Help, please. Error: "Could not connect with /usr/etc/fam

[Hansolo]

Hi Guys,

Newbee here.
A while ago I bought an SGI Indy Workstation.
I was messing around with it and for some reason (I don't remember why!)
I messed up some file and now I get this message
"Filemanager Fatal Error. Could not connect with /usr/etc/fam"
and can't do anything anymore.
I did some research and tried to correct the problem, but to no avail.
For some reason the system can't connect to the File Alteration Monitor.
I don't have a floppy drive. I don't have an external SCSI CD Rom drive.
I do have a parallel zip drive and ethernet.

What can I do to maybe correct the corrupted file or something else.
Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Cheers
Han

 

[Elf]

Hi!

It's difficult to diagnose things like this remotely, but I think the general advice would be to reinstall IRIX if this is a show stopper for you.

There are a few network install options for reinstallation without a CD-ROM drive:

• https://github.com/unxmaal/booterizer
• https://forums.sgi.sh/index.php?threads/howto-irix-network-install-using-ubuntu.109/

 

[Hansolo]

Hi!

It's difficult to diagnose things like this remotely, but I think the general advice would be to reinstall IRIX if this is a show stopper for you.

There are a few network install options for reinstallation without a CD-ROM drive:

• https://github.com/unxmaal/booterizer
• https://forums.sgi.sh/index.php?threads/howto-irix-network-install-using-ubuntu.109/

Thanks Elf!
I will definitely try that!

Cheers
Han

 

[Jacques]

I have this every time I do a fresh install. Have you checked fam is started and enabled in inetd.conf? Should be near the bottom.... sgi_fam/1-2 ... etc ...? If it's commented out uncomment it. Restart completely or restart networking.

 

[Hansolo]

I have this every time I do a fresh install. Have you checked fam is started and enabled in inetd.conf? Should be near the bottom.... sgi_fam/1-2 ... etc ...? If it's commented out uncomment it. Restart completely or restart networking.

I tried to edit the intetd.conf file in console. But I don't know how to do this in console. Can you tell me how, please? I attached a screen dump of my syslog.

Cheers
Han

 

[Hansolo]

I checked if the fam was started and it was and did some more checks but I got a fail at the port mapper. Some blog tells me to debug a line in the inetd.conf file like so: sgi_fam/1-2 stream rpc/tcp wait root ?/usr/etc/fam fam -d. But I don't know how to open edit and safe a file in console.

Cheers
Han

 

[Hansolo]

By the way, I also tried a network install of a new system, but could not get a ethernet connection going between my mac and the indy.

 

[Elf]

There are various types of text console editors out there, but vi is usually my go-to:

• http://nixdoc.net/man-pages/IRIX/man1/vi.1.html
• https://www.cs.colostate.edu/helpdocs/vi.html

 

[Hansolo]

Thanks Elf!
I'll see what I can do, using these.

Cheers
Han

 

[massiverobot]

Thanks Elf!
I will definitely try that!

Cheers
Han

THere is lots of real-time support in the discord for booterizer if you take that path.

 

[Hansolo]

THere is lots of real-time support in the discord for booterizer if you take that path.

Thanks. I'll keep that in mind.

 

[Hansolo]

When checking the FAM all steps went as should, until I got to this command:
# rpcinfo -p | grep fam
It didn't give any return feedback.
This means: FAM is not registered with the portmapper.
So the client applications can NOT connect to specific ports for the services they need.

How can I solve this problem?