[rescue] Installing Irix...

[Francisco Javier Mesa-Martinez]

On Wed, 15 Aug 2001, Tugrul Galatali wrote:

> 	Anyone got a FAQ or some sort of newbie Indigo2 guide? I have sooo many
> stupid questions that I need answered to get rolling on this machine, like:

take a look at the following sites:

some sites with information about the i2
http://www.futuretech.vuurwerk.nl/indigo2/
http://www.sgihelp.org/

for the old SGI FAq, and some old system info:
http://www-viz.tamu.edu/~sgi-faq/faq/html-1/
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Pines/2258/4dfaq.html


> 	1) What is the equivalent of probe-scsi? If its hinv, is it supposed 
> to show 7 hard disks like: (the one in the command mode in the bios)
> 
> 	SCSI Disk: scsi(1)disk(x)
> 
> 	where x = 1 to 7. Or is my SCSI subsystem hosed.

hinv in the prom should show all the SCSI devices. If you are getting 7
devices being shown, that means that a) you did not terminate properly the
SCSI chain, or b) you set a SCSI device with an illegal address.


> 	2) How bloody long does a diagnostic take?

a looooong time, most of the time you do not know what the machine is
doing though....

> 	3) If I just boot up off an Irix 6.5.5 cd without a hard drive, how far
> should I be able to get? I get an invalid swap partition or somesuch error (I
> would check but its still in diagnostics)

w/o hardrive the installation will not go anywhere simply because the
installer needs to create a small miniroot partition.

> 	4) Does the hard drive need to be prepared in anyway, or just boot and
> let it deal with it?

nope, you need to start the fx formatting utility. first you need to start
a sash shell from the installation CDROM and then load the fx program.

should look something like this 

>>>dksc(x,y,z)sash.ARCS

where x is the SCSI controller you hace the CD attached to, y is the scsi
ID for the CD and z is the partition (I do not remember exactly what
partition has the sash on it, try from 0 to 8).

once the sash starts, you can get to the formatting (fx) utility as
follows:

sash> dksc(x,y,7)stand/fx.ARCS

should be pretty straight forward from there on.
 
Hope this helps.

Cheers.