Miscellaneous Operating Systems/Hardware

So to complete my collection of unusual (purple ) computers, i recently bought a prism.

Big mistake as it turnes out.

I cant get this thing to work. There are no SLES9 cds to get on novell.com, so no chance getting the box running with a X server.

Somewhere i have read that the SGI propack stuff that could enable the X server for the machine is also avalable for RHEL 5.5, which i got luckyly downloaded somewhere from the net.
Booting RHEL5.5 gets the machine stuck on "freeing kernel memory". Disabling apic, acpi and other kernel options didnt change anything, after exessive tries its always the same: Stuck on the message above.

So i tried debian 7.8: It boots to the text installer, then the keyboard isnt working anymore...

I was whoever able to install SLES 11.x. But after install it somehow tries to enable the x server (even though i tried to unselect all the x-org server stuff in yast), which results after boot in a wild jumping cursor on the console and endless messages "unaligned memory (or was it kernel) access: <memory-adress-range> - <memory-adress-range>"

I thought the problem with the x server sources in the two agp graphics cards that are installed, so i thought maybe the problems can be bypassed by taking out one of the cards, but no luck, still getting wild blinking cursors, unaligned memory access or other strange behaviour with all sorts of linuxes i tried.

The machine was preinstalled with debian 6.0, which also ends up with "unaligned access" error messages at some point, but i somehow can get it running. However, after updating through apt-get i now have "broken packages" error messages when i try to install something with apt-get.

Then i wanted to try freebsd: No chance, doesnt work either.

I dont know if the problems are because of the EFI part, or the itanium part of the machine, but im totally fed up.

Can someone please tell me how i can get this thing to work, the best would be having it running with a x-server.

What do i want with a machine drawing nearly 500 watts of current running text consoles?

Sounds like there's an issue with your memory. Have you tried removing the memory so only one or two sticks is installed?

I could be wrong, but didn't SGI have their own brand of Linux on this? Could also ask other members like Adrenaline if they have any ideas.

sgi never had their own linux brand however the prism does not work with ia64 linux by default either. i'd stick to the versions they were sold with and to get x running you might need some extras from sgi. have a look at techpubs and the relnotes from supportfolio

I forget to mention that i also have found the propack cds that are needed for these special linuxes that bring the special kernel and stuff. But i just dont get suse linux enterprise server 9, sp3, ia64 from nowhere.

And yes, i also tried with the minimal memory config, and its the same result.

I can see Suse 9.1 going for 20 bucks on ebay right now, if you're willing to possibly throw good money after bad...

You could search in the SGI Knowledge Base for the following sentence (include the quotes):



This leads to a huge 34.7 GB download. The URL is like this.

http://download.sgi.com/content_request ... epo.tar.gz

I haven't finished the download yet, but perhaps somewhere in this big pile of bits may be a SLES 9 ia64. Or perhaps it's really just a pile of bits. I don't know, but it may be worth a try.

tomvos wrote: This leads to a huge 34.7 GB download. The URL is like this.

http://download.sgi.com/content_request ... epo.tar.gz

I haven't finished the download yet, but perhaps somewhere in this big pile of bits may be a SLES 9 ia64. Or perhaps it's really just a pile of bits. I don't know, but it may be worth a try.

That sounds like a little more than just the pro pack. If it's the full SLES distribution, that's worth archiving somewhere for the day SGI decides to save space on its servers. (FWIW, at one point, you used to be able to download the SLES ISOs from Novell. IIRC, a big "if", it would install, but a license code was needed in order to enable updates and other features.)

the pro packs were around 1.7gb so that's a lot more. worth checking out for any altix or prism owners as jose said already

The three ISOs from SLES 9 SP3 for IA64 were a little under 2GB on disk. If it's the right ProPack, "ProPack4_for_Linux_SP3" is about 600MB in three ISOs.

I'm not sure *what* is in that 34GB blob, but I'll find out tomorrow...

I downloaded the Pack, but it doesnt contain the SLES9 IA64 Base-Images, which are the problem.

Perhaps the output of boot is being sent to serial console.

That part with the serial console i dont quite understand.

The only thing on the prism i can connect a serial cable to is the "console" port on the backside.
If i plug it in there and connect to it, i only see the L1 prompt and the output of the l1 commands.

I dont know how and if i can connect to the console output through serial cable.

When dealing with an SGI machine that has an L1, the magic keystrokes to switch between L1 and console mode are ^D and ^T - that is, CONTROL-D and CONTROL-T. I forget which is which, but the system will tell you which one to use to switch _back_ when you enter the appropriate one.

Note that when you switch from console to L1, by default it's just for one command, then returns to console mode - enter "l1" (I think) to stay in L1 after switching from console mode.

Thx for the tip, that was exactly what im looking for.

So i made some experiments after calming down for two days.

Gentoo and Red Hat 5.0: Does boot (gentoo takes ages, doesnt find root device itself), does install, but trying to boot it gives:


I dont find anything on the net about it

RHEL 5.5 stops at "freeing kernel memory"

SLES:
11 SP3: Tries to boot in yast2 (x window crap) and then the screen wents dark. Sometimes it is possible to switch with alt+f2 to text console, and with alt+f1 back to text-yast somehow. Sometimes it doesn work because the keyboard is dead.

Is there a way to tell it to install w/o X?

11 SP1: Boots nicely, but quits the yast ncurses frontend with the first message: "an error occurred during the installation". I am then thrown back to yast, and cant install regardless what im doing.
On the other consoles (F2-F4) i get an error like keyboard error or keyboard not found, and /dev/console not found. But I dont find any usefull hints on the net.
Now the funny part: I have a serial to usb bridge which BSODd my PC several times when that ncurses install menu switched windows.

Debian: The keyboard doesnt work as soon as the installer gets up. I need to try to get this running through serial console, now that i know how to switch between them (CTRL+D to enter, CTRL+T to leave to L1 again, thx smj).
[E] Tried so - BSOD.

Im getting drunk now, fuck it

Now I feel really bad, I assumed you knew the console connection commands... and had 2 displays connected to the machine, as it was configured with dual outputs.

Let me hunt through the pile of 600 or so SGI software CD's I have around the place and see what I can find for you....

I have the iso files at home. Did you ever get this system up and running? I bought one and tracked down the pro packs and sles. I just never got around to installing it.

Hi,
if you download and extract this yourepo.tar.gz file you will find a lot of PROM-versions located under htdocs\SGI-ProPack\4\rpm\ia64\.
Some of them as v4.33 and v4.43 I've seen before, however after v4.x the version numbers jump to v10.x .
All v10.x files contain A350/Prism PROM and a separate A450/A4700 PROM and the latest seems to be v10.54.
Did anyone try and flash this one ?

Ok,
just compared the size of PROM v5.04 and v10.54 and it is exactly the same.

xiri wrote: Ok,
just compared the size of PROM v5.04 and v10.54 and it is exactly the same.

That means nothing. The capacity of the flash memory chip is constant also.

MrWeedster wrote: Big mistake

it's exactly what I think about Prism