On Wednesday 23 April 2008, you wrote:
quoted text
> > > I think I'm gun shy from my mac installs but there is a p partition on
> > > the drive that takes up the first 3515 blocks of the drive and I'm
> > > thinking I have to leave that there. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
> > > Otherwise I did the normal install...
> >
> > Yes, you need to leave it there - the SGI Volume Header takes up the
> > first few blocks of the disk.
>
> Oh, I wanted to ask this for quite some time:
>
> Can I create this volume header without an IRIX installation?
>
> The disk in my O2 died, I have another SCA disk (from a Sun), wiped clean.
> And my old IRIX CDs have read errors, so I can't even install IRIX from
> scratch just to prepare the disk.
>
> Any workarounds?

You can easily install on a "blank" disk - the installer will create a SGI 
Volume Header on the disk if one is not already present. If one already 
exists it will give you the option to keep it or replace it. Once bsd.rd is 
booted you could even manipulate it manually (using sgivol(8)) if you really 
wanted to do so, however there is generally no need.

Grab a current cd43.iso (or netboot a bsd.rd) and give it a whirl!
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             => Joel Sing | joel@ionix.com.au | 0419 577 603 <=
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         "Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time."
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