to run an X server in the DINA VM - it's handy, but not required by any means. But see the note about wscons.conf on the wiki page - the console is probably using a Swedish keyboard layout, which might cause some issues.

DINA needs to "see" broadcasts on your Ethernet network - like BOOTP requests, DHCP requests, etc. If it can do that with the NAT settings you've got, great, but that's why it's normally set to bridged networking instead.

As for using network 10 versus network 192.168.1, etc - you've got to use what's right for your local network. Obviously for the write-up you can't know what every reader is using in advance, and perhaps unfortunately I'm not using what 90% of folks will be using. I did try to flag this, but it should probably be discussed as a Before You Start item or something.

Anyway sorry you've been having such a hard time with this. You definitely don't need to have your O2 running in order to sync Nekoware. If the DINA VM can reach the outside world, just use option 1 from the menu when you login as root to get it going.

Yeah, thanks for the info. Since networking didn't work out of the box with DINA and VMware (which I expected
I guess) I think I wound up over-testing instead of thinking first.

Synced nekoware this afternoon. I know that with regards to mirror sites the closest isn't always the best and
today was a good example. Since I'm in California I used dustytech. Was away for about five hours, came
back to see it was still downloading with only about 20 packages so far. Ach!
Changed to using ftp.nekochan.net and all packages finished downloading in a fraction of the time.

Now it's time to load the IRIX disks. I actually happen to have all of them from 6.5 up to 6.5.30 so there
shouldn't be a problem using the one's I need. IIRC my last update on the O2 was to 6.5.29.
Fixing computers and working on my own OS projects the O2 wound up being shoved aside, collecting dust.

Thanks again, sir.

Marc

You're most welcome, and good luck with the install. If you notice particular points that could use improvement, whether they're in DINA or the partial write-up we have so far, feel free to post them to this thread. One of these days, if somebody doesn't beat me to it, I'll try to incorporate these and other points into the wiki page.