IRIX Base Installation

 General Information

Introduction

This page will describe how to install IRIX 6.5 on a clean disc. You may need to do this when you want to upgrade a pre-6.5 version to 6.5.x or when you really want to reinstall IRIX or simply got a new SGI but no operating system on the disc.

Installing IRIX is not that hard, the most complicated step is setting up the disc, because you have to boot from CD and partition your drive - this is not that easy, but described in detail here.

We now assume that you have a labeled harddrive ready to receive a fresh IRIX installation.

What you need

Before you start, make sure that you have at least the following CDs for IRIX 6.5:

  • IRIX 6.5 Foundation 1 & 2
  • IRIX 6.5 Installation Tools

Note that the "Installation Tools" are also contained on the first CD of an IRIX 6.5.x Overlay set. Most often there is no special CD containing only the installation tools, so don't worry if you don't have such a disc, but you have overlays. Note that for an installation from CDs you need bootable overlays - that is downloading the overlays from www.sgi.com is not sufficient. You probably want to get your hands on an original CD set instead.

It is also a good idea to install some applications which can be found on the following CD:

  • IRIX 6.5 Applications

If you want to install the development system, you also need

  • IRIX 6.5 Development Foundation
  • IRIX 6.5 Development Libraries

Note that you also need these CDs if you use freeware development tools like gcc, because these CDs contain all IRIX specific libraries.

You might also want to install

  • ONC3/NFS Version 3
  • IRIX 6.5 Applications
  • IRIX 6.5 Base Documentation
  • SCSL Scientific Library

Initializing your Harddisc

First you have to partition and initialize your harddrive before you can install IRIX onto it. This requires that you first have to boot the Installation CD either from your local CD-ROM or from Network. Please read these two sections for booting into the disc partitioning program fx:

We assume that you are using your local CD-ROM

Starting the Installation

When you are ready with preparing you harddisc, you can start the installer itself. There are two possibilites: Start the installer from sash by typing install, or select "Install System Software" from the main menu of the PROM.

If you get an error message telling you that no swap-space is available, you first need to initalize your harddisc via fx.
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