How to install NetBSD on an SGI Indy R5000

From NetBSD Wiki

this is incomplete.

In this article I will describe step by step how to install NetBSD on an SGI Indy R5000 workstation.

Contents 1 Synopsis 2 Requirements 3 Pre-installation Tasks 3.1 Discovering the MAC Address 3.2 Creating a change root environment 3.3 Setting up the DHCP Server 3.4 Setting up TFTP

Synopsis

Before you decide to purchase an SGI Indy 5000 and try to install NetBSD on it, you should be aware that the CPU Power of this machine isn't comparable with recent CPU's. You should keep in mind that the Indy's run only at about 180 MHz.

Requirements

• a Silicon Graphics Indy R5000 workstation. The picture shows an SGI R5000. Since this product is discontinued, it's rather hard to find one. If you're lucky you can find some on ebay or on the NetBSD Mailing lists.
• a serial cable (Modem MiniDIN8 to DB25 (Macintosh, non-null modem) to connect between the SGI and your PC.
• a second PC with a serial port running a Unix™-like OS like NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Linux or Solaris.
• tftp-service in your network

Pre-installation Tasks

Since the R5000 does not contain any bootable devices (*), you will need to netboot the kernel. In order to netboot the kernel, you will need a tftp enabled service in your network. Since this is rarely the case you can easily set it up yourself. For that you need a second PC preferable running NetBSD, or any other Unix-like System. In this article I'm assuming the DHCP/TFTP Server and the Computer connected with the serial cable is the same one. You can of course split the services to different machines.

* An exception is the Floptical Floppy Drive for optical and normal 3.5 inch disks.

Discovering the MAC Address

To serve the NetBSD Kernel only to your SGI Indy workstation, you'll need to know the MAC-Address of your machine. Normally this is printed on the back of your workstation, next to the power socket, the numbers below the bar code.

Another way to determine the MAC Address is to enter printenv in the PROM Monitor.

Creating a change root environment

Please download following sgimips sets from your local NetBSD FTP Mirror or the latest sgimips sets from the NetBSD autobuild cluster:

• base.tgz
• etc.tgz
• misc.tgz
• text.tgz
• kern-GENERIC32_IP2x.tgz

and extract this sets to a directory of your choice. For example /home/zafer/sgimips/r5000.

Setting up the DHCP Server

NetBSD comes with the ISC DHCP Server included. Just create a file named /etc/dhcpd.conf containing:

deny unknown-clients;
ddns-update-style none;
subnet 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {		# Adjust to your network
	host r5000 {
		hardware ethernet 08:00:69:19:33:38;    # Adjust to your MAC address
		fixed-address 192.168.1.123;            # Adjust
		#filename "/netbsd";                    # Do NOT set!
		option root-path "/home/zafer/sgimips/r5000"; # change-root directory
		server-name="192.168.1.200";            # The DHCP Server
	}
}

and add the following lines to your /etc/rc.conf

dhcpd=yes
dhcpd_flags="-q ex0"

where ex0 is the network card you listen for requests.

You can now start the dhcp server by entering:

# /etc/rc.d/dhcpd start
Starting dhcpd.

Setting up TFTP

To provide TFTP uncomment the tftp service in your /etc/inetd.conf and restart inetd with:

# /etc/rc.d/inetd restart

Now copy the NetBSD kernel for your r5000 from your chroot environment directory to /tftpboot.

# mkdir -p /tftpboot
# cp /home/zafer/sgimips/r5000/netbsd /tftpboot/

to be continued.