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IRIX 5.3 Network Help? - Printable Version

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RE: IRIX 5.3 Network Help? - Anonymoose - 07-12-2025

Ah, I’ll update this thread once I upgrade to 6.5.22…

With that being said, I do have another reason for wanting networking: transferring files from Mac to Indy. I do have FileZilla set up, and wanted to know if I could do ethernet to ethernet? Directly transferring files without a router as a middle man. Is that networking process different than what’s been discussed above?

RE: IRIX 5.3 Network Help? - robespierre - 07-12-2025

esp doesn't exist in IRIX 5.3.
"unknown host" means that the resolver could not resolve the host name into a network address, so this is not a test of the network. Use numeric addresses to test if your network is routed correctly, not names.
Once you have packets passing over the correct routes you can work on the DNS.

To your other question, if two computers are on the same network segment, they do not require a router to communicate. This means they must be assigned addresses in the same subnet.

RE: IRIX 5.3 Network Help? - vishnu - 07-12-2025

So for example if your network is 192.168.0. - you should be able to ftp to any host on that subnet, 'ftp 192.168.0.100' for example. If you have the hostname for 192.168.0.100 in your /etc/hosts file, you can ftp to the hostname instead of the IP address. That's basically the reason hostnames exist in the IP protocol,  because people find it much easier to remember names than numbers.

RE: IRIX 5.3 Network Help? - Anonymoose - 07-12-2025

Hmm ok that’s good to know. So if I were to set my Ethernet IP to 192.168.1.1 and the Indy to 192.168.1.2 that should work?

RE: IRIX 5.3 Network Help? - vishnu - 07-12-2025

So for example if your network is 192.168.0 - you should be able to ftp to any host on that subnet, 'ftp 192.168.0.100' for example. If you have the hostname for 192.168.0.100 in your /etc/hosts file, or if it's in the nameserver you use, you can ftp to the hostname instead of the IP address. That's basically the reason hostnames exist in the IP protocol, because people find it much easier to remember names than numbers. I run a nameserver on my workstation so I don't have to bother my ISP's nameserver more than once for any web host.

RE: IRIX 5.3 Network Help? - weblacky - 07-12-2025

You absolutely can but with ethernet ports this old you will not get auto-crossover. So you will have to custom crimp a crossover ethernet cable or use a commercial crossover adapter.

This was a very standard thing to do in the 90s but it's literally unheard of these days. There are adapters on Amazon for crossover so that you can take a normal ethernet cable and attach a small adapter to have it become a crossover cable, and that might be more what you would want to do.

product link: https://a.co/d/japisPD

Gigabit by standard can auto-crossover even if it's only one port of the pair so you never see crossover cables for sale anymore. Below one gigabit some ports had auto crossover but it wasn't very common. For 10Mb it was never heard of for automatic crossover.

However you will not have automated network config services unless one of the two hosts has them. So you'll likely be establishing a static IP address on both clients and establishing no static gateway unless you're going to share/IP forward from one of the hosts. You should only need to establish aesthetic IP address and net mask to show them they're in the same subnet. You would not establish a default gateway as there would be none.

There was a later protocol called zero config that was picked up in the Windows XP days that uses local link addresses to auto-configure themselves. Though those have their own issues of not just working out of the box and it still won't help with Irix.

I've not personally dealt with IPv6 on Irix but if it supports the standard installation you could also do a zero config on IPv6 by allowing by SLAAC, but you have to install additional components to enable IPv6 so there might be a chicken and the egg problem there anyway. It would likely be easier just to establish static IPv4 address on each directly-connected station.

Please note you won't make anything explode if you try to use a normal cable, it just won't work. You either need a crimp a crossover cable yourself or buy one of these adapters to make a standard ethernet cable crossover if you want to attach two stations with a single ethernet cable with no hub or switch or any other device in between the two.


(07-12-2025, 06:20 PM)Anonymoose Wrote:  Ah, I’ll update this thread once I upgrade to 6.5.22…

With that being said, I do have another reason for wanting networking: transferring files from Mac to Indy. I do have FileZilla set up, and wanted to know if I could do ethernet to ethernet? Directly transferring files without a router as a middle man. Is that networking process different than what’s been discussed above?
As long as you also set your net mask correctly that is all you should need. You only need your default gateway if you're going to an address that's not part of your local subnet.

Just putting in the IP address alone with no other information will not allow everything to work properly. You need to specify the netmask correctly, but you do not need a default gateway if you do not expect to use the Internet or any other subnet that isn't within 192.168.1.0/24

(07-12-2025, 06:54 PM)Anonymoose Wrote:  Hmm ok that’s good to know. So if I were to set my Ethernet IP to 192.168.1.1 and the Indy to 192.168.1.2 that should work?


RE: IRIX 5.3 Network Help? - vishnu - 07-12-2025

If you use a hub you don't need to worry about crossover, the hub takes care of that for you. You can get a five port hub for almost giveaway money at any webstore that sells network supplies. Oh, and since your network is 192.168.0.xxx your netmask should be 255.255.255.0

RE: IRIX 5.3 Network Help? - Anonymoose - 07-12-2025

Maybe the problem is that I have no clue how the internet works. The Indy is set at 192.168.0.3, just for simplicity, (“use default netmask” and “turn on networking for this port” are enabled) and my Macs ethernet is configured manually, with IP as 192.168.0.2, subnet as 255.255.255.0, router as 192.168.0.1, and DNS server as 192.168.0.1. My Console (Indy), shows this:

IRIS 1# ftp 192.168.0.3
ftp: connect: Network is unreachable
ftp>

There could also be an issue with how FileZilla is set up. As of now, the only way I can enter the software is if I set the Host as 127.0.0.1 and the port as 14148, both of which I don’t know where they come from.

I’ve set Server listeners to address 192.168.0.2 and port 21, and left protocol as “Require explicit FTP over TLS”.
I’ve also mounted a folder on the desktop as the mount point with no authentication and a user name of IRIS.

RE: IRIX 5.3 Network Help? - weblacky - 07-12-2025

I would do this the opposite way. You may not know this but Irix already has an FTP server in it. In 6.5 it's turned on by default, I don't know about 5.3.

All that TLS junk will not work. You need raw pure FTP no encryption BS.

On Irix/UNIX you should be using a standard command for UNIX called "ifconfig", on the terminal of course.

The command will tell you the IP address assigned to each interface and if it's up or down at all. The interface will not be up if it's not electrically happy with what it's been linked to.

I would use PC stations to remotely deposit stuff into the SGI versus the SGI access them, to start.


Also I would use the ping command to do basic routing and reachability testing before I would start trying to access services at this point. You're not even sure if your basic network set up is correct let alone of service running on it. So you should be using ping to test routing and connection to your other machine.
Also if you're not running the standard port 22 for filezzila, which due to modern operating systems security I understand why it wasn't. You need to specify that port number on your FTP client command line. It has to be FTP then the host name and then the port.

Also you have to make sure you're in binary mode or you may corrupt your transfers. The truth is FTP from a terminal is actually a little advanced and you would be better off treating the SGI is the server and using a graphical client on your modern PC to start learning.

RE: IRIX 5.3 Network Help? - Anonymoose - 07-13-2025

I got it working! Why it worked, I'm not sure.
I checked ec0 with ifconfig and then did
'ifconfig ec0 inet 192.168.0.3 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.0.255 up'
After that, both computers could ping each other and I can now view the Indy in Finders "Connect to Server" (albeit in read only mode). Filezilla still doesn't work though, hopefully there's a free and easier alternative.

A side effect though, the shutdown option in the sidebar won't work anymore