[K12OSN] Re: K12OSN Digest, Vol 11, Issue 64

Henry Burroughs hburroughs at HHPREP.ORG
Thu Jan 20 14:11:35 UTC 2005


SGI O2s... that brings back some memories.  About 2 years ago I worked
on creating a cluster of O2s and Indy workstations back at the college I
graduated from.  I used a version of Debian.  The SGI Machines use
different versions of the Rxxxx processors... which have similar, but
not exact architectures.  My Indy kernels would not boot the O2s.  These
machines however, have the ability built right in to tftpboot.  What was
arcane was figuring out the settings required for the SGI "BIOS" in
order to network boot.

Try this link... it looks familiar (there are some special tweaks to MTU
or something, otherwise TFTPBOOTs might fail or timeout):
http://www.total-knowledge.com/progs/mips/o2-howto.shtml

I've never compiled a version of LTSP (or at all), for a different
architecture, so I don't know the requirements. I've played with cross
architecture compilers, but it has been awhile.

I got this link from the linux-mips wiki:
He appears to have some working kernel versions..., so all you would
have to do is get a network booting version of LTSP for MIPS going...

http://www.tal.org/~milang/o2/


What I ended up doing with the SGI Indy workstations was configuring
Debian on a drive, and copying the files to new drives for the new
stations.  The O2s would make it easy since the SCSI drives pop in and
out the back in their nice SCA connectors..mmmm....  Oh, putting the
kernel on the drive takes some magic too....

Check this link out for help
http://honk.physik.uni-konstanz.de/linux-mips/indy-boot/indy-hd-boot-micro-howto.html
> 
> ______________________________________________________________________
Hopefully my rambling makes some sense.  Good luck!

Henry Burroughs

> From: aust_txv at ACCESS-K12.org
> To: Support list for opensource software in schools. <k12osn at redhat.com>
> Subject: Re: [K12OSN] k12ltsp & SGI O2
> Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2005 12:09:44 -0500
> 
> >>We were donated about 40 SGI O2 R5000 and would love to be able to make 
> good use of these RISC boxes other that "cute" bookends. >>
> 
> Wow those are neat looking.  They are RISC R5000 cpu's like 210Mhz (RISC) 
> yes ?  I think you are in for a battle.  You can weave your own LTSP for 
> these I think with another OS.  Find a linux distro for that hardward and 
> see if it works.  These are not x86 workstations so an "out-of the box" 
> K12LTSP install won't work for you.  Try to find a linux distro for that 
> hardware.  They did not come with IRIX ?  Might have to go FreeBSD, I don't 
> recall seeing a linux distro for the R5000 cpu.  I would love to be wrong 
> for your sake. :) ;) They are cool are they blue or black ?
> Hope this helps,
> Tom Ventresco
> 
> 




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