[rescue] SGI Indy revival

[Patrick Giagnocavo]

Can you just dd the image over the network after booting into single
user mode?  It will create an image the size of the disk, which you
could compress later.  If you can compile GNU ddrescue, it has some
smart options that might help you as well.

--Patrick

On Sun, Mar 22, 2026 at 9:05 PM Joshua Boyd via rescue
<rescue at sunhelp.org> wrote:
>
> I am hoping to show an Indy in the retro room at a conference next
> weekend, but I'd like to make sure it is fully backed up first, which I
> should have already done anyway.  At the moment surprisingly everything
> works.
>
> There are two areas of concern.  This machine has licensed software on
> it, so in addition to backing up the disk, I want to back up the
> identity of the machine so that if need be it can be restored to a
> different one or after the NVRAM is someday replaced.  For identity, do
> I just need to back up the eaddr?
>
> Virtually all of my Irix experience is with Irix 6.4 then Irix 6.5, so I
> want to be a little sure of things here before diving in.  Previously I
> would have taken the disk out and DD'd it but currently I don't have any
> other machines with SCSI running, and would prefer not to have to set
> that up to get this backed up. Here is the process I'm thinking, and I'd
> like feedback on it.
>
> 1) Boot into single user mode.
>
> 2) Connect a second disk and EFS format it.
>
> 3) Use tar to backup the first disk  piped to tar extract on pointed at
> the new disk.
>
> 3b) tar -cpofv - -C / . | tar -xpof - -C /newdisk
>
> I'm a little uncertain if it will then end up trying to recursively
> stuff as it is written to /newdisk. I know that 5.3's doesn't support
> --exclude.  It does support -X though.
>
> 4) turn off, unplug, swap the scsi ID on the new disk to the old one and
> disconnect the old one.
>
> 5) success?
>
>
>
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