[bjames]

Never had to do this before, but what is the best method of re-installing irix and overlays without having to reinstall the applications i.e. SI3D, Maya, and other big apps.

I will be installing from the CDs

[gijoe77]

not sure there is a simple way - I would backup/restore homedir's, /usr/Softimage, /usr/aw and /usr/local . I'm willing to bet there is some other dir that is worth backing up but It's not clear to me at the moment.

but there are other tweaks those software might have done to other things (toolchest, icon catalog, whatever the process is to setup icons, etc)

I've always sort of was under the impression if I do a re-install from CD's, I'm reinstalling everything.

[uunix]

For a start off, do not mkfs when doing the new install. As for the rest, I'd go with gijoe.

[bjames]

For sure... making new file system is out of the question. I was wondering if reinstalling irix from Inst would just update the OS files like how windows will just refress the OS related files and not affect installed apps. I have a feeling reinstalling Irix may rewrite /etc, /usr, /var etc folders and loose some files.

What I’m might do instead is reinstall Irix completely on my backup drive and test this out.

I have a spare hard drive with an earlier version of irix that I use when installing apps or messing around. If the installing of an application is successful on my ‘test’ drive, I will swap out system drives and install on the good drive.