Getting Started, Documentation, Tips & Tricks

Hello everyone,

after only seeing SGI on movies and reading about SGI machines on web, finally managed to get one Indigo2 IMPACT10000.

No keyboard, no mouse, no monitor, no documentation, no CDs and no CD device ... only the pink box...
On power on plays some melody and that is all that I get from the box at moment... but I'm so happy.

Just wanted to share my excitement and to say hello to all SGI aficionados.

Congratulations!
You will need to get a regular PS/2 keyboard and 3-button PS/2 mouse, or you could run it headless through the serial console. There have been reports in the past that some cheaper PS/2 keyboards don't work: I think this is an issue with Scan Code Set 3, which is part of the PS/2 keyboard protocol but not actually used by PCs.

Welcome nato, it has a hard disk yes?

Thank you.

It has a two disks. Don't have any info about machine specs. Bougth on ebay "13W3-M Male to HD15 cable adapter for SGI Indy Octane Indigo2 workstation PC/VGA", it will be a few weeks before I can attach monitor.

Regarding headless, don't have DIN8 to USB with some converter in betwwen. I will wait for 13W3, to see what is on the pink machine.

welcome natocccp and congrats. you got yourself a true classic there

Nice little machine, hope you enjoy it (once you get it fully running).

Hello,

does attached screenshot of Indigo2 booting means that disks are dead or file system is damaged?





Any idea how to login if user and password are not provided? No CDROM device installed in the box nor CD media with IRIX availabe at moment.

Thanks in advance,
Regards

Boot into the prom and set the date. Don't turn off the power though.

The SCSI disk with id 2 seems to be faulty. Not sure which position is disk id 2 in the Indigo2, but my first guess is the top drive.
Also during boot, it looks for additional scsi disks with ids 1 and 2 on the second scsi controller, which usually attach to the back SCSI connector, so these are missing. At least the root drive seems to be working, and boots IRIX. Congratulations

Resetting password on an IRIX system is a FAQ, and is covered in:
http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/Root_password_removal
http://software.majix.org/irix/admin-password.shtml
http://www.oocities.org/siliconvalley/h ... ssword.htm

If you don't own a second SGI machine, and don't have IRIX media and a CDROM, it is possible to download an image of IRIX install media and try netbooting that image on a Linux machine. IRIX media are found at archive.org
For setting up a Linux system for netbooting IRIX machine, this is a bit of a hassle, but this page describes it:
http://www.ifora.org/sgi/

There is also DINA http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/Using_DINA ... on_of_IRIX

dexter1 wrote: The SCSI disk with id 2 seems to be faulty. Not sure which position is disk id 2 in the Indigo2, but my first guess is the top drive.
Also during boot, it looks for additional scsi disks with ids 1 and 2 on the second scsi controller, which usually attach to the back SCSI connector, so these are missing. At least the root drive seems to be working, and boots IRIX. Congratulations

Yes, top drive is ID 2, if using the built-in ID allocation rather than jumpers. The "data sync" error does not sound good!

fstab is looking for partition 7 which indicates the second internal disk and both external disks were once set up as "option drives", but if the second internal disk has since been re-partitioned as a "system drive" it no longer has partition 7 in the table. Though you'd hope if someone were doing that they would also update the fstab entries.

"data sync mark error" sounds like the formatting is corrupt. You may be able to fix it by low-level formatting, but the drive may be physically faulty. I'm more surprised that there is even an error message for such a low level problem.
It's possible to reset the root password without any external help, but it's an exercise in persistence.

Hello,

bought new VGA cable and colors are now better.

After waching some YouTube videos with IRIX, my conclusion is that file system level of demage is large enough to render system unable to login, i.e. that is not issue with root password, but root account intself doesnt exists. Here is image of login screen, there is no icon for root account:



Can anyone confirm that there must be at least one avatar on login screen for login.

Also found out what is actualy inside the machine:



Does line:

SCSI Disk: scsi(0)disk(2)

means that there are two disk in machine or there is only one disk with ID=2?
Do I have to have two SCSI Disk lines if I have two disks?

Thanks in advance,
Regards

IRIX supports either displaying a list of the known users for you to select one, or providing a box for you to enter the username. If it's configured in the latter manner, no list of users is displayed.

Hence, the display of that login screen is fine and does not show that root doesn't exist or anything. You'd just need to type it in as the username.

Getting around a root password with IRIX isn't too difficult, but it does require a second disk with IRIX installed on it and the ability to mount both drives simultaneously. Check the wiki (and Google) and you'll find plenty of methods of resetting the root password.

As for that hinv, it is showing that there's one disk with SCSI ID 2 running on controller 0 (ie, the built-in SCSI bus). If you have two disks installed, then there will be two entries there showing the IDs of each (and possibly a third if you pop a CD drive in as well!).

Hello,

with difficulty to find cd-rom device for SGI attepmted to reset password with network boot.

Thank you for all links.

Reached this point in net boot with Indigo:



Any ideas what might be wrong?

Thanks in advance,
Regards

fx is a tool for partitioning and formatting the disks, not a tool to start a miniroot stand alone shell and clear the password on your system.

Oh, i see that Majix is referring to fx for the reset password procedure via the debug method. It is easier to boot sash over the network and edit the passwd file.

If you have a bootp/tftp server set up, you can start the miniroot from the PROM menu by clicking on the second option "Install system software" (or press "2"). Then you need to enter the ip address of the bootp/tftp server and the location where the stand/sash.64 is located.

Once the miniroot environment is up, go to Admin and start a chroot environment. Then you can edit the password file /etc/passwd with vi.

I always use http://www.ifora.org/sgi/ but this might be a rehash of above information.

EDIT: Make sure you have set the netaddr environment variable correctly in the PROM.