Re: Ok...FINALLY got the Indy...
On Tue, 29 Aug 2000, Christopher C. Chimelis wrote:
> I finally got ahold of the SGI Indy that I mentioned about a month
> ago. It's currently in my living room with Irix on it (ugh). Basically,
> where do I go from here? I noted no install floppies in the Debian
> archive (not like this has a floppy drive, but I do have a CD-R and some
> time on my hands). Should I start with another dist and piece Debian in
> on the second hard drive?
>
> Curious and anxious to get started :-)
Okay, my suggestions:
* Get a 2nd disk.
* Use fx -x to set up the partitions on the 2nd disk, use fx -x to give
yourself expert ability and adjust the partitions such that you
have around a 10M volume header (it's useful later). Also, you need
a minimum of 2 regular partitions.
* Get a kernel like 'vmlinux-2.2.14-r4x00-cvs-INDY.ecoff'
* Use 'dvhtool' to drop the kernel into the volume header on the 2nd
disk. Something along these lines:
dvhtool -v add vmlinux-2.2.14-r4x00-cvs-INDY.ecoff linux /dev/rdsk/dks0d2vh
* Set up a dhcp server somewhere on the lan using something like this:
------------------------
host test {
hardware ethernet 03:00:23:0e:13:20;
fixed-address 10.1.1.10;
option host-name "test";
option domain-name-servers 10.1.1.1;
option broadcast-address 10.1.1.255;
option routers 10.1.1.1;
option root-path "/home/sgi-linux";
}
-------------------------
* Grab the Debian-mips tarball
* Set up an NFS server on the dhcp server to export '/home/sgi-linux'
-------------------------
/home/sgi-linux 10.1.1.10(ro,no_root_squash)
-------------------------
* Set up a TFTP server on the dhcp server serving up a useful kernel
like 'vmlinux-2.2.14-r4x00-cvs-INDY.ecoff', your /etc/inetd.conf
would look something like:
-------------------------
tftp dgram udp wait tftp /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/sbin/in.tftpd /tftp
-------------------------
With 755 permission on /tftp and 644 permissions on the kernel in
/tftp.
* Remove the IRIX disk from the system
* Change the SCSI ID of the other disk to '1'
* Boot it up and hit 'Stop for maintenance' or whatever it is.
* Select 'command prompt' or similar from the menu
* Do 'unsetenv netaddr'
* Now do: 'boot -f bootp()vmlinux-2.2.14-r4x00-cvs-INDY.ecoff init=/bin/sh'
This should grab the kernel, boot the system and drop you at a prompt.
* Now we have an interesting issue. df reports '/dev/sda1' as being the
root device, except that it isn't really, your root is the NFS mount. The
problem with this is that mke2fs won't let you create an ext2 filesystem
on '/dev/sda1'. So, we get around this:
# mke2fs /dev/sda2 # Need some play area, remember, root is ro
# mount /dev/sda2 /mnt # Mount the play area
# mknod /mnt/sda1 b 8 1 # Create our 'fake' sda1
# mke2fs /mnt/sda1 # Create the filesystem on sda1
# rm /mnt/sda1 # Don't need it any more
# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt # Mount up what will be the real root
# tar -clf - . | (cd /mnt && tar -xvpf -) # Copy over files
# sync; sync; sync
* Reboot the box (you may have to punch the reset button, it's recessed
between the groves below the power switch)
* Stop for maint. again, go to command-line
* Run 'linux root=/dev/sda1' (Otherwise it'll try and use the NFS mount)
This should boot you into Debian at least to play with.
Couple notes:
You don't *have* to go through the 'dvhtool' part if you
don't want to, but if you don't you'll always be having to boot off of the
network or have a efs partition on the disk that you can put the kernel on to
and then boot to that. I'm hoping to at some point be able to figure out the
format of that volume header and be able to write something like dvhtool to
allow you to modify it.
Be very careful with fx -x, obviously. You don't want to mess up your
Irix install (well, probably not anyway). If you don't care about Irix and
don't mind using the net boot stuff all the time and nuke Irix. At the moment
I've got a pair of Indy's up, one in Irix and one in Debian that I'm playing
with.
I havn't found a compiler yet, though hopefully once I do I can get rid
of having to stop and go into command-prompt mode and do 'linux root=/dev/sda1'.
I havn't figured out how to get the prom to pass a parameter to the
kernel by default. You can do 'setenv OSLoader linux', which will make it use
the linux kernel by default, but 'setenv OSLoader linux root=/dev/sda1' doesn't
work (it's too long to be saved in the prom).
Anyhow, this is mostly off the top of my head, so read over it carefully
and if you have questions/problems feel free to email me and I'll do what I can
to help...
Stephen
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