I purchased a 4.3GB IBM SCSI hard disk to add to my O2 system. The process seemed fairly straightforward, but I ran in to a few more problems than I expected. Below are the steps I went through to add the hard disk to my O2.

Equipment Needed:

• An O2

• A SCSI hard disk to add to the system

  NOTE: You need to purchase an SCA Ultra Wide (U/W) SCSI hard disk for the O2. I recommend IBM hard drives, but other brands are known to work too. This is one of the nice advantages to the O2, at least in the year 2001. SCA hard disks seem to go for pennies off eBay, so chances are you can luck into a large one for less than $50US.

  For those wanting a ready-to-use hard disk for the O2, you can find those at Reputable. Various sizes, partitioned as an option disk and ready to use.

• A Phillips head screwdriver

• Drive sled for the O2

  The R5000 model O2 can accept two internal hard disks. Both disks have to be mounted on O2 drive sleds. These either came with your system or not. Reputable also has these available, as do other SGI vendors. If you have an R10000 or R12000 O2, your second hard disk is going to have to be external. The dissipator and processor assembly in those models consume the extra drive bay.

Installing the Drive:

1. Take your hard disk and check the jumper block. You don't want to have any SCSI ID jumpers enabled, no termination jumpers enabled, and no weird jumpers enabled. SCA drives will take care of all of that for you. One jumper that may need enabling is the "Disable Sync Negotiation" one. I have two IBM hard disks in my O2, one needed that jumper, the other didn't. Try it with sync negotiation. If you have problems, disable sync negotiation. The errors I got when booting when I had disabled sync negotiation on the new drive were:

   unix: dksc0d2col: <6>No sense<6>: (asc=0x0, asq=0x0)<6>

   Whatever that was, it went away once I enabled sync negotiation. SCSI is cool, but sometimes it just plain confuses me.

2. With the jumper block verified, mount the drive in the sled. The sled has kind of like a back to it, which is the side that has the lock on it. Mount the drive so that the circuit board side butts up to the back of the sled. So the completely exposed side of the sled will be the top of that hard disk. The screw holes will line up, there are only four. If the holes don't line up, consider that a sign that you have an incompatible hard disk for the O2. :)

3. Shutdown/power off the O2.

4. Unlock the sled by pulling the lever down ninety degrees. With the sled aligned so that the lever will go up when pushed, slide it into the slot. The sled should stop when the lever catches. Once this happens, push the lever up to pull the sled in the rest of the way. It's really a no-brainer (thanks SGI for making a really nice case to work with).

5. Turn the O2 on. IRIX should boot up now. Login as root when the system finishes booting.

Partitioning

1. The disk will need to partitioned/labeled/whatever for IRIX to be able to use it. There are two ways that I know of to accomplish this, the easy way and the hard way.

2. The Easy Way
   1. The system has booted up and you've logged in as root. From the Toolchest choose System. From the System menu, choose System Manager. This loads up sort of a hypertext-like system for doing system administration. It has an NT feel to it, but that's ok, because you'll rarely ever use this.

   2. On the left side of the System Manager, click Hardware and Devices. The contents on the right side of the window should change.

   3. Under the Hardware and Devices listing, click Disk Manager. This will launch Disk Manager.

   4. If you're familiar with SCSIProbe on the Macintosh, this window will look familiar. Click the icon next to your new hard disk. It will be the one that DOES NOT say SystemDisk.

   5. Click the Initialize button to set up the new drive. This process is pretty self explanatory. Once this is finished, the drive is ready for use.

3. The Hard Way
   1. The hard way involves logging in as root, starting either winterm or xwsh, then using fx to prepare the disk. I only call it hard because people new to IRIX will probably find fx to be a little user-unfriendly.

   2. Login as root. From the Toolchest choose Desktop. From the Desktop menu, choose Open Unix Shell. This will place you in winterm.

   3. Now you want to run fx and start playing with the disk. To start fx, run this command:

      fx -x

   4. fx will start and show the version and date (probably the build or release date). fx needs to know the disk you want to work on, so it immediately starts prompting you for this information if you didn't supply it on the command line. In the O2, you'll want to give these answers for a second internal hard disk:

      fx version 6.5, Dec 31, 2000
fx: "device-name" = (dksc)
fx: ctlr# = (0)
fx: drive# = (1) 2
fx: lun# = (0)
...opening dksc(0,2,0)

   5. fx will poke and probe and the disk to get the rest of the information it needs. After this step, you'll be at the fx menu/prompt thing.

   6. I suggest using [a]uto to prepare the disk. It's the easiest, most braindead way to get a working disk under IRIX. Press a followed by a y when it asks you if you're sure you want to continue. At this point the disk exercises begin.

   7. An important decision needs to be made. Do you want to let the exercises finish or do you want to let it go for a little ways, then stop? Letting them finish will take quite a while. So I suggest letting it run for a few periods, then pressing Ctrl+C to stop. If you have a hard disk of unknown origin, it might not be a bad idea to let the exercises fully complete before continuing. It's a reassuring test.

   8. Now, you've either let the exercises finish or you hit Ctrl+C. We need to label the disk now. So choose [l]abel, [c]reate, and finally [a]ll. After that, enter [..] to return to the previous menu. Then type [sy]nc to write the changes. Type [..] once more and then [exi]t to quit.

   9. Almost finished. You've done the fx part, now you need to make a filesystem on the disk. At the root prompt, type this to create the filesystem:

      mkfs_xfs /dev/rdsk/rdks0d2s7

      This creates a new XFS filesystem on the new drive, assuming it's device #2.

   10. Make a mount point for it.

       mkdir /space

   11. Mount the new filesystem.

       mount /dev/rdsk/rdks0d2s7 /space

   12. To have the system boot each time the system boots, add an entry to /etc/fstab.

       /dev/dsk/dks0d2s7 /space xfs rw,raw=/dev/rdsk/rdks0d2s7 0 0

   13. Done.