[rescue] netbooting IRIX (was: Culling some goodies!)

[Jonathan Patschke]

On Tue, 30 Jan 2018, Richard wrote:

>> [1] Plus a ready-to-go VMware appliance I threw together for netbooting
>>      IRIX.
>
> Nice!  Do you have a set of instructions so others can create such a
> thing?

    http://www.sunhelp.org/pipermail/rescue/2003-April/084767.html

To fill in the gaps, you need tftpd, bootpd (ISC dhcpd works), and NFSv2
configured to allow mounts from non-privileged ports.

With regards to step 1, put each disc's contents  into a separate
directory.  Usually you just need the "dist" directory's content, but
either Foundation 1 or Overlays 1 is "special" and needs the whole
contents.   It's easiest just to expect you'll have to point inst at
$NFSROOT/65found1/dist and such.

Note: to copy the EFS disks (usually just Installation Tools 1; the rest
are Rock Ridge), you'll need a Linux machine configured with read-only SGI
EFS support.

With regards to step 3, that requires a running IRIX system, or copies of
the machine-specific kernel.  I've got kernels for the Indy, Indigo2,
Indigo2 R10k, and Octane at least.  The kernel on the "Installation Tools"
disc has no NFS support, so you have to do the install over rsh.  The
miniroot has a full libc and friends, so an NFS-style path will DTRT when
the installer tries to mount it.

SGI firmware will find the kernel file using BOOTP in the usual way.

If there's sufficient interest, I could see about taking my VMware image,
removing the IRIX images (for DMCA reasons), and providing documentation
for setting it up.  IIRC, it's built on OpenBSD 5.5-ish.

-- 
Jonathan Patschke
Austin, TX
USA