Getting Started, Documentation, Tips & Tricks

Just snagged an Octane 2 a few weeks ago, and have finally got around to getting it set up.
I've gotten root access by resetting the password thanks my original Octane. The machine was originally part of a flame setup and has a very minimal desktop set up, even with toolchest trimmed of all but the barest of essentials. I'm definitely an Irix noob, so I started gingerly poking around and the machine and managed to start a 'standard' version of toolchest.. Anyway, I merrily went about setting the desktop more to my liking, got finished, rebooted and I was back exactly where I was before. I realize that I am humbled before the previous Admin for this machine, but I'd really like it to remember what I've set up and also that there's likely a script somewhere that keeps foiling my attempts to preserve my settings. Can someone point me in the general direction of where to look? I'll try to post an hinv went I get this hurtle jumped. It is a rather snappy machine compared to my older dual processor Octane with V12 graphics no less.

Tom

I think I have the time machine that George Orwell left here in the loft.

Joking aside, the environment for a smoke/flame is set up that way for a reason, I know it's a pain, but hey ho pip and dandy..

Does flame still work?

A smoke/flame setup is worth keeping, so you may want to dual boot it with another disk. I can help you with this after you have a fresh install (on another disk), but I can't take the credit, that (from my perspective) goes to Ian Mapleson.

I hope you aren't spending hours setting up your workspace as the root user? There's no point! Simply create a new account and will have all the defaults.

Sorry for the previous post. Posted on my ipad, and it does a wonderful job of editing what it thinks I think I mean!
I've done some poking about in the machine and see all kinds of tracks of flame this and sparks that but I wouldn't know without an arrow pointing at the executable saying 'try here'. I do know that it attempts a few different file system mounts that fail, has me wondering if this was originally part of some type of cluster environment. The machine appears to have belonged to a film and commercials house based in Toronto.
I don't currently have an external scsi dvdrom that works with SGI machines. One item on my "list of things to do" is take one of the few internal scsi drives I have and cram it in an external enclosure so that the Octanes aren't a one and done install.
The new machine did come with a DAT tape drive, but that's not going to help out for a bit. It also has a card at the bottom of the V12 with 2 LVDS ports and another card beside that one that reads Channel 1 and Channel 2. Apparently used with a video break out of some sort. Oh, and 2 fibre cards in a PCI box. Looks like the throughput for this machine was pretty good.
I'll see if I can't get a dvdrom setup this weekend and load Irix on a different drive.
Let me know what to look for to see if the flame software might still be on machine.

Thanks,
Tom

robespierre wrote: There's no point! Simply create a new account and will have all the defaults.

Not, really. The desktop services were turned off by the Autodesk installer for maximum performance.

Being root:


I think usually I have to enable more services but don't rememer which ones at the moment, I can check this night if necessary.

I reiterate what robespierre said about spending your days logged in as root (not saying you are doing that, but if you are, that's begging for disaster, proper Unix hygiene is to spend your days logged in as a regular user and only su to root when you need to perform an administrative task). With regard the the Toolchest, having a ~/.chestrc should trump any settings that would otherwise default to the system-wide toolchest configuration file, see here:
http://techpubs.sgi.com/library/tpl/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?coll=0650&db=man&raw=1&fname=/usr/share/catman/u_man/cat1/toolchest.z

If they really do chkconfig desktop off, then it will prevent any users from having the Indigo Magic desktop stuff unless they have written custom init files to run those services. The less fascist way to do this for any individual user is to touch .disableDesktop in their home directory. So what I would probably do is to (as Titox said) chkconfig desktop on, then touch .disableDesktop in the Flame user's directory (which disables it for just him), and create a new user for general (non Flame) usage.
The exact interactions of the init scripts are detailed here (for the old Irix 5.3): https://www.talisman.org/unix/hack-x-on-sgi.shtml

Logging in as root is just lazy and can cause a lot of problems. With 6.5 you can use sudo, which I prefer to su because you keep your own shell. Shell sectarianism is very strong.

robespierre wrote: Logging in as root is just lazy

Turns out flame 7.2 is installed on the machine and has a license number. No dongle though. Flame wants to connect to discreet to verify the license which blows up. I don't believe discreet lives at that address anymore. Did get the desktop to come back up and toolchest appears to be back to a normal state. This dual 400 Octane is miles quicker than my dual 300 or seems so. Too bad about the flame install, after a bit of googling, it looks very interesting.

fleetingthought wrote: Too bad about the flame install, after a bit of googling, it looks very interesting.

Flame (originally named Flash) has been at the top of the heap in most Hollywood special effects studios for the last 25 years at least, so yeah it's interesting...