Run Reanimator for SGI IRIX netboot on qemu

jhonnaker

New member
Jan 21, 2025
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Run Reanimator for SGI IRIX netboot on qemu. There is this great project called Reanimator for having a netboot server for installing SGI IRIX.

https://github.com/Linux-RISC/Reanimator

It currently runs on Raspberry Pi 4 and VirtualBox.

I only have a Raspberry Pi 5 and a MacBook with an Arm64 processor so I can't run it in VirtualBox. I decided to run it in qemu and it works!

I first converted the VDI to a raw file:

VBoxManage clonehd Debian_i386-IRIX_install.vdi Debian_i386-IRIX_install-qemu.img --format raw

I then booted in qemu. I have to use sudo to get it a real IP address on my home network:

sudo qemu-system-x86_64 -M q35,vmport=off,hpet=off -m 2G -cpu max -accel tcg,thread=multi,tb-size=1024 -global ICH9-LPC.disable_s3=1 -smp cpus=4 -device virtio-blk-pci,drive=drive1,bootindex=0 -drive if=none,media=disk,id=drive1,file.filename=Debian_i386-IRIX_install-qemu.img,discard=unmap,detect-zeroes=unmap,format=raw -rtc base=localtime -device virtio-net-pci,netdev=net0 -netdev vmnet-bridged,id=net0,ifname=en0 -device cirrus-vga

I just had to edit /etc/network/interfaces to change the interface name to what qemu presents and reboot. You can find out what the correct interface name is by logging in as root and typing "ifconfig -a". I even changed it back to DHCP.

When you update the OS and it updates grub, it will complain about the disk. Just choose to let it install grub on the root of the disk, which is the first selection in the list.

You also have to change /etc/hosts and /etc/bootptab with IPs for IRIX and IRIX2 for IPs on your home network.

Enjoy!
 

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