SGI: Hardware

So.. After 2 nights of xfsdump I produced a good drive that's bootable on the machine it was produced on (Octane 2) I was ready to insert into the 2 cheapo old Octanes I picked up some time back.

BUT.. When inserted into either of the two Octanes (1), they hang after boot up regardless of the combination of boards (IE: I've swapped them around).

The source IP30 is


The older Octanes are (the ones I am trying to run the dumped drive on):
195 MHz, 1M 2nd Cache
195 MHz, 1M 2nd Cache

The Xbow could be causing an incompatibility issue, but I doubt the CPUs are.

Can you boot Octane 1 & 2 of the same image?

How far after boot do they hang? Is it perhaps failing when trying to bring up the graphics system? I would expect the Octane 2 installation to be configured for VPro graphics and the older Octane 1 systems to have Impact series graphics which would require different software. At least that's the first thing I'd check.

Does the directory /usr/gfx/MGRAS exist and contain anything on your Octane 2 installation? If not, that would suggest that you don't have the right software installed to drive the earlier Octane graphics.

very quick, ie: 2 seconds after the bar light changes from red to white.

No, gfx doesn't contain that directory.

Hmm...I'm a little surprised at how quickly it hangs. I'm not familiar enough with the internals to know if the boot-time text port requires device-specific drivers. If so, then that would explain the hang, since you don't appear to have the right software installed for the older-style MGRAS graphics.

Have you tried booting the "hanging" machines with a serial console? It's possible that they're booting fine (not actually hanging at all) but can't display anything giving the appearance of being hung. I've certainly seen that sort of thing happen.

AFAIK, you'd need IRIX media in order to add the necessary graphics drivers to the existing installation. (Or a fresh install of IRIX on the other machines would also work.) But since you're cloning a disk, I'm assuming you don't have IRIX media. In which case, I'm stumped. Maybe somebody else will come along and offer better advice.

I have media, but unless I did a netboot, no way of connecting CD-ROM. I could easily transfer the required files, by mounting the drive in my working Octane2. I could even boot that drive, but would it let me install if I'm on newer technolodgy?

I'll try serial cable as well.

On SUN machines you could boot -r and configure new hardware, do we not have anything on IRIX like that?

Thanks for your time jp.

As I'm sure you've seen Irix will let you stop the boot process for maintenance but you're not getting that far, Solaris has much better boot recovery options as it has always been intended as a high availability server OS, which, to say the least, Irix never was. Anyway, you probably want to have a look here first: http://forums.nekochan.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=12576&p=99925&

Boots ok, on serial, with no keyboard/mouse/monitor connected.

Just to recap, which I may not have made clear, it hung, seconds AFTER booting the OS, therefore we had already gone past the maintenance section.

I've set console=d but not able to login, also network isn't up. Think I'll try the second board.

Well, I'm giving up on them now, they strike me that they will be continuously error some. Ethernet now works, SCSI doesn't.

uunix wrote: On SUN machines you could boot -r and configure new hardware, do we not have anything on IRIX like that?

Something like that would require having all the necessary drivers on the hard drive already. Upthread it seemed clear that you don't have the MGRAS drivers, so to "configure new hardware" will require installing drivers from IRIX distribution media somehow (directly attached CD, DINA appliance, whatever).

The thread vishnu pointed out suggests that in inst (which you should be able to get to through the maintenance menu), you'd need "keep *" and "install fresh". I thought it would have been "install hardware" instead. So if "install fresh" doesn't work, try that.

uunix wrote: Well, I'm giving up on them now, they strike me that they will be continuously error some. Ethernet now works, SCSI doesn't.

Uh, how can SCSI not be working if it's booting?

ISTR installations on an Octane with R10k CPUs would not work when moved to an Octane with R12k CPUs. Not sure I tried the reverse. (That was probably using 6.5.19 FWIW.)

I think that was before I got my hands on any VPro gfx cards - where you will also face a problem swapping over from MGRAS. There are threads you can find on nekochan about adding the necessary software to switch gfx card families,

Send me your dual R14k CPU module and I promise I'll run all the permutations and report back...

uunix wrote: I have media, but unless I did a netboot, no way of connecting CD-ROM. I could easily transfer the required files, by mounting the drive in my working Octane2. I could even boot that drive, but would it let me install if I'm on newer technolodgy?

There's a web page floating around by a guy who put all his various Irix install media onto an old sca hard disk. With that, you're good to install on O2, Octane, newer Origins, newer Onyxes, Tezro ... seemed like a good idea to me. You could even put it into an external scsi case and use that idea for installing to Indigo, Indigo2, etc.

Or you could setup DINA ...

They look crap so I'm striping and junking.

i'd get an external scsi plextor or one of the few others that were accepted by most risc machines. it's really handy having that around not only for sgi but any other boxes you might have