[VisualCortexLab]

Some days ago I posted this thread on sgi.sh: https://forums.sgi.sh/index.php?threads/...twork.764/ :

Hello everyone.

I belong to a Spanish Retrocomputing forum called Retrowiki.

I have developed Reanimator, a software appliance to install IRIX over a network using a Raspberry Pi or VirtualBox (no extra RBPi features).

Reanimator has some interesting features such as:
- multiple network protocols available: NFS, Samba, FTP, ...
- automatically download of selected IRIX versions from the Internet: 5.3, 6.2, 6.5.0, 6.5.7, 6.5.22 and 6.5.30
- full version including several IRIX versions
- a Raspberry Pi network assistant to select wired or Wi-Fi connection to the Internet. The RBPi will work as a router for your sgi computer, allowing access to the Internet through your Wi-Fi network
- selections file to simplify the IRIX installation
- easy configuration by menus
- mount ISO images and pendrives
- update scripts from the Internet

Please, browse http://irix.mersisl.com/ and give it a try.

I think Reanimator could be an easy solution to install IRIX on your Octane.

i wish I'd seen this post a few days ago!! going to try your tool right tonight after work on my Pi3 and will report back

I tried for the past 4 days to reinstall IRIX on my machines using the same exact setup I had 2 years ago (Debian, bootpd) but unsuccessufully.

Issues I'm having with the bootp setup is that I can see the file requests (and whether it fails or not) on the bootp logs, but then nothing happens on the IRIX side so I'm not sure what broke since my last successful experience.


..... 5 minutes into the Reanimator's documentation and I *might* have finally understood why my bootp setup wasn't working.

" - return to tftpd: Octane (among others) won't boot with tftpd-hpa. Please, download the image again."

This weekend I was trying to both the Indigo (Elan) and the Octane and both had no chance to run fx.ARCS or sashARCS from the Prom using bootp()
Guess this is why?

I'll give more experimentation time by trying this Reanimatr setup on a Pi3 but also will try and swap tftpd-hpa for tftpd to see if that fixes.


Cheers,

[VisualCortexLab]

UPDATE:
not sure whether all the wasted time this past weekend was *only* because I forgot to issue the "setenv srvaddr" in the EPROM, which I'm pretty sure I might have done a couple of times, but I definitely used it several of my attempts ... but *finally* I'm back into installing IRIX and software on my machine, thanks to this Reanimator Raspberry setup!!

Thank you @Linux-RISC so much for the beautiful build, so slick!!

Cheers,

[Linux-RISC]

Thanks for your feedback!, I'm very happy to see this tool is useful for SGI enthusiasts :-)

[VisualCortexLab]

Hey @Linux-RISC, here's just an update for you and for the forum in general.
First off, I think you can positively update your table of tested system (http://irix.mersisl.com/) with an Indigo R4400 Elan and IRIX 5.3 installation.

All went super smooth.

But hold on, here's the question/tip for the forum instead.
I almost gave up last night when my Indigo kept bouncing back to me saying "Unable to reach server" or "the server path doesn't contain any distribution" or errors like those.
This was happening in the EPROM, either by using the "Install System software" Icon or by using the EPROM console using the bootp()[..]sashARCS -x command.

Eventually, I got it to work and that "shit, I bumped into this before" little lamp in my brain suddenly lit up.

So here's the thing:
When powering on the machine I can go to the terminal and start either "fx" or "sash" by using this syntax:
bootp()192.168.5.120:/IRIX/irix5.3/1/stand/sashARCS -x

then I'm into "sash"
but then the commands to get the installation to kick in and work is the following:
bootp()192.168.5.120:/i/IRIX/irix5.3/1/dist

notice the added "/i" in the path!
(The complete path to the distribution would be "/home/irix/i/IRIX/irix53/1/dist")
without that extra parent directory I couldn't NEVER have the install to reach the distribution and start the installation.

so my question here is, can anybody explain to me why this is happening?
I literally wasted days behind this issue and I don't remember this happening when I was using an IRIX system as a network server instead of a Linux/Raspberry server.
Or have I totally forgot entirely how this was working?

Another thing I had to force on the Indigo was using the setenv tapedevice bootp()192.168.2.46:/export/irix/dist/sa command, cause the "setenv notape 1" variable wasn't enough for the installer to just reach the destination directory without "asking for a tape".

Either way, this helped me and I hope this will help someone else too


Cheers!

---

Hey @Linux-RISC, here's just an update for you and for the forum in general.
First off, I think you can positively update your table of tested system (http://irix.mersisl.com/) with an Indigo R4400 Elan and IRIX 5.3 installation.

All went super smooth.

But hold on, here's the question/tip for the forum instead.
I almost gave up last night when my Indigo kept bouncing back to me saying "Unable to reach server" or "the server path doesn't contain any distribution" or errors like those.
This was happening in the EPROM, either by using the "Install System software" Icon or by using the EPROM console using the bootp()[..]sashARCS -x command.

Eventually, I got it to work and that "shit, I bumped into this before" little lamp in my brain suddenly lit up.

So here's the thing:
When powering on the machine I can go to the terminal and start either "fx" or "sash" by using this syntax:
bootp()192.168.5.120:/IRIX/irix5.3/1/stand/sashARCS -x

then I'm into "sash"
but then the path that the "from" commands need to get the installation to work is the following:
bootp()192.168.5.120:/i/IRIX/irix5.3/1/dist

notice the added "/i" in the path!
(The complete path to the distribution would be "/home/irix/i/IRIX/irix53/1/dist")

without that extra parent directory I couldn't NEVER have the install to reach the distribution and start the installation.

so my question here is, can anybody explain to me why this is happening?
I literally wasted days behind this issue and I don't remember this happening when I was using an IRIX system as a network server instead of a Linux/Raspberry server.
Or have I totally forgot entirely how this was working?

Another thing I had to force on the Indigo was using the setenv tapedevice bootp()192.168.5.120:/IRIX/irix53/1/dist/sa command, cause the "setenv notape 1" variable wasn't enough for the installer to just reach the destination directory without "asking for a tape".

Either way, this helped me and I hope this will help someone else too


Cheers!

[Linux-RISC]

The documentation has just been update with your feedback, both on Github and http://irix.mersisl.com/

Regarding your question and according to the documentation https://github.com/Linux-RISC/Reanimator...l_guide.md, we have to skip "/" before "i" and the path is slightly different depending on the case:

bootp():IRIX/6.5.22/ovl1/stand/fx.ARCS -x
- the home directory for tftp (/etc/inetd.conf) is /srv/tftp/i and points to /home/irix/i, so "i/" is avoided.

irix@rbpi:i/IRIX/6.5.22/ovl1/dist
- the home directory for "irix" user is /home/irix, so you must add "i/" to access to that directory.

Perhaps the installation on your model is more tricky than usual for some reason, the tftp server could work with the "/i" path for unknown reasons, but I'm sure I tested "/i" with "irix" user and it didn't work in some context.

Anyway, thanks for your feedback !

By the way, your collection is absolutely amazing :-), please let me know when you use Reanimator with different models to keep the table updated.

[VisualCortexLab]

The documentation has just been update with your feedback, both on Github and http://irix.mersisl.com/

Regarding your question and according to the documentation https://github.com/Linux-RISC/Reanimator...l_guide.md, we have to skip "/" before "i" and the path is slightly different depending on the case:

bootp():IRIX/6.5.22/ovl1/stand/fx.ARCS -x
- the home directory for tftp (/etc/inetd.conf) is /srv/tftp/i and points to /home/irix/i, so "i/" is avoided.

irix@rbpi:i/IRIX/6.5.22/ovl1/dist
- the home directory for "irix" user is /home/irix, so you must add "i/" to access to that directory.

Perhaps the installation on your model is more tricky than usual for some reason, the tftp server could work with the "/i" path for unknown reasons, but I'm sure I tested "/i" with "irix" user and it didn't work in some context.

Anyway, thanks for your feedback !

By the way, your collection is absolutely amazing :-), please let me know when you use Reanimator with different models to keep the table updated.

ahhh that would make sense now! Thanks for pointing that out.
I must admit, not using these machines for 20 years definetely made me forget a lot.


I'll probably try to install an Indy R5000 one of these days, I'm just not sure I have an hard drive for it.... I'll report back once that's done

Thank you!