[TommyBoy]

Hello all,

     I am brand new to the SGI hobbyist computer and I just got my first SGI workstation. It is an Indy. I am wondering how I can transfer files between the Indy and my PC. Obviously it doesn't have USB ports, so flash drives aren't an option. I also don't have a floptical drive or a 3.5 inch floppy dirve installed. Can you hook the workstation to a PC using an ethernet cable and then somehow transfer files that way? If so, how would I go about that? What would I need to do?

    Are there any other ways of transferring files? Please let me know. Thanks.

[commodorejohn]

The quickest, easiest way to get stuff onto a *nix workstation is to get it hooked up to your local network (not computer-to-computer - hook it into your home router) and set up FTP access. Dead easy once you've gotten that taken care of. You'll want to set it up with a static IP outside of your router's DHCP range, so you don't have to keep checking if its address has changed. It looks like IRIX might have FTP enabled by default from the documentation I'm reading, but I don't have my SGIs hooked up to check at the moment. If so, you should be able to connect to your Indy with your own user credentials using any standard FTP client (FileZilla is my go-to) as soon as it's on the network.

[Raion]

If by PC you mean "Windows" then don't bother with NFS (networked filesystem) or Samba/SMBFS. Use FTP as CommodoreJohn says.

If you have a Linux, Solaris or FreeBSD system, use NFSv3.

Also, even if the Indy had USB, it wouldn't be able to use a USB mass storage. That's not a thing on SGIs.

[shrek]

Semi-related to this topic does anyone know if an XFS SCSI disk pulled out of an SGI machine can be mounted normally on a Linux PC? Will it just mount like normal assuming the XFS modules and programs are installed? This would be the most difficult way to transfer files but could be useful if an SGI workstation dies.

[Raion]

It will if you hook it up to a proper SCSI controller. However, I've found it can be glitchy. XFS on Linux and on IRIX are at least functionally different enough to introduce subtle icompatibilities.

[jan-jaap]

Semi-related to this topic does anyone know if an XFS SCSI disk pulled out of an SGI machine can be mounted normally on a Linux PC? Will it just mount like normal assuming the XFS modules and programs are installed? This would be the most difficult way to transfer files but could be useful if an SGI workstation dies.

In short: maybe.

There are at least two on-disk IRIX XFS filesystem layouts. The 2nd format was introduced sometime early in the 6.5.x overlay series, and became the default for new filesystems created in IRIX 6.5.14 and newer. A filesystem created with v1 on-disk layout stays like that even if you upgrade to a later IRIX, e.g. 6.5.30.

Linux only understands the 2nd on-disk layout, and in recent years there have been new XFS features (Linux only) which may make a filesystem created in a semi-recent Linux unreadable in IRIX.

So there is a common ground, but you have to know what you're doing.

[uunix]

Once you have networking setup on the INDY and you can at least 'ping' the windows machine. You can use an ftp server like filezilla for windows. Easy to setup and works on all Windows machines. I have this as a backup.

Alternatively, and as is my setup, NFS services running on multiple Windows Servers. I have mounted nfs shares on all my IRIX/AIX/LINUX machines and it works flawlessly. You don't even need to copy stuff from the nfs share, you can run them directly from the network. You can simply 'cd' to your mounted nfs drives and away you go. Windows implementation of nfs on server is pretty good.

Obviously though, not everyone has the ability to run a Windows Server, so filezilla (imho) is a good choice.

Security wise, all my stuff is inside my network, although I do export a public directory to the outside world, which has restrictive WAN and read/write rules, but that's a different story.

[weblacky]

To answer the xfs Linux question, not anymore!!!

Looked into this last year, xfs has gone through several revisions (I think 4-5). Irix support is only revisions 1-2. Irix 6.5.5+ introduced xfs v2.

All that support was removed from xfs-prog tools in modern Linux some time ago (I tried newer parted magic distributions, same problem, driver knew it was xfs but complained it didn’t understand it and required v3 or higher).

I assume because modern XFS was used in clustering file systems during SGI’s Linux fad. So they probably felt that people would only use it for those functions and removed early support that had been there.

You could try to find a 10+ year old Linux distribution that still has support.

But right now, NO XFS version used in Irix is understood by anybody but Irix right now. I was shocked!

Irix still supports fat16 and later ones used udf 1.2 or 1.5 (don’t know which) on DVD-RAM disks. Those will still work.

But do like everyone is saying, load IIS ftp server in windows (built-in and free) and ftp content out of the Indy. Nearly everything else has been blocked. But you can still share a small sized SCSI disks using fat16, that’s it now. Sad that Linux removed early xfs support, I found no reason given why this was done.


Thanks

[shrek]

Thanks for the replies guys. I didn't know that XFS had changed so much in recent years.

[callahan]

Weblacky -- Is this based on actual testing? A system may not officially/fully support a given standard and still be able to read from a disk.