[stormy]

I still stand by my assertion that there is no reason to use anything other than irix on these old systems. You get no benefits utilizing something else.

Yes but that kind of perspective turns people away from trying and therefore has a knock on effect when either support gets dropped or no development takes place.

[Irinikus]

What can you run on these machines in OpenBSD, that you can’t in IRIX?

[commodorejohn]

A modern-ish browser, I suppose.

[Irinikus]

Are you able to fully utilise the graphics hardware in SGI’s under OpenBSD?

[ghost180sx]

I'm not sure if it supported the graphics hardware very well, but it was at least a modern supported (with security updates) BSD Unix. But, I can't find the official release of 6.6 on the website. 6.5 is current? I think it's not out yet.

[Raion]

6.6 is not out yet.

OpenBSD had pretty good support for IMPACT/Indy, but not anything else. It wasn't on par with any of the IRIX versions.

I don't use IRIX for the hardware even, I'd probably if it was on x64 or POWERel and FOSS I'd probably be willing to sell most of my SGIs and only keep one or two.

That's why I say linux/BSD on SGI hardware is kind of pointless.

[miod]

What can you run on these machines in OpenBSD, that you can’t in IRIX?

A working IPv6 stack, and anything for which IRIX lacks a driver : USB mass storage comes to mind.

---

Are you able to fully utilise the graphics hardware in SGI’s under OpenBSD?

No.

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Miod, you are/were involved in OpenBSD for years, say, from your experience, could this change be reverted if the problem with the disk controller could be avoided? I mean, do you see any chance to resurrect the SGI port?

OpenBSD people could for example use a different disk controller and even if the O350s cannot boot from it, they could still network boot from another machine and use the internal disks after the OS has booted. Or instead use a FC controller and a "disk" from a storage system.

At this point this is no longer a technical problem but a people problem. Theo de Raadt prefers building official releases on hardware he has physical access to (i.e. in his machine room in his basement), with minimal human intervention once the system has been set up. On the other hand, the interrupt loss problem he has been triggering about once a month is extremely difficult to trigger in older to investigate its cause (I myself only hit it three times in about 8 years). So yes, he could plug a SCSI PCI card and connect to an external disk enclosure... but he won't do it because, to him, this is not worth the try.

[Raion]

IRIX IPv6 works in 6.5.30 as far as I can tell, but it seems IPv6 hasn't been super important in recent years as of yet.

[miod]

IRIX IPv6 works in 6.5.30 as far as I can tell, but it seems IPv6 hasn't been super important in recent years as of yet.

To the best of my knowledge, IRIX's IPv6 stack has not been fixed for the RH0 amplification attack.

[Raion]

Hmm apparently not. But then again, for 2006 it's impressive. Not many issues I see with non-IPV6 OSes as of yet, and I suspect there will be hacks in the future.