[ale] SCO boot.

[Neal Rhodes]

On Mon, 2009-09-28 at 10:33 -0400, ale-request at ale.org wrote:



> Message: 6
> Date: Mon, 28 Sep 2009 10:24:22 -0400
> From: "Jeff Lightner" <jlightner at water.com>
> Subject: [ale] SCO Open Server 5 boot root floppies?
> To: "Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes! We run Linux!" <ale at ale.org>
> Message-ID: <99E6A67A9DA87041A8020FBC11F480B30352FF32 at EXVS01.dsw.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> 
> Does anyone happen to still have a SCO system with Open Server 5 on it
> that would be willing to create boot/root floppies I could borrow?


I do in fact have a working SCO OS5.02 system, and in fact this summer
used it to help someone convert their
defunct accounting server to linux. 

There are going to be some difficulties regarding boot floppies - they
varied depending on which disk 
controller was used.   I can build you a set, but it will be assuming
the SCSI disk is connected to the NCR Symbios
controller on my DEC server.    It's not going to recognize a DPT
controller.   There might be much mumbo jumbo
with BTLD floppies.       You could also in theory re-run the install,
including the BTLD stuff, right up to the point where 
it's recognized the hard drive, and then break out and try and ....
well, do the very limited things you can do with the very 
few utilities present on the install diskettes.      My recollection is
that it's much harder than it sounds. 

You might want to think through exactly what you are trying to
accomplish here.   Might be better to just take a
backup tape and restore it elsewhere.      Those were bad old days most
sane people would rather not try to 
remember. 

Another strategy would be simply to build another SCO server with SCSI
of any flavor, and then stuff your drive in
after booting off the primary, and pull off what you need.    If I'm
remembering right, you could have an IDE primary root
drive, and it would consider the SCSI drives to be 2nd in the pecking
order.    The process is a little tricky if you haven't 
done it before;   one wrong answer and it will cheerfully re-format your
SCSI drive. 

SCO didn't dynamically discover new hardware like Linux.   So every new
bit you configure, recompile kernel, reboot, and hope
the new kernel finds the hardware. 

Neal Rhodes
MNOP Ltd


> We have a need to try to explore a SCO server we may be inheriting and
> the CD drive was kaput so my Linux and Backtrack CDs weren't of much
> help.  
> 
>  
> 
> >From boot messages it appears the server has DPT SCSI and VisionFS
> (which I'm assuming is the filesystem type but may be wrong). 
> 
>  
> 
> I'm going to investigate Linux on floppy (unfortunately I didn't have
> one with me when I examined it) but am not sure it would have a driver
> for the DPT SCSI or would recognize the filesystem.
> 
>  
> 
> Also since I need to be able to boot from these to try to mount the
> filesystems I'd need to know the root password for the floppies so of
> course you'd need to make it a temporary password before creating the
> floppies.
> 
>  
> 
> Alternatively if anyone KNOWS (not guesses) another way to hack root on
> SCO I'd appreciate hearing about it.   From what I can find on line the
> only sure way to do it is with boot/root floppies.
> 


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