On Tue, 29 Aug 2000, Stephen Frost wrote:
> * 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.
Ok...wiped the second disk and am partitioning it now. Am I correct in
thinking that I can use fx -x to set it up like an option drive, add a
second efs partition, then adjust the sizes of the others as noted
above? How big should each be and what are they for? Coming from Alpha,
this sure looks quite a bit like our MILO booting method (where you need a
small FAT partition to hold the boot loader). I just want to avoid having
two 2GB paritions if I'm only using a small portion of one for booting
from...
> * Get a kernel like 'vmlinux-2.2.14-r4x00-cvs-INDY.ecoff'
Ok...where do I find this? I also need a URL for the tarball...
> * 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";
> }
Ugh! I forgot how to get the hardware address! Any
tips? Nevermind...just found it :-P
> * Remove the IRIX disk from the system
> * Change the SCSI ID of the other disk to '1'
Is this really necessary? Couldn't I alter the environment vars in sash
(SystemPartition and OSLoadPartition)?
> 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.
I'll look into this once I get booted up and running. I've helped Alpha
out a lot, so maybe I can apply some of that knowledge here... :-) I'm
assuming docs are lacking on the format of the volume header, but other
than that, what would help to figure this out?
> 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.
Must be nice :-) My Irix install seems ok thusfar. It boots and runs
fine, despite me playing with the second drive. I'm lucky for that since
I cannot re-install due to lack of media :-P
> 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).
Good to know. Does quoting help? I can't imagine that they made the env
var THAT limited.
> 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...
Thanks!
C
