The collected works of Orakel

OSnews.com: SGI Indigo Magic Desktop for Linux Project Needs Betatesters
Slashdot.org: What Happened to 5dwm?
Slashdot.org: SGI & The IMD4Linux Project?

And from the IMD4Linux homepage :

Last updates from the front: 23/02/2004

It's alive! SGI finally replied and a the new license agreement is in the mail. Let's wait and see.


I find this quite awesome for i love this WM. After SGI dropped support for older SGI machines, like the popular Indy and Indigo2, this project together with the Linux kernel (which is ported to about all Indy/Indigo2 CPU's; from R4K4 till R10K; with more support, like O2 / R10K support in the make), GNU userland, and proper support for the graphics and audio cards, this brings new life to these machines. Because a lot other software has already been ported to (GNU/)Linux: XFS, FAM, and much more. Thanks SGI!
$ cat TODO
Learn Inner Sanctuary; Act Autonomous; Forge Future; Experience Enthean Enlightenment.
If you have a (fast) x86 machine with Linux on it, you can recode a proprietary WMV9/RM video to something you wish with MPlayer's MEncoder thus resulting in possibility to use native codecs on a broader number of OSes, because of the openness of the codec you use then. Exactly what i'm doing all the time with Real garbage (their codecs are far from the definition "open source"). I'm not using this method to play movies on my SGI computers, but you could, if you want, given XViD and MP3 are supported by the MPlayer port, and your SGI machine can handle it. I'm afraid none of mine can.

Here's what i'm doing with RealMedia video's:
$ mplayer -dumpstream -dumpfile test.rm -rtsp-stream-over-tcp rtsp://streams3.omroep.nl:554/tv/vpro/r ... 0040121.rm
$ mencoder test.rm -o test.avi -ovc xvid -oac mp3lame


Voila, an XViD was born. The RTSP URL is just as example; -rtsp-stream-over-tcp matters only when the RTSP protocol is used (ie. for Real, but also for ie. QuickTime) for firewalls or broken connections, though it's possible to forward UDP connections on a firewall too. As you can see i'm using XViD + MP3. When Theora is ready i'd love to use OGG Vorbis + OGG Theora instead. Regarding files: test.rm is the output file in the first command, and the input file in the second command. It can be deleted afterwards; while test.avi is the output of the second command which you'll want to view with ie. MPlayer afterwards.

If you see the above i think it's pretty straightforward of what exactly happens and i think the same can be done regarding WMV9. I never tried, though. I did succesfully done the conversion with QuickTime 6.

Finally, i wrote a few extended howto's for this process (for Real), but it's not in English. The MPlayer documentation explains it too, though pretty short. I hope this is useful for anyone up here!
$ cat TODO
Learn Inner Sanctuary; Act Autonomous; Forge Future; Experience Enthean Enlightenment.
It's damn slow on an Indy (i don't remember specs of the Indy though). Don't bother to try. Together with someone else i ported GNUstep to Linux/MIPS just for fun. Also very slow, ofcourse. APT was horribly slow for example. Seems the same rule which applies on old Sun hardware (run SunOS on it, not GNUBSD) also applies on old SGI hardware.

A real benchmark is more interesting than just the feelings imo.

One of the most interesting usages (ie. Challenge S as firewall) is not possible because GIO64 is not supported, hence no Phobos.

Here's info to get Linux running on O2/R10000
http://www.linux-mips.org/~glaurung/
It's also possible to boot Linux over the network on O2/R10000.
I know someone who has this working succesfully (but not a native installation! -- yet)

O2 used to be working on NetBSD, went broken, but works again. NetBSD supports the following
* IP12 machines
o Indigo (R3000)
o 4D/30, 4D/35 (theoretical/untested)
* IP20 machines
o Indigo (R4x00)
* IP22 machines
o Indigo2 (R4400)
o Challenge S
* IP24 machines
o Indy (R4400, R4600, R5000)
* IP32 machines
o O2 (R5000, RM5200, R10000, R12000)


http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/sgimips/

Would be interesting to see one of those overclocked O2's running on ie. O2. If anyone has done this, and has information on performance, please share.
$ cat TODO
Learn Inner Sanctuary; Act Autonomous; Forge Future; Experience Enthean Enlightenment.
Hmm now that's interesting. Would that mean a G130 works using Linux/NetBSD? Does anyone happen to know? Does anyone now if the 3C597 works under these OSes in an I2?
$ cat TODO

Learn Inner Sanctuary; Act Autonomous; Forge Future; Experience Enthean Enlightenment.
Thank you! Very useful.

There's one odd thing i've noticed which is from a cosmetic point of view not looking good: if i move my mouse over the current opened applications they all pop up; i have this feature enabled. If the icon is less big than the maximum size is pops up relatively less to vertical, but still relatively more to horizontal. In the case of XMMS, which (here) has a very small icon, it'll not even pop up in vertical way over the default size of the whole iconbar while it does slightly to the horizontal way.

I'm not sure how this could be fixed or wether it should be fixed at all. In the case of XMMS a different icon could be chosen instead of this one which would make this "bug" at least less apparant.
$ cat TODO
Learn Inner Sanctuary; Act Autonomous; Forge Future; Experience Enthean Enlightenment.
[quote="nekonoko"]
As for glib2/gtk2 as far as I know they are 100% MIPSpro.[/quote]

(Offtopic)

Didn't you get linking problems at the end of the compilation? What options did you used? Did you apply any patches on the source?
$ cat TODO
Learn Inner Sanctuary; Act Autonomous; Forge Future; Experience Enthean Enlightenment.
Epiphany, because it has a native, build-in, well-working crash/recovery system much like Opera has. My only complaint is that it doesn't have LDAP support. However it is also part of GNOME, so i prefer Firefox + a less good crash/recovery plug-in. That one won't recover when your browser or anything underlying decides to turn it's back against you.
$ cat TODO
Learn Inner Sanctuary; Act Autonomous; Forge Future; Experience Enthean Enlightenment.
You could also chose to run an X server on the other computer as well. And to fix this telnet problem, log in with FTP as root and edit /etc/inetd.conf then reupload the file and reboot the machine. If the line is insecure, don't forget to change your root passwd since it was send via cleartext (assuming you don't use FTP over SSL). You could also use the serial line + Hyperterminal.
$ cat TODO
Learn Inner Sanctuary; Act Autonomous; Forge Future; Experience Enthean Enlightenment.
nekonoko wrote:
Orakel wrote:
nekonoko wrote: As for glib2/gtk2 as far as I know they are 100% MIPSpro.


(Offtopic)

Didn't you get linking problems at the end of the compilation? What options did you used? Did you apply any patches on the source?


squeen did those, but there should be notes/patches in the tardist as an optional install.


Neat -- thanks squeen, and everyone else who documents their build process. I've succesfully compiled glib 2.4.0 and 2.4.2 now.
$ cat TODO

Learn Inner Sanctuary; Act Autonomous; Forge Future; Experience Enthean Enlightenment.
[i]Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
Selected video codec: [ffodivx] vfm:ffmpeg (FFmpeg MPEG-4)[/i]

Should work on every platform FFmpeg works on. And that's a [i]lot[/i] including IRIX, Windows, Linux, and (all?) the Unices. No problem.
$ cat TODO
Learn Inner Sanctuary; Act Autonomous; Forge Future; Experience Enthean Enlightenment.
unixmuseum wrote:
Orakel wrote: log in with FTP as root

I certainly hope hamei doesn't allow for root ftp!! It's one of the highly suggested security measures...


Uhm. I, for one, don't care about IRIX security. I allow Telnet and FTP as root with no root passwd set. Big deal, the machine is NATed. That could be very well the case in hamei's situation as well. I certainly hope so, given it makes the situation much easier.
$ cat TODO

Learn Inner Sanctuary; Act Autonomous; Forge Future; Experience Enthean Enlightenment.
For those interested in more lightweight-than-Mozilla-browsers:
Dillo
Netrik
Links
W3m
Elinks

All of these run _fast_. Some of these have HTML4, frames, tables, javascript, image support rendering the program quite useful for all-day basic usage.

I've only compiled and tried Links2 on IRIX 6.5 and it ran & worked very well.
$ cat TODO

Learn Inner Sanctuary; Act Autonomous; Forge Future; Experience Enthean Enlightenment.
With -ao you specify the audio output driver and/or device. See -ao help for a list of available drivers; -vo does the same, for video. I recommend you to view the manpage as schleusel described because the available options are _huge_.

-f doesn't exist if you want f ull s creen try the option -fs.
$ cat TODO
Learn Inner Sanctuary; Act Autonomous; Forge Future; Experience Enthean Enlightenment.
OpenGL is portable, Direct3D is not. If you want a (potential) portable application OpenGL should be your choice since Direct3D is only available for Win32/x86-32. IMO, portability is _extremely_ important (even for proprietary software). On the contrary, Microsoft appears to disagree .
$ cat TODO
Learn Inner Sanctuary; Act Autonomous; Forge Future; Experience Enthean Enlightenment.
unixmuseum wrote: You are?


Not arrogant.

Don't advertise it in public, you might attract some fucknuts trying to break in...


Advertise to whom? Break in to what? I stated the security consequences. He/she (assuming male gender for the rest of the post) is able to think for himself wether the solution is worth it or not.

Imagine a nice little java script running as root coming out of you browsing the web... Could do some damage...


Not really possible here given my browser doesn't run as root nor runs on IRIX. You're welcome to try it though. What website would you wish me to travel to (please no flash/shockwave/activex/java, it won't work)?

hamei is in a business environment in which security is a concern (not that home users shouldn't be concerned) ... root password is most definitely set, password file shadowed, and most likely root ftp & al. disabled...


He stated he has FTP enabled. It could be (according to you "most likely not") that FTP using the root account is possible. Wether it is passworded doesn't matter in that case since he knows his password. Shadowed passwd file is also completely irrelevant. IF it he is able to get Telnet working via this way he's also able to enable SSH and change his password although he'll have to reboot to get Telnet working which might be unpleasant, you're right on that. So why not state the possible solution to the problem?

When it comes to network security, it doesn't hurt to be paranoid...


Really? He firmly agrees, that's why he's using Telnet and FTP, not SSH! Why haven't i read any of your preachings on hamei's usage of Telnet/FTP? Finally i also hope you're not using too much fw_* packages, for the sake of your brilliant (network) security paranoia....
$ cat TODO

Learn Inner Sanctuary; Act Autonomous; Forge Future; Experience Enthean Enlightenment.
squeen, thanks. The problem lied rather in the fact XMMS had it's own standard, small icon enabled which SGI Freeware's version disables . I've applied the relevant part of the patch and the problem was fixed. Your solution works also well; the icon has been changed. PS: I'm interested in your customized icons for iconbar section.
$ cat TODO
Learn Inner Sanctuary; Act Autonomous; Forge Future; Experience Enthean Enlightenment.
Alternatively, you could install 'Services For UNIX' (SFU) on the Windows machine(s). It comes with a NFS server and client which fits nice in a *NIX environment. Various other Windows NFS clients and servers are also there.

I'm wondering though. Is that version on Freeware Sharity or Sharity-Light? Because on their homepage http://www.obdev.at/products/sharity they say non-MacOSX and non-FreeBSD versions need a license.
$ cat TODO
Learn Inner Sanctuary; Act Autonomous; Forge Future; Experience Enthean Enlightenment.