Old indy2 rendered unbootable... (long post)

From: gprs (dbishop_at_ehvert.com)
Date: 01/28/04 

Date: 28 Jan 2004 11:16:10 -0800

Good morning all,

  A friend of mine gave me an old Indigo2 with Irix 5.3 loaded on it.
What he did not give me was the PROM password nor the root password.
While investigating what to do next i decided to mount the drive in a
linux system and see what could be done with the /etc/passwd file. i
was successful in mounting the drive but before i could determine what
i should do with the passwd file, i found the correct method of
resetting the PROM password which should allow me to reset the root
passwd properly.

  i reset the PROM password and rebooted the system only to be greeted
with:
"Autoboot Failed"

System Diagnostics renders:
"No SystemPartition set"

autoboot gives me:
"No default device and path in environment"

ls scsi(0)disk(1) gives me:
"dks0d1s0: volume header not valid"

>From the reading that i have done over the last few weeks (i do alot
of reading now to ensure i don't bugger it up further), i can see that
i need to get access to my CD using "Install System Software". This
isn't so easy as i don't have a local CDROM.

i recompiled a linux kernel to include the efs module only to find
that it isn't capable of reading the CD. i know it should, i have
read many posts about how to do it and it just keeps on spitting out:

mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom -t efs
"wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/cdrom, ..."

i found efslook and it has allowed me to see the contents of the CD.
There appear to be 3 areas on the CD with readable stuff. the first
one has the following content;
.cshrc
.login
.profile
bin
dev
etc
lib
sbin
unix.IP12
unix.IP17
...
unix.IP6
usr
var

the second has the following content:
CDgrelnotes
CDrelnotes
dist
help
insight
relnotes
firmware
stand
REALEASE.info

and the third has the same contents as the first.

i can see in the stand directory of the second area files like:
sash.IP12
sash.IP17
...
sash.IP9
sashARCS
ide.ip4
ide.IP5
...
ide.IP22
fx.ARCS
fx.IP12
fx.IP17
...
fx.IP6

i have two questions stemming from this.

1) the CD that i have is from IRIX 5.2. Can i safely use this
mini-root/fx to restore my disk label?

the command i have been given is:
boot -f dksc(x,y,z)sashARCS dksc(x,y,w) stand/fx.ARCS --x

which i will have to modify once i get the mini-root over the network.
 One step at a time although any hints here would be greatly
appreciated.

2) Should the above fail, which files do i need to get off the CD to
get the indy reloaded with the IRIX 5.2?

hopefully more is better and i have included all the necessary bits.

thanks in advance,
dean