About This Guide

This guide describes how to set up and operate an SGI Origin200 server. It contains the following chapters:

Information about installing and removing memory, option boards, and internal components are found in the Origin200 and Origin200 GIGAchannel Maintenance Guide (p/n 007-3709-001, or later).

In addition, this guide contains the following appendixes:

A glossary and index complete this guide.

Where to Find More Information

Figure i illustrates sources of additional information about your Origin200 system.

Figure 1. Sources of Additional Information About Origin200

Figure i Sources of Additional Information About Origin200

The following sections describe each of the sources of information illustrated above.

You may also wish to read these sections:

Origin200 and Origin200 GIGAchannel Owner's Guide

Refer to the Origin200 and Origin200 GIGAchannel Owner's Guide (this manual) to set up the system, use the system, install peripherals (such as option drives and serial devices), and to find out about the cosmetic features of the system (such as locking the system and swiveling the feet on a tower chassis.)

Origin200 and Origin200 GIGAchannel Maintenance Guide

Refer to the Origin200 and Origin200 GIGAchannel Maintenance Guide to install memory, option boards (PCI and XIO), troubleshoot the system, and replace components. This book is provided with every Origin200 and Origin200 GIGAchannel server.

The system and all the procedures in this guide are designed so that you may maintain many of the components of the system without the help of a trained technician. However, do not feel that you must work with the hardware yourself. You can always contact your maintenance provider to have an authorized service provider work with the hardware instead.

Optional Documentation

The IRIX Admin manual set is recommended as a reference for system administration tasks. This set of manuals contains the following books:

  • IRIX Admin: Software Installation and Licensing—This book explains how to install and license software that runs under IRIX, the SGI implementation of the UNIX operating system. It contains instructions for performing miniroot and live installations using Inst, the command-line interface to the IRIX installation utility. It also identifies the licensing products that control access to restricted applications running under IRIX and refers readers to licensing product documentation.

  • IRIX Admin: System Configuration and Operation—This book lists good general system administration practices and describes system administration tasks, including configuring the operating system; managing user accounts, user processes, and disk resources; interacting with the system while in the PROM monitor; and tuning system performance.

  • IRIX Admin: Disks and Filesystems—This guide explains disk, filesystem, and logical volume concepts. It provides system administration procedures for SCSI disks, XFS and EFS filesystems, XLV and lv logical volumes, and guaranteed-rate I/O.

  • IRIX Admin: Networking and Mail—This book describes how to plan, set up, use, and maintain the networking and mail systems, including discussions of sendmail, UUCP, SLIP, and PPP.

  • IRIX Admin: Backup, Security, and Accounting—This guide describes how to back up and restore files, how to protect your system's and network's security, and how to track system usage on a per-user basis.

  • IRIX Admin: Peripheral Devices—This book describes how to set up and maintain the software for peripheral devices such as terminals, modems, printers, and CD-ROM and tape drives. It also includes specifications for the associated cables for these devices.

  • IRIX Admin: Selected Reference Pages (not available in IRIS InSight)—This book provides concise reference (manual) page information on the use of commands that may be needed while the system is down. Generally, each reference page covers one command, although some reference pages cover several closely related commands. Reference pages are also available online through the man command.

Except where noted, the optional books listed above are included online with the appropriate version of IRIX, either preinstalled on the system disk or available on CD-ROM. You can display these books from a graphics workstation using the IRIS InSight viewer.

If you cannot use IRIS InSight, you can obtain these optional books in one of the following ways:

  • Visit the SGI Technical Publications Library on the World Wide Web (http://techpubs.sgi.com/library ); you can view the books online via your Web browser, download PostScript and PDF versions of the books, and purchase printed copies.

  • Contact your sales representative for information about obtaining printed copies of these books.

Online Reference (Manual) Pages

The Origin200 server comes with a set of IRIX reference (manual) pages, formatted in the standard UNIX “man page” style. These are found online on the main system disk, and are displayed using the man command. For example, to display the reference page for the Add_disk command, enter the following command at a shell prompt:

man Add_disk

Important system configuration files as well as commands are documented in reference pages. Citations in the documentation to these reference pages include the name of the command and the section number in which the command is found. For example, “Add_disk(1)” refers to the Add_disk command and indicates that it is found in section 1 of the IRIX reference.

For additional information about displaying reference pages using the man command, see man(1).

In addition, the apropos command locates reference pages based on keywords. For example, to display a list of reference pages that describe disks, enter the following command at a shell prompt:

apropos disk

For information about setting up and using apropos, see apropos(1) and makewhatis(1M).

World Wide Web-Accessible Documentation

SGI makes its manuals available in a variety of formats via the World Wide Web (WWW). Using your Web browser, open the following URL:
http://techpubs.sgi.com/library

Release Notes

You can view the release notes for a variety of SGI products and software subsystems using one of two utilities:

relnotes 

Text-based viewer for online release notes.

grelnotes 

Graphical viewer for online release notes.

To see a list of available Release Notes, type the following at a shell prompt:

relnotes

For more information, see the relnotes(1) and grelnotes(1) reference pages.

InfoSearch

InfoSearch is a unified system for retrieving and viewing online information, providing you with quick and easy access to online information available on SGI computers. With InfoSearch, you can search or browse through release notes, reference pages, application help cards, online books, and other forms of online information.

There are two ways to use InfoSearch:

  • The infosearch utility, which runs on SGI workstations.

  • A World Wide Web interface, infosrch.cgi, that you can access through any Web browser.

Your Origin200 system can be configured as an InfoSearch server so that other workstations on your network can use it to retrieve information. However, you must have a graphical workstation in order to use InfoSearch, either with the infosearch command or via a Web browser.

For basic information about getting started with InfoSearch, see the infosearch(1), sgindexAdmin(1), booksAdmin(1), and infosrch.cgi(1) reference pages.

Conventions

This Origin200 Owner's Guide uses these conventions:

  • References to document titles are in italics.

  • IRIX commands and names of files appear in text as italics.

  • Words that are found in the glossary are in italics.

  • References to other chapters and sections within this guide are in quotation marks.

  • Anything that you type on your keyboard is in Courier bold.

  • Anything displayed on the screen is in Courier.

  • Names of IRIX reference (manual) pages are in the default font and are followed by the section number of the reference page. For example “who(1)” refers to the who command, which is found in section 1 of the IRIX reference.

  • Steps to perform tasks are in numbered sentences. When a numbered step needs more explanation, the explanation follows the step and is preceded by a square bullet.

About the CD Software Media

You received one or more compact discs (CDs) with your Origin200 server. The CDs include optional software that you might find useful, and a copy of the operating system and software installation tools that are already on your system disk. If your server was shipped with an SGI system disk, you don't need the CDs to set up and use your system. Store them in a safe and convenient place so you can find them when you need to install new software, or in case of a system failure.

Where to Go From Here

To learn about the Origin200 server, turn to Chapter 1, “Overview of the Origin200 and Origin200 GIGAchannel Server.”

To set up the Origin200 server in a tower configuration and start using the system, turn to Chapter 2, “Setting Up an Origin200 System.”

To install the Origin200 in an equipment rack, turn to Chapter 3, “Installing an Origin200 System in a Rack.”