Pull image from SGI Octane

mredus

New member
Feb 27, 2023
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0
1
Hello,

We have a fairly early (~1998) SGI Octane running special software on top of IRIX that we would like to emulate for training purposes.

I am wondering what the best/most cost-effective solution for pulling the image from the drive is - I think that it's a 2 gig disk. The machine is fully bootable and works as expected. Any suggestions? We do have an external enclosure with a CD drive as well as what I believe is a magneto-optical drive.

EDIT: At the very least, we'd like to archive the contents of the drive.
 
Last edited:

flexion

Active member
Sep 23, 2020
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Switzerland
2GB is rather small for a disk, even in 1998. If the 2 GB is really a disk, not just a partition, and you don't have any other partition available with enough space to "dd" it to, then you could insert a second SCSI disk and use xfsdump to copy the contents to that second disk. This can be done even while the disk/partition is in use with the OS booted from it.
 

gijoe77

Member
Feb 18, 2019
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18
first thing I would do is clone the disk to a newer drive (see https://forums.sgi.sh/index.php?threads/how-to-create-disk-archive.745/#post-5169)

to extract the software, assuming no installation files exist, one would have to manually copy files off the old system either A - if the original software was installed via software manager, software manager will list all the files that are associated with the software, or B - use trial-and-error in copying the files off the system.
 

mredus

New member
Feb 27, 2023
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1
Upon closer inspection the main drive is a seagate ST39102LC - about 9GB in total. Unfortunately, we don't have the original installation files so I will need to go the route of copying files.
 

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