[liloeconnie]

Hello everyone, I'Massimo from Italy and i have a problem, it isn't serious...but i would like to fix it to restart my O2

I received a SGI O2 (with great pleasure) but no hard drive (rightly for privacy). Now I have installed a (used) 36gb sca 80 scsi HDD and would like to reinstall Irix 6.5.
I attempted to do it myself but got numerous errors. Not being an expert in Irix (and Unix/Linux), for example I can't even read a directory on the cd or switch from cd to hard disk and I can not understand what steps I have to perform. I am also following an installation manual and have done some FX command operations but there are still errors on the disk showing up. I think the problem is in preparing the disk correctly which needs a sequence of Irix commands that I am not familiar with. (the disk should work fine in theory but i'm not 100% sure, yes i need to verify also this someway)

I am attaching some photos I took during the FX commands and other attempts, it seems there is still something missing to do (I hope you can understand something)

I ask you for help if someone knows better the specific procedure (step by step) and also Irix commands to format the disk correctly, firs of all i think.

For admin: if this is not a right place for this question, you can move in other place (I have not noticed a better place in the forum sorry)

Thank you for patience and good i nice day
Massimo

[jan-jaap]

Hi,

Several of your screen shots show 'media errors'. This usually means the disk has bad sectors or other physical problems. I can think of one exceptions and that would be a disk low-level formatted for something other than 512 bytes per sector. Sometimes hard disks from large (SAN) storage systems are low level formatted with a sector size slightly larger than 512 bytes/sector, e.g. 520. But these are usually Fibre Channel disks.

To check the sanity of your disk from 'fx', you can erase it. Form the 'fx' prompt, choose /exercise, /sequential, / wr-only and when prompted for a range select 0 as the start and whatever big number it suggests as end. This will write over the entire disk with zeros which can take a long time depending on how big the disk is. It will attempt to map out bad sectors if it encounters them. If there are more than a few I would throw it away because otherwise you will spend a lot of time installing the OS and by the time you're done it will develop more bad sectors and all will be for nothing.

After successfully wiping the disk you need to create a disk label in fx before you exit this program. From the partition menu choose [ro] for 'root' drive, accept the defaults, write out the disk label and exit the program. NB: a disk label is what you'd call a partition table in a PC.

With that done, you can reset the system, and when the [1] ... [5] menu shows, choose the option to install system software.

On the topic of the O2: *NEVER* pull the system tray out of the system while the power cord is plugged in. There's a big risk of killing the whole system.

Good luck!

[robespierre]

I've never seen "defect list error" up to now, but it would appear to be consistent with a disk that accumulated so many bad sectors that its defect list got filled up. If this is the case, there is no point in using that disk any more.
One proviso to the above is that the entries in the defect list are not always genuine defects. The SCSI protocol defines four types of defect lists:
PLIST : The list of defects that are considered permanent defects. This is stored into the drive at the factory after the factory surface test. This is a read-only list: it never changes after the drive leaves the factory.
DLIST : The list of defects sent by host software to the drive to be added to the GLIST during a FORMAT UNIT operation. These defects are "manually added" from the drive's perspective.
CLIST : The drive can optionally perform a certification procedure while executing the FORMAT UNIT command. Defects found by the drive during certification are added to the CLIST, which gets added to the GLIST.
GLIST : The list of "grown defects", which are all those defects which have been added since manufacture. The GLIST is added to either automatically, or by the REASSIGN BLOCKS or FORMAT UNIT commands.

If the drive is operated under some marginal conditions, for example with bad cabling, it is possible for communication errors with the host computer to reflect as block errors and defects. So the GLIST may be filled up with fake defects, impeding correct operation. I wrote about this problem at https://forums.irixnet.org/thread-3046-p...l#pid21459

(As an aside, if your drive parameters are set to "DO auto bad block reallocation on read" you may have triggered this problem. I notice in your screenshot #7 this is turned on.)

The drive may be reformatted to clear the grown defect list. This is not possible using fx, but it can be achieved through a short C program in IRIX. But until that is done you will definitely not be able to install IRIX on that disk. It may also not help, if the drive is so worn out that it was filled up with genuine defects.

[liloeconnie]

Hi all and sorry for my delay, but I've been driving myself crazy with the O2 these days.
I've made several attempts, all of which have failed. Including installing openBSD.

Thanks for the replies first of all.

I'll update you on the situation

I had already proceeded to low-level format the disk with positive results, I tried to make partitions and labels, and tried to install Irix 6.5 from CD (downloaded from Archive.org).

But although the install started, it then stopped after the first phase of copying files, black screen, I had to turn off the O2.
I made several attempts but always with the same result.

Then I tried to install openBSD. The procedure was successful, without errors, but when restarted, the O2 gave an error:

Boot file not found on device pci(0)scsi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(0)/sash

Again I tried several times but always with the same result...

Okay.

Yesterday evening I read your reply messages and I came back confident of being able to install Irix, which would be the best thing, what I would like to do.

So I said to myself, ok let's go back to the initial situation. I ran the low level format again which lasted all night and was successful, same as the previous one (see attached img)

But now, before continuing, I would like to have further help from you on the correct steps that I must perform, in order to be followed step by step, so in case of errors or problems we can deal with them methodically.

Thanks again...

PS: I ask you to be patient for my ignorance about unix, but I come from DOS and it seems to be a whole other world...

[liloeconnie]

hi robespierre,

I re-read your answer better.
But if I reformatted the disk via Fx (is this a low level format?) and the operation was successful, shouldn't this be enough to make the disk usable? How can I get a list of defects so I know if the disc is still good? I haven't a C program to do this. Thx

[robespierre]

The format command in fx is a so-called low-level format. The term is misleading because there isn't any "high level format": when you normally prepare a fixed disk, you do so by installing a disklabel, partitioning (these first two steps are part of fx), and creating filesystems (which is done using mkfs).

To check if the disk seems healthy after the format operation, you could use the following command:

Code:

fx> /bad/showbb -g

to display the GLIST. These are all the defects in the grown defect list (those that manifested since the drive was made). The fewer there are, the better. If this is fewer than 50 or so the drive is fine. Over 100 and it is probably worn out.

[liloeconnie]

The format command in fx is a so-called low-level format. The term is misleading because there isn't any "high level format": when you normally prepare a fixed disk, you do so by installing a disklabel, partitioning (these first two steps are part of fx), and creating filesystems (which is done using mkfs).

To check if the disk seems healthy after the format operation, you could use the following command:

Code:

fx> /bad/showbb -g

to display the GLIST. These are all the defects in the grown defect list (those that manifested since the drive was made). The fewer there are, the better. If this is fewer than 50 or so the drive is fine. Over 100 and it is probably worn out.

Ok i can try to do this for the first thing. I ask to you, because i have understood some thing but not everithing, if the disk result fine, what are the step that i follow when i use FX menu. 
The first is to select "reformat", but for example, i can choose A to make auto reformat? Then i need to make "Label" but for one or all partitions?...etc..
Unfortunately, not knowing the irix/unix environment, I have all these specific questions that I can't give a good answer to. For this I need a step-by-step procedure...

For example also the mkfs command, i know that is used to format partitions, ok but where can i find it? under Fx command? under console? and how can i invoke console?
And what is the command line to use? ...all questions that i have difficulty to know

[liloeconnie]

See the attachment

[robespierre]

You may have to use one of the different formats because the way defects are tracked depends on the drive.

Code:

fx> /bad/showbb -g -c

Is probably what you need, but there is also

Code:

fx> /bad/showbb -g -b

The default when no format is given is -l which means logical block number format. You can read most of the fx documentation from inside the program: just type "help" or "?" followed by the command name and it will print all of its options.