From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: by oss.sgi.com id ; Tue, 25 Jul 2000 11:47:17 -0700 Received: from deliverator.sgi.com ([204.94.214.10]:12391 "EHLO deliverator.sgi.com") by oss.sgi.com with ESMTP id ; Tue, 25 Jul 2000 11:47:03 -0700 Received: from cthulhu.engr.sgi.com (cthulhu.engr.sgi.com [192.26.80.2]) by deliverator.sgi.com (980309.SGI.8.8.8-aspam-6.2/980310.SGI-aspam) via ESMTP id LAA22287 for ; Tue, 25 Jul 2000 11:39:07 -0700 (PDT) mail_from (ehab@aia067.aia.RWTH-Aachen.DE) Received: from sgi.com (sgi.engr.sgi.com [192.26.80.37]) by cthulhu.engr.sgi.com (980427.SGI.8.8.8/970903.SGI.AUTOCF) via ESMTP id LAA48949 for ; Tue, 25 Jul 2000 11:46:16 -0700 (PDT) mail_from (ehab@aia067.aia.RWTH-Aachen.DE) Received: from aia067.aia.RWTH-Aachen.DE (aia067.aia.RWTH-Aachen.DE [134.130.140.67]) by sgi.com (980327.SGI.8.8.8-aspam/980304.SGI-aspam: SGI does not authorize the use of its proprietary systems or networks for unsolicited or bulk email from the Internet.) via ESMTP id LAA01102 for ; Tue, 25 Jul 2000 11:46:13 -0700 (PDT) mail_from (ehab@aia067.aia.RWTH-Aachen.DE) Received: from localhost (localhost [[UNIX: localhost]]) by aia067.aia.RWTH-Aachen.DE (8.9.3/8.9.3/SuSE Linux 8.9.3-0.1) id UAA04975; Tue, 25 Jul 2000 20:46:07 +0200 From: Ehab Fares To: michael.j.lewis@db.com Subject: Re: SGI-Linux VisualWorkstations Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2000 20:31:56 +0200 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.0.28] Content-Type: text/plain References: <85256927.0048395E.00@nysmtp4001.svc.btco.com> In-Reply-To: <85256927.0048395E.00@nysmtp4001.svc.btco.com> Cc: linux@cthulhu.engr.sgi.com, adi@mr-happy.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: <00072520460700.04813@aia067> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-linux-mips@oss.sgi.com Precedence: bulk Return-Path: X-Orcpt: rfc822;linux-mips-outgoing On Tue, 25 Jul 2000, you wrote: > Has anyone managed to get Linux (any distribution) onto the Visual > Workstation? Personally, had a no. of problems > with the Visual Workstation and my last gasp effort to use the machine > (apart from as a dust magnet) is to run Linux on > them .... any info. pls. let me know. (linux.sgi.com ... used to have a > couple of pages as I recall, but dont think they are there now....) > > > rgds & thnks, > > > Michael L -- We've been runnung Linux on a Visual Workstation 540 for some time now.. We used a SuSE 6.3 Distribution and there was a lot to do to get the mahine booting for first installation. The Information we used was on the www.linux.sgi.com... For some reasons (perhaps the new Visual workastation from SGI) only the mips architecture is now present there! Unfortunatley I don't have these Information anymore... I also have only been able to boot the 2.2.10 Kernel. The system is integrated into a Linux cluster. We are not using the CD-ROM or the floppy much, so I don't know of any problems there. The machine hangs every now and then (sometimes once per 2 weeks and sometimes one per day). The hanging seem to stop if the X server is not activated. Our biggest problem is the Memory, we are only using 960MB of the 2GB. I believe this is only a problem of the arc loader. It is even mentioned in the sources of that loader. I haven't figured out a way to get around that yet... I personally find it discouraging that there is no further development for these machines. They would make a great linux visualization machines (as SGI apparently noticed already and giving a linux option for the newer Visual Workstation)... What is needed is a better support for the hardware including the graphics... regards, Ehab.