[NickPGSmith]

Hello. I acquired an old Octane that needed some attention. Successes so far:
- Completely stripped down, removed all the built-up dust, especially the wads in the top vents (ugh)
- Tried to lubricate the PSU fan to stop it whining (partially successful)
- Replaced the incandescent bulbs on the lightbar

Now I am ready to do a network boot of IRIX which is where I am coming unstuck. I installed the dexter1/irix-install docker image on Fedora 35, and the container runs, and I can successfully grab a file via TFTP. However, from the Octane when I monitor to/from traffic I can only see outgoing requests with tcpdump:


IP 10.0.0.2.bootpc > 255.255.255.255.bootps: BOOTP/DHCP, Request from 08:00:69:0b:9e:1f, length 300

and no response. The UI says it could not connect to server, and it generated the path

xio(0)pci(15)multi(0)network(0)bootp()10.0.0.1:/inst/dist/sa(sash64)

which is curious as this has the IP of the bootp server but yet it seems to be broadcasting. Well, it should work if the bootp server responded.


On my Fedora box running the container I see:

netstat -a | grep shell
tcp6      0      0 [::]:shell              [::]:*                  LISTEN

which seem so show it's listening, although why it reports tcp6 is not clear to me.

netstat -a | grep boot
udp6      0      0 [::]:bootps            [::]:*



might be suspicious to me (not showing LISTEN) but then TFTP shows similar, and I can connect to it and grab a file OK:

netstat -a | grep tftp
udp6      0      0 [::]:tftp

Now, I also expected the container to use a bootptab file in the mounted volume, but it seems it's using /etc/bootptab so I copied by file over the top of /etc/bootptab in a rebuilt container.

Still no joy. Can anyone suggest some further diagnosis or ideas? Thanks

[robespierre]

IPv4 and IPv6 are not compatible at all (completely different protocols). If you only have UDP6 ports open the Octane cannot communicate with them.

[stormy]

Why not just make your life easy and use Booterizer? http://booterizer.com/ using a Pi as a network installer. Or if you don't have a Pi here is the github: https://github.com/unxmaal/booterizer

[Linux-RISC]

Some days ago I posted this thread on sgi.sh: https://forums.sgi.sh/index.php?threads/...twork.764/ :

Hello everyone.

I belong to a Spanish Retrocomputing forum called Retrowiki.

I have developed Reanimator, a software appliance to install IRIX over a network using a Raspberry Pi or VirtualBox (no extra RBPi features).

Reanimator has some interesting features such as:
- multiple network protocols available: NFS, Samba, FTP, ...
- automatically download of selected IRIX versions from the Internet: 5.3, 6.2, 6.5.0, 6.5.7, 6.5.22 and 6.5.30
- full version including several IRIX versions
- a Raspberry Pi network assistant to select wired or Wi-Fi connection to the Internet. The RBPi will work as a router for your sgi computer, allowing access to the Internet through your Wi-Fi network
- selections file to simplify the IRIX installation
- easy configuration by menus
- mount ISO images and pendrives
- update scripts from the Internet

Please, browse http://irix.mersisl.com/ and give it a try.

I think Reanimator could be an easy solution to install IRIX on your Octane.

[Raion]

I also have done a NetBSD install guide but I think that your issue primarily has to do with IPv6. It would probably be wise to try and do this only over ipv4.

[NickPGSmith]

Thanks for your suggestions.

> Why not just make your life easy and use Booterizer?

My general approach is to make my life as complicated as possible; that way I learn more. Or get frustrated. ;-) So I have learned some Docker in this process as well as about SGI...

So I am aware that the SGI needs to talk IPv4, but was somewhat thrown off my netstat showing IPv6. In fact this seems to be a Linux artefact, see here: https://www.ajfriesen.com/netstat-shows-...only-host/

I am not quite sure what I have changed, but currently I got a response from BOOTP server in Docker, and loaded up sash and fx.64 on the Octane.

One blocker was not realising how the Docker container was working with regards to which bootptab it was reading: I didn't know I had to create my own image and copy my settings over into it.

Also I didn't help by not using the correct tcpdump command. This is what I should have used:
tcpdump -i 2 -n "src 10.0.0.2 or portrange 67-68

So, now I got to running:
bootp()/inst/dist/miniroot/unix.IP30

where it transfers a bunch of stuff over the network, seems to start a kernel and then falls over with an error... a problem for another day

[NickPGSmith]

... after a bit more fiddling and doing the disk initialisations/partitioning again, I got further... now it loads the Inst> prompt but won't pull the images from there. I believe this is where it moves from TFTP to RSH, so I need to validate RSH is working within Docker.

Fun

[NickPGSmith]

After some time away, I got back to finishing the installation, and completed a basic setup.

I used:

keep *
install standard
install prereqs
rem java_dev.*

during installation, but now I find some packages I want are not installed. I found bash and flexlm and used inst to install them, good. But I want to enable IPv6 and I am missing eoe.sw.ipv6. Am I going blind? Shouldn't that be on one of my images:

Applications: Applications.image
Complementary Applications: Complementary_Applications.image
812-0818-030 Installation Tools and Overlays 1: Instalation_Tools_and_Overlays1.image
812-0819-030 Overlays 2: Overlays2.image
812-0817-030 Overlays 3: Overlays3.image
812-0757-002 IRIX 6.5 Foundation 1: IRIX 6.5 Foundation 1.img
812-0760-002 IRIX 6.5 Foundation 2: IRIX 6.5 Foundation 2.img

?

[jpstewart]

IRIX package naming conventions can be a little confusing if you're not used to them.  The name 'eoe.sw.ipv6' indicates that the ipv6 subsystem is part of eoe.sw, which is on the Foundation 1 disk.  There won't be a separate eoe.sw.ipv6 file.  You'll have to open eoe.sw in inst or swmgr and then manually select the ipv6 subsystem from it. 

Note that there will likely be an eoe.sw overlay, too, on the Overlays 1 disk.  You'll probably need both the base and the overlay.

[NickPGSmith]

Thanks for the explanation!