IRIX and Software

DINA + Hyper-V

I thought I'd share some quick notes on using DINA with Hyper-V.

There may be better ways to do this, but this was my process:

1) Convert the VMDK to a VHD with the freeware tool vmdk2vhd.

2) Resize the drive with the freeware tool VHD Resizer. I used 80GB, but it hardly matters because the extra "space" is an illusion, and will never be used. There is something not quite right about the VHD after the conversion. If you don't also resize the drive, when you try to boot it will complain that wd0 is smaller than its partitions. I expect this is some off-by-one bug, so anything bigger than 60GB will do for the new size.

3) Create a VM in Hyper-V pointing at the VHD. The default settings are fine, except that you don't need nearly 512MB of RAM: 160MB or so is plenty. After it is created, under 'Hardware', remove the standard network adapter and add a legacy network adapter.

4) Start the VM.

5) Hit a key before it boots the kernel and type 'boot -c' to get into userconfig. Then disable ACPI with:

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disable acpi
disable re
quit

If you don't disable ACPI, the network will not function properly and there will be a bunch of warnings about the processor during startup. Unfortunately this needs done every time it boots. :/

6) You may need to update the keyboard settings. They are set by 'encoding' in /etc/wscons.conf. I used a value of 'us'. Restart.

7) The network interface is 'tlp0' under Hyper-V instead of 'pcn0' under VMWare. You'll either need to edit the template files under /usr/dina before configuring the system, or edit /etc/rc.conf afterward to use the right interface.

And that's it! I have no idea if X works under Hyper-V. I've never tried, but I rather doubt it. The important part is at this point you should be able to access it over the network from Windows and SGI machines, and as soon as your IRIX files are copied over, can do netboot installations.

*ADDENDUM*

I found a couple of more things, though not related to Hyper-V specifically.

1) When it rolled over from Feb to Mar, new static BOOTP entries stopped being made properly, and what got entered in dhcpd.conf broke DHCP entirely by setting the word 'from' as the MAC address for the new entry. When the days moved from two digits (29) to one (1), the 'cut' in the script /usr/dina/checkforSGI_BOOTP_reqs was grabbing the wrong field. I haven't really tested it, but my fix was to add:

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sed 's/  */ /g' |
ahead of the 'sort/uniq/cut' part.

2) Every night the cpu got pegged and kept there. I noticed that /usr/dina/startmenu was running even though no users were logged in. A little poking around showed that the daily security checks do something logged in as root, which started startmenu automatically. Because startmenu was trying to read input, it never finished and the security check would spin forever. The fix for me was to edit /etc/security.conf and add this at the bottom:

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check_rootdotfiles=NO
:1600SW: :O2: :O2+: :O2: :1600SW:
Thanks for sharing this, telackey. DINA is a great tool, if only to avoid repetitive stress injuries (RSI) from swapping CDs so many times. :) This is a platform I would probably never have tried, but may be more practical or desirable for some folks trying to get started with IRIX.

I added a section to this wiki page where you could fill in the steps you took to setup DINA under Hyper-V. You can refer to the section on setting up DINA 1.0 under Linux+VMware as an example.
Then? :IRIS3130: ... Now? :O3x02L: :A3504L: - :A3502L: :1600SW: +MLA :Fuel: :Octane2: :Octane: :Indigo2IMP: ... Other: DEC :BA213: :BA123: Sun , DG AViiON , NeXT :Cube:
Great! I'll fill in the wiki soon. Maybe include some screenshots of the process too.
:1600SW: :O2: :O2+: :O2: :1600SW: