thanks for the info guido... shame about the lack of efs or (irix)xfs. should still (theoretically) be able to make it dual boot. i figure if i make quite a large volume header i should be able to get something up and running alongside irix. now i have to try and remember how the environment variables were set so i can boot back into linux :-/ and i should probably mug up on dvhtool before i do anything rash! is there a debian-mips cd? if so, where is it kept? GREG