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Modern Linux on SGI Altix
I recently purchased two SGI Altixes, an Altix 350 and Altix 3700. The IA64 Altix computers came with a RHEL based distro, then switched to SuSE Enterprise Linux Server (SLES). The latest officially supported is SLES 11, which I installed fine on both atlixes. SLES works okay, but I've found that using it is difficult as there don't seem to be any archives of packages for it avaliable.
I know others have gotten Debian to install on the Altix, but I was looking for a more modern OS. I first attempted to install Gentoo, which did work, but since Gentoo removed IA 64 support, I dont think its worth documenting this process. My rough notes are here: Getting circa 2022 Gentoo IA64 on an SGI Altix 350.
T2 SDE Linux
I was pointed at T2 SDE Linux, which is a source based distro that supports IA64, by one of the devs working on out of branch Linux kernel support for IA64.I bootstrapped T2 from my Gentoo install, but I think it should be possible to do it from a SLED 11 install as well.
UNDER CONSTRUCTION: I will clean up these notes next time I install on the Altix 3700. I also need to figure out elilo on T2.