IRIX and Software

I've got a ginormous box of SGI CDROMs. Last time I used the CDROM on my O2 I had some strange errors. These CDs are getting on in the years. I'm thinking it is time to start tackling making archives.

Is anyone else keeping a big archive? How are you organising it? Any special software you are using? Do you keep md5 sums? Do you keep images or dist? Are there better tools for long-term storage? Pictures of the CDs and/or booklets and covers?

I don't know that I'm keeping an archive necessarily, but I took images of my SGI install CDs not so long ago. A pretty basic "dd if=/dev/cdrom of={some-file-name}" arrangement, making sure to include the part number from the CD as part of the file name. Didn't really bother with md5sums or anything like that.

for the osx users, if you don't wanna use dd, exporting a bin/cue from toast worked fine for me

I don't think any of the SGI discs are multimode (except for Octane Soundtrack). So you don't need cues, a regular ISO image is enough.
Toast .image files (or Nero .NRG) is just an ISO with a 512 byte trailer.

I've always dumped to raw disk images using dd. You can burn them back to disc with programs like xcdroast or any other burning utility that supports raw images.

jodys wrote: Last time I used the CDROM on my O2 I had some strange errors. These CDs are getting on in the years.

I think it's more likely the CDROM drive of the O2 is getting old. But backups never hurt.

pentium wrote: I've always dumped to raw disk images using dd.

Same here. If using an IRIX system, be sure to back up the entire disc (s10), not just the EFS partition (s1). But any Linux or OSX machine will do.

I have a little script which reads the .IM file from the CDROM root and renames the image accordingly, e.g. the CD with this .IM:

is renamed: 812-0707-001_MIPSPRO_C_COMPILER_7.2.efs

I somewhat order CD images by IRIX version or whatever else is common between them, but it's rather vague Many CDs work on many IRIX versions or were part of several distributions.

Thanks for the reminder about the .IM files. I just wrote a little python script to image (dd if=/dev/sr0 of=IMAGE_NAME) these from a linux box, loopback mount the image, then rename stuff according to the .IM file (or user input). FYI, the .IM file seems to have been introduced around or after 5.3. Many of my earlier CDs lack this so I have to name them manually. I'm still thinking about imaging the booklets and/or CD covers. I think it would be pretty quick work with a copy stand and some lights.

I do a "dd" image, then a tarball of the contents. The latter is in case you reach a point where it is hard to extract the files from the image.

I started doing this with tapes. Originally I had dd images, but with IRIX tapes you'd need to write them out and then find a working IRIX box with a distcp that wouldn't mess up the header and require a new version of inst to install (e.g. if you distcp a 4D1-3.3 tape on IRIX 5.3 it will not install because it will now need a 5.3 inst to install, but 4D1-3.3 of course only has 3.3 inst). Now I have the tarballs and dd files, and it makes network install easier.