[rescue] Sources of IRIX?

[Scott Quinn]

If you're installing IRIX once then CDs can be OK (I don't recall ever having to put a CD in multiple times, unless you count the original "opening" of the distro and then once for the install). More than that and an install server helps. It looks like DINA is still around @ http://shiftleft.com/mirrors/dina.harrydebug.com/ . I haven't used it in a while but it was a good option if you didn't have another IRIX machine up (IRIX install requires certain capabilities in the rtools that were taken out of the Linux versions). You did IIRC have to read out the CDs on a Linux box because that has the EFS filesystem option, then transfer the files over to DINA (a BSD-based virtual machine).

No matter what you do make sure you follow the howtos that Ian put up at http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/sgi.html#ADMIN if you haven't done IRIX installs before. IRIX has some oddities, and some things that never made it into the documentation (such as some not-obvious directories that need to be opened). I could see this as an error on the first release or so of 6.5, but that was around for 8 years and the docs were never corrected.