[gijoe77]

as root do this

chkconfig esp off

if your not using nfs I suppose you can also do

chkconfig nfs off

[William D]

Is there a way to make an image of the drive that can be restored later on? Perhaps to a FTP or NFS? I would like to be able to have a backup just in case.

[Trippynet]

Yes, check out Ian Mapelson's site - http://www.sgidepot.com, there are instructions there for making a TAR archive of a drive.

Also if you have an R5000/R7000 O2, it'll have two drive bays and it is possible to use xfsdump to clone a drive. That's what I do on my systems - have 2 or 3 cloned backups on spare drives.

[William D]

If you don't mind, could you give me an example of the xfsdump command to copy the main drive to a second?

[William D]

Well, don't know what I did or how I did it, but now my O2 comes up with PANIC: init died (why=2 what=0x9) at boot.

[Irinikus]

I don't know what the issue with your machine is, but I would advise that you get a set of IRIX 6.5 discs cut as you will more than likely need them in the future. The nice thing about an O2 is the fact that it has a built in CD-ROM

I've had to re install IRIX many times due to messing around with things that I maybe shouldn't have.

[William D]

I have a second drive now at least, so if I install Irix on it could I copy the software over from the original drive or is it like windows where it actually needs installed?

[Irinikus]

Most, if not all of the software will have to be installed, but most of the decent software for these machines is freely available if you ask around and look in the right places.

Allot of the members here like to do network installs, I for one prefer to do it the old fashioned way using CD's, as it works for me.

As far as software for my machines goes, I generally use the secondary disks in my systems to store all of the install files and license files for the various software packages that I have installed, so should I need to re-install IRIX, I can quickly and easily re-install the software that I had installed on the system.

[Trippynet]

Your best bet is to see the guide on Ian's site (it is very thorough and detailed). Cloning with xfsdump has quite a few steps, but it is possible to automate most of them via a script. Of course if you've borked the system drive somehow, you'll need to get a working IRIX installation sorted first!

[Irinikus]

The xfsdump method is a good way to go, however you have to be absolutely sure that you have a completely healthy setup before you carry out an xfsdump, otherwise any latent problems will simply be transferred when you carry out an xfsrestore.

Hence, why I personally prefer to carry out fresh IRIX installs.