mleopold@tiscali.dk wrote: > Hi All. > I just got my hands on an old SGI Indigo2 and I would like to install Linux > on it (preferably Debian). I've searched a few places and I get contradicting > signals on whether this might work or not. The machine is an Indigo2 (IP28) > 175MHz R10000. I have such a machine, too. Short summary: It won't work yet. > I've tried booting over the net using bootp and tftp following the instructionsin > the debian-howto.. The machine gets an IP and immediately writes "execute > format error" (using the r4k-ip22/tftpboot.img image). I'm guessing that > this is and 32/64 bit problem, but I really haven't got a clue. That's because the R10000 Firmware wnats only ELF64 objects. > I found > an other image looking like it might be a 64 bit image (from Kumba, the > Gentoo guy), it downloads and then freezes the machine. > > Can anybody give me some hints here: what I'm I suppose to do? Will this > ever work? I don't really care about installation method (network, cd, etc). Some SGI uniprocessor R10000 machines are non-I/O-coherent, specifically the IP28 ans the IP32. The R10000 has a bug/performance feature which leads to erraneously marked dirty cachelines, which wreaks havoc on those machines for DMA transfers. The solution is to use a special kernel with compiled in cache barriers (needs a not-yet written compiler patch) and careful managing of page table accesses from userspace (needs rmap, and thus 2.5 Kernel). I'm working slowly on it, but I get constantly distracted by toolchain issues. :-) > There was some talk in Febuary on a guy got Linux up and running on an Origin > 200 - and some bootable cd's. That sounded prety interesting =] The Origin is easier to support, it has coherent I/O. > Btw: I also got my hands on an Octane (IP30) with an R10000 (195 Mhz) - > I haven't tried to install on this one, but that might be interesting too.. This one is also I/O coherent, so chances are much better than for IP28. Thiemo
