Autodesk Software versions on IRIX

Autodesk Software Releases on IRIX:

Legend:

1. ISA: Instruction set architecture
   1. -mips1: 32 bit instruction set defined by the R3000 microprocessor.
   2. -mips2: 64 bit instruction set defined by the R4000 (or greater) microprocessor.
2. ABI: Application Binary Interface
   1. -o32: Old 32-bit ABI.
   2. -n32: New 32-bit ABI; supported on IRIX 6.2 and beyond.
3. Executable file format
   1. COFF: Common Object File Format (for executables); only supported through IRIX 5.3.
   2. ELF: Executable and Linking Format (for executable); supported from IRIX 5.x onwards.

      So, what's this all mean?

Autodesk Software Compatibility Matrix:

* On 64-bit (R8000/R10000) systems, you'll need to modify a few things:

AutoCAD on Irix 6.X? ... YES ...

AutoCAD R13 runs just fine on IRIX 6.2 (and 6.3 and 6.4). If you are running on a system with R4x00 or R5000 CPU (and 32-bit IRIX kernel), you should not have any trouble (unless you are installing on a large XFS file system).

• This is indicated by a message informing you of 'insufficient disk space for the installation'.

However, if you are running an R8000 or R10000 CPU (and 64-bit IRIX kernel) there are several script files in AutoCAD R13 that make use of the operating system name (as returned by the 'uname(1)' command. On 32-bit systems, uname -s returns IRIX while on 64-bit systems, it returns IRIX64.

The first script file affected is the ainstall script located in the root directory of the AutoCAD R13 CDROM. As it is on the CD, it is a bit tough to change =;^} so you have several options to work around the problem.

• Run ainstall from a 32-bit machine (i.e. R4x00 or R5000).
  • Point the installer at an NFS-mounted filesystem on the 64-bit system, or...
  • Once installed, copy the installed tree to the 64-bit system.
• Replace the uname command temporarily for the installation:
  • Save this uname-replacement in your home directory.
  • Follow the directions in the script file and install AutoCAD normally.

AutoCAD R13 startup Script:

The second script file that relies on uname is the acadr13 startup script that is located (by default) in the directory /opt/acad13/bin. Here is an improved acadr13 startup script.

  NOTE: Be sure the acadr13 script is executable;
     > chmod a+x acadr13
  I also like to run the script from the command line to check for errors:
     > /opt/acad13/bin/acadr13 -or- ./acadr13

IMPORTANT: You should *not* attempt to install the digitizer Screen Area (or MoleMode) drivers from the AutoCAD R13 CD on an IRIX 6.X system. The drivers on the AutoCAD R13 CD are for IRIX 5.x systems only!

An IRIX6.X version of the Screen Area drivers may be downloaded here.

NOTE: For users of the TriTeal Enterprise Desktop v4.0 (or earlier), you may need to obtain an update from TriTeal for use on IRIX 6.X.

AutoCAD on XFS File Systems:

While AutoCAD itself runs very well on the new XFS file system, you may run into some difficulty when trying to install AutoCAD on large file systems, especially ones over 2 GB in size. Since the installation program is a 32-bit executable, it sees numbers over 2 GB (2^31) as negative, and thus improperly determines that there is insufficient disk space to complete the installation. There is an easy work-around for this problem in the 'ainstall' program:

ainstall work-around:

Instead of using the selection:

• Typical Install

use the selection:

• Custom Install...

and then de-select one option in the Custom Install dialog box. For example, if you don't require the External Database Access (ASE) feature, click on the option button to its left to remove it from the installation list and select OK.

• The key here is that once you de-select an item, the installer does not check for available disk space and proceeds normally.
  • You should ascertain that you do have sufficient disk space at this point using the command:
    • > df -k
  • A full AutoCAD installation requires approximately 120 MB of disk space.
• If you need to install all features, you can later come back and install only the de-selected items.
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