[geeks] IRIX install thoughts and questions

[William Barnett-Lewis]

Hello all,

(please remember I am an utter newby to Irix. Thanks!)

In my continuing quest to turn this Indigo2 into a productive
workstation, I have gotten a copy of Irix - 6.5.1 with the 6.5.14
update. I successfully installed 6.5.1 onto a 2 gb disk with 256 mb as
swap as the original 128 mb caused an out of swap barf during the first
install attempt. It's set up as XFS with 512k blocks. With Dev
Foundation, Dev Libs, NFS, and Freeware installed this leaves me with
320k free. 

Somethougts - Irix doesn't set the root password on install???? 

And that is one wierd installer. IIUC the things I read on the net, this
is an _improvement_ over earlier IRIX installers??? Eeekkk!!! 

Is there a cdrom automounter running - ie is /usr/etc/mediad (for ex or
is it something else?) like vold under solaris?  

How do I get emacs to be happy on a serial console? The usual tricks are
not working tonight, though it may be the VT100 emulation of my Ampex
VT220 clone. The disk grinds forever and then nothing appears to happen,
however once the disk stops spazing, ^X^C gets me back to a prompt as it
should. I have not been brave enough to play with ^z yet... :'>

One other thing, how do I tell how much disk I need for an update? The
6.5.14 update just failed because I was 300k short on the root
partition. Obviously I can whack something, but I do need an idea of
where to begin. The original install was pure defaults and I did not see
(which is not to say it wasn't there) anything in the relnotes.

One last bit, is there a good web site that talks of whatever
differences there are between admining "average" unix and Irix?

Thanks all,

William
-- 
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public
relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
Feynman's Appendix to the Rogers Commission Report.