Tips & Tricks

Installation Guide

Introduction

General

This is a short description of the IRIX boot and installation process. It introduces the basic ways to start the installation of the operating system. It doesn't go into depth, but covers the various types of IRIX media you could use to do a fresh install. It is assumed that the reader is familiar with the basic installation tools (fx and inst). At the end of the page links to other installation instructions are given.

On most SGI systems the installation process can be invoked from the maintenance menu by selecting the "Install System Software" entry. This will boot sash and start the IRIX installer. This process will fail if the installer cannot find a swap partition to copy the installation tools to.

Files

To prepare your disk and/or do a fresh install you will invoke at least 2 of the following commands which are located on the installation media. The first which you will always need is sash, the standalone shell. From there you will start one of the other two: fx, the disk utility, or install, the installer.

The biggest problem about sash and fx is, that you have to run different versions depending on your hardware. The following table gives you the appropriate filenames:

Professional Iris
   4D/60                ?              ?
   other                sash.IP4       fx.IP4
Personal Iris
   4D/2x                sash.IP6       fx.IP6
   4D/3x                sash.IP12      fx.IP12
Power Series
   4D/120               sash.IP5       fx.IP5
   4D/210               sash.IP9       fx.IP9
   other                sash.IP7       fx.IP7
Crimson
   all                  sash.IP17      fx.IP17
Indigo
   R3000                sash.IP12      fx.IP12
   R4x00                sashARCS       fx.ARCS
Indigo 2
   R4x00                sashARCS       fx.ARCS
   other                sash64         fx.64
Indy
   all                  sashARCS       fx.ARCS
Challenge/Onyx
   R4x00                sashARCS       fx.ARCS
   other                sash64         fx.64
O2 / O2+ 
   all                  sashARCS       fx.ARCS
Octane / Octane 2
   all                  sash64         fx.64
Fuel
   all                  sash64         fx.64

Look up the appropriate entries for your system and use them whenever $sash$ or $fx$ is used in the examples below.

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Sources

Installation from Tape

For this text we assume that the tape drive is SCSI ID #7 on the first (only) SCSI controller and that you want to install to SCSI ID #1 (the harddisk). Unless you are using a fresh disk from SGI you need to add a disklabel and partition information on it.

Enter the Command Monitor from the PROM menu (real old IRIS 4D drop automatically into a command line mode if the fail to load an OS) and type boot -f tpsc(0,7,0)$sash$ to load the standalone shell. Next you can invoke the partitioning tool by typing tpsc(0,7,0)$fx$ -x from the command line you are presented.

After leaving fx the system usually drops back into the menu screen. Tto invoke the installation by selecting the appropriate entry in the menu. If you are not presented with a menu (or want to start isntallation manually) you have to reenter the Command Monitor. Boot the standalone shell again as indicated above, then start the installation program by typing install. Follow the instructions on screen, you can install the software tape after tape.

Installation from CD

Here we assume that the CD-ROM drive is SCSI ID #4 on the first (only) SCSI controller and that you want to install to SCSI ID #1 (the harddisk). Unless you are using a fresh disk from SGI you need to add a disklabel and partition information on it.

Enter the Command Monitor from the PROM menu and type boot -f dksc(0,4,8)$sash$ to load the standalone shell. Next you can invoke the partitioning tool by typing dksc(0,4,7)stand/$fx$ -x from the command line you are presented.

After leaving fx the system usually drops back into the menu screen. To invoke the installation you can now select the appropriate menu entry. Follow the instructions on screen, you can install the software CD after CD in case of IRIX releases prior to 6.5. In current IRIX releases it is necessary to read the contents of each CD to be installed before the actual installation process is started.

Installation over Network

For this text we assume that IRIX is to be installed over a network connection on a SCSI harddisk attached to the primary controller. This drive has SCSI ID #1. Unless you are using a fresh disk from SGI you need to add a disklabel and partition information on it. It is also assumed that the bootserver is configured and that the OS to be installed is located in /irix/6.5 (replace $hostname$ with the hostname or IP address of the server in the examples below).

Enter the Command Monitor from the PROM menu and type boot -f bootp()$hostname$:/irix/6.5/sa($sash$) to load the standalone shell. Next you can invoke the partitioning tool by typing bootp()$hostname$:/irix/6.5/stand/$fx$ -x from the command line you are presented. This should load the fx program from the remote host.

After leaving fx the system usually drops back into the menu screen. To invoke the installation you can now select the appropriate menu entry and all you have to enter is an IP address. Follow the instructions on screen. Once the installer has been loaded it will ask some further questions about software locations.