IRIX and Software

So I've wasted most of tonight on trying to get Irix 6.5.20 on the Fuel and I can't get a bootable system. I have (what I think is) a full set of install CDs: foundations I and II, four 6.5.20 overlay CDs, and the Apps CD.

After partitioning the drive with fx, which was no problem, I start the installer from overlay 1 and start with foundations. I "from", "keep *", "install default", "keep conflicting" and "go" for both Foundations I and II, and then the same for each of the overlay CDs (1 and 2 are the same, the difference being 1 has the miniroot).

The installs appeared to succeed. Or, at least it installed *something* because there's a regular file system with apparently valid files, but there is no kernel. When I quit the installer, it does rqsall, as expected, but autoconfig fails: no /var/sysgen/boot. There's a /var/sysgen, but there's no boot/ in it.

Am I missing a disc? Or, hopefully, just missing a step? The Irix install guides out there are not very detailed, at least not the ones that came up with a cursory Google search.

Incidentally, while the USB keyboard worked fine in the PROM command monitor, the actual install miniroot wants a PS/2 keyboard, even though it can see (and complain about) USB HID events.

You probably want the development foundations 1 and 2 also but what you have should be the complete set for a running installation. The Fuel needs 6.5.17 or higher, so you are okay there.


Did you make sure to partition as a root drive and install all the required files ? Sometimes you have to tell the prom where to look for the boot files, also. Decent writeup over at Ian's. ( Alltheweb for 'Ian Mapleson xfsdump xfsrestore disk clone', you should find a bunch of helpful stuff.)


/var/sysgen/boot on my computer is a link to /var/cpu/sysgen/IP35Boot

Take a look there and see if maybe just the link is missing ? Another thing to try is check out the steps to do a disk clone over at Ian's site. There was a couple steps at the end to make sure you had the boot files installed properly. Can't hurt to run through that series.


Should be okay, just missing a step or two. This is the reason I am running on a ten year old installation, doing an Irix install is a pain in the butt

Since you've got 6.5.20, stay there for a while. Many of the utilities from 20 are much nicer than the newer stuff. Some day if I ever reinstall Irix it will be to 21, then patch that to make it work with nekoware, then carefully upgrade the relevant systems without screwing up DPS, Impressario, ShowPS, all the good stuff from pre-B ellu ozo days.

I'd agree with hamei to try Ian's IRIX 6.5 Install Guide (if you have a failed install I'd suggest you implicitly include the 'Clearing Old Data Prior to Installation').

Ditto on hamei's suggestion to make sure the PROM is correctly linked to your new boot files. When installing IRIX on a new-to-me box, I usually do a 'resetenv' at the PROM command line, followed by a 'printenv' to make sure things look ok.

I'd diverge from hamei's recommendation to stick with IRIX 6.5.20. You won't be able to run nekoware unless you're at least at 6.5.21 , and with your IP35 system I would recommend the latest version of IRIX you can access. While a default install of a post 6.5.21 version of IRIX does loose some of the classic IRIX utilities hamei mentions, you also gain support for some of the IP35 hardware that was added post 6.5.20 - and you once IRIX is up and running you can install most of the missing classic utilities.

Hamei - most of the classic stuff you cite is present on a basic 6.5.22 install. For some bizarre and obscure reason SGI issued patches (recommended ones!) that remove these components (DPS, etc) or have replacement packages on the "Complementary Apps" CD so ignoring that CD and being careful about patches will give you a classic 6.5.22 system.

Why bizarre reasons? SGI already paid Adobe's DPS license fee for 6.5.22, and I seriously doubt Adobe refunded any of it for them promising to remove the software with a patch. Removing functionality for no return is bizarre.

in general i wouldn't use global wildcards like "keep *" but rather looking at what you're actually doing.
in addition to ian's giude you might also wanna have a look at this: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2153&p=16128#p16128

That's where the destructive little devils hide ? In the patches and on the Complementary Apps ? Thanks, SAQ. You just saved me a bunch of time

Agreed, it was stupid and destructive. I often wonder if Belluzo was not in fact an undercover agent for Mickeysoft. Bozo Ewald was just greedy and stupid but Belluzo may have been more cunning. The fall of SGI is instructive, for those who bother to pay attention.

Wreck : I don't mean he should stay there forever. But I will always regret happily tra-la-la-ing down the yellow brick road and allowing SGI to substitute that useless crap (cups, gview, screwed up Photoshop, etc etc) for a working system. I also recently discovered they butchered the entire fonts system. It's a total mess under the blankets. Thanks, SGI.

You can run nekoware on a patched 6.5.21, I did it for years. The main thing you get by going to 6.5.30 is better firewire. There's a lot of smaller patches but in comparison to losing the good utilities, 6.5.30 is no big deal.

I would still go there eventually but take it slowly and don't let the "upgrade" ruin your system. Can anyone think of a worse pile of steaming bear shit than CUPS ?

Well, it turned out to be real simple: I screwed up overlay disc 2, so the required packages were never installed. (I'm using copies of my originals: those are gold!) So I reimaged it and it worked properly.

So now it boots 6.5.20 and that seems to work fine. (foetz: I got the "keep *" from Ian.) However, some of the posts in this thread make me wonder what the next step should be -- I definitely want to make it Nekoware-ready, but I don't want to lose something I might want later. I have 6.5.22 tardists from supportfolio, though I may also have a line on a set of 6.5.26 overlay CDs (crossing fingers). What would I lose, exactly, going to either .22 or .26? Where can I restore those lost tools from, assuming I want to?

well things sounded much more dramatic than they are. swmgr is one of the best software managers i've ever used and lets you add or remove whatever you desire anytime. also the output of many programs gives good enough hints about what's missing.
anyway everybody use different stuff so it's always an individual choice. the only thing i had to reinstall after 6.5.22 was DPS so if you should get 6.5.26 i'd recommend a normal install with whatever patches you have. then you can figure out what's missing if you should run into problems.

as for the "keep *", that does work of course. i just meant it's not such a good idea because it's kinda like saying "i don't care"

It is an individual choice but I have to disagree with how easy it is to fix. Fixing my fonts situation alone was a two day operation. They *still* aren't really fixed. DPS ? how did you get that back ? if you have a tutorial I'd love to follow it. 6.5.21 is no longer available from SGI Cups sucks dead donkey balls. Reinstalling Impressario is slightly easier but if you don't have to do that, DON'T CREATE THE NEED !!

There are several systems that are noticeably worse post-6.5.21 Ime it's a hell of a lot easier to avoid grief than it is to fix it.

Not exactly (or maybe not even remotely) what you meant, but it is possible to re-install/re-link Acrobat 4.05/dpsnx and have something better than the meager versions of ghostscript (gsview and xpdf) that SGI inserted in place of the original Display Postscript system (tho most of the time I use the version of xpdf that you added to nekoware).
For reference (and to absolve 6.5.22 from blame), the original DPS went missing at IRIX 6.5.23: Quoted from the IRIX 6.5.30 Update Guide (if you've got a minute there's some other interesting stuff in there too).

That's pretty much what i did, also. And if you use PhotoShop, there were a couple of tricks to get it running again. (the Human Nekochan Search Engine can find that in .003 seconds, I am sure )

Howerver, i wish that I had not gone ahead and blindly 'upgraded'. If I knew then what I know now, I'da graduated from sixth gra ... no, I mean I'd have kept the original system rather than trying to back-install them.

None of these problems are psychopathic killers, for people who just mess about with the ol' Octane once a month for ten minutes, they don't matter. But if you do printing, then you want things to match. After the Great Software Upheaval, they don't.

We won't even discuss CUPS again. The cupboard is bare of Tagamet.


Oh cool ! That's good news. How about Impressario and ShowPS, etc ? If so, 6.5.22 would be ideal for a while. Can run nekoware ... eventually he will want to update most of the systems but if 6.5.22 is basically good, that's excellent.


Updated my ass. They replaced the real Adobe Type1 fonts with el-cheapo copy fonts. Then they aliassed all the fonts over to the replacement crap. So when you think you are using Helvetica, you are really seeing Heavenetica. You just have all these real fonts in that directory that aren't getting used, except you think that's what you are seeing displayed.

Then when you go to print on your PostScript printer using the real Adobe fonts, sooprize sooprize ! Are my eyes going bad ? What's the deal with this PostScript shit, it's nowhere near as good as they say !

Yeah, well it might be if you were really using the fonts you thought you were using.


I do prefer xpdf but it should be a choice , not something rammed down our throats. Or worse, snuck in under the banner of 'modern replacements.'

As SAQ mentioned, the fees were already paid. Why cheat existing users ? Doesn't make any sense.


Anyway, my point was just that since Classy is at 6.5.20, don't rush in to get 6.5.30. Yes, 30 is mostly better, but there's a lot of stuff a serious user will want to keep from 6.5.20. So run it at 20 for a little while.

Really good to know the good stuff was still there at 6.5.22, too. That overlay is still available. Might be okay to go there directly, I haven't looked into it very deeply. When did CUPS ruin the property values ?

yup that's what i meant. also x_eoe.sw.Xfonts still comes with some DPS stuff.
not exactly sure what you miss however and i've hardly done any printing with irix ... ever

Okay, I'll dust the 6.5.22 tardists off and try to get those on this weekend. Thanks!

The easiest way to re-link Adobe's dpsnx.agent is to let the install script do it for you - as suggested by yoben (scroll down a ways into the link):
I'm guessing you're already tried and are way ahead of me on this..... but it looks like a version of Adobe's Helvetica (and a few others) are installed along with DPNXBasic. Was the ability to access/use those fonts fubar'd by the removal of DPS too?

I'm pretty sure that Impressario is an option with even 6.5.30 - though you need to be very careful with the Complementary Applications CD because the needs-an-additional-license ESP PrintPro is set to replace Impressario by default.

There also is a patch whose sole function is removing Display PostScript (and probably putting in the new fonts). I have never installed that particular patch on my systems. I went to look it up, but my Supportfolio account has been removed. There didn't seem to be any reason to re-apply, since there aren't any new IRIX patches general-availability anyway.

I did look at the support matrix. Looks like they have the Origin 400 under "MIPS servers".

The fonts situation is rather confusing, and made more so by SGI's actions at 6.5.23 ....

This is the result of deduction, so anyone with more accurate knowledge, please share. But from what I can figure out, 6.5 originally came with Type 1 fonts in /usr/lib/DPS/etc etc. They then linked these to /usr/lib/X11/etc etc, maybe for compatibility with applications that were not designed for DPS ? So in the case of scalable fonts, you were using the Adobe fonts no matter what (unless you installed your own, or some application did that "for" you.)

Then you had the applications like PhotoShop and Framemaker, which were not really designed for Irix anyhow. On systems that did not have Type1 fonts, they would have to bring their own. So when Adobe "ported" those applications to Irix, they didn't bother to change the application to use the scalable fonts natively available through DPS or even the X system, they just installed the entire mess that they designed for Windows or Solaris or Macintosh.

So now we have the bitmap fonts, scalable Type1 fonts living under DPS, these scalable Type1 fonts linked into the X system, and independently-installed Type1 fonts for some applications. At this point, these are all either bitmap fonts or real Adobe fonts.

At 6.5.23 (I thought it was 22, thanks for the correction), some manager genius at SGI decided that Adobe licenses cost too much, they were not only going to replace the Adobe components with Modern ! New and Improved ! Open Source ! rah rah rah yay ! components in future releases, they were also going to "update" all the components that people had already paid for with cheap crappy junk SGI downloaded off the Internet. Or maybe even some BBS in Nigeria, who knows. They wrote this up as if it were some kind of improvement but in fact it was a substitution of low-quality copies for systems that worked. Not only worked but, in the case of Postscript printers, the substitution actually deceived you as to what you were getting.

You may notice that they did not lower the price of Irix as a result of license-fee avoidance, either. Intellectual Property is the basis of American Innovation and World Leadership ! (When we are collecting. When we are on the paying end it's not as wonderful.)

What you have now, if you have an updated pre-23 install is : all the original parts sitting there bit-rotting, a bunch of camouflaged downloaded free junk in use, some aliassing scripts redirecting the el-cheapo copies to replace the fonts you might think you are using, some applications that use real Adobe fonts (the ones that brought their own) while most other applications do not, a printer system that's total garbage, a Postscript viewer that doesn't, an old version of xpdf, and god knows what-else blundering around the system, pretending to be quality software.

(The nekoware stuff from gtk2 ghostscript etc is in addition to the original Irix font systems, and pretty much separate. SGI also apparently messed around with ghostscript at 6.5.23 but I haven't dug into that yet and don't want to. There was something about the iconcatalog becoming anti-aliased around then which would indicate ghostscript/freetype but that's another quest for another season.)

It's ugly. That's all there is to it, plain old ordinary ugly. And deceitful, that they snuck this in under the guise of "patches" and presented it as an improvement. It's garden-variety fraud.

Free Markets, yay. Money money uber alles. A manager can manage any business, Ricky Belluzo ! Rick Belluzo ! Strategic partnerships ! Job creators ! Investors !

Pardon me while I puke.

FWIW, I copied the adobe font files found in /usr/adobe/DPSNXBasic_2.1.1/psres/fonts/* into a folder in /usr/nekoware/etc/fonts/ and added a pointer in /usr/nekoware/etc/fonts/local.conf ( along with the other fonts suggested by Canavan ). Doesn't do much for the the larger font issue in general, but it might help to make the occasional web page easier on the eyes.

For 99% of what people do with Irix now, it doesn't matter. But if you have an eagle-eyed Assistant who is a certified lunatic (r) about page layout and your printed material doesn't match what she created, you're in deep poop.

It was a real mystery to me for a long time why that was happening.

And the poop up my nose was getting unpleasant