[ale] Virtualizing SCO OpenServer 5.x

[Michael H. Warfield]

On Tue, 2014-04-15 at 19:21 +0000, Beddingfield, Allen wrote:
> I have a consulting client running SCO OpenServer 5.x on an old Dell
> PowerEdge 2600, and I would love to get this moved into a virtual.
> I've found some howtos for P2V'ing into VMware ESXi, by using G4U to
> make a whole disk image, ftp that to another machine on the LAN, then
> write it back to a VM, then change the various drivers, etc...  inside
> the VM to get it to work. I'm going to haul a test machine down there
> with ESXi on it to test, but I was wondering if anyone else has had
> any luck doing this - either on ESXi or even on KVM?  I know it won't
> be possible with XEN.  

Oh, ouch.  Yeah, sadly, I have had some experience with that.  I did
this, one time before, for a consulting customer.  At the time, I used
VMware GSX Server (no longer available).  I'm guessing that ESXi should
work.  I seriously doubt KVM is going to work because it's based off
Qemu and I ran into serious problems with Qemu and the fact that many
SCO binaries are 286 (yes, you read that right) and Qemu refused to
touch them.  That may also be why XEN doesn't like them.  I never tried
it under VirtualBox and I would put the odds at 60/40 pick'um.

The VMware P2V path may work for you.  I don't think I tried that since
I was working under GSX and didn't have that available back then.
Changing the drivers is going to be a joy, even if you are familiar with
SCO, since it involves rebuilding the kernel.  :-P  I do seem to recall
some headaches with SCO and some IDE drivers.  If that PowerEdge 2600 is
running SCSI disks (I have some PowerEdge 2850's that are 2U rack units
with mSCSI drives) you're probably going to have a headache with those
drivers and converting over to virtualized IDE.  Not sure if ESXi has a
provision for SCSI emulation or not.  If it does, get it as close as you
can.

> I've also seen other mentions of people loading up the VM with a fresh
> install, and untarring a full system backup over the top of it.  The
> problem is that I don't think there is enough free disk space on the
> original system to make that backup, and given the age of it, I want
> to mess with the hardware on the original system as little as
> possible.

This is the route I took and, quite frankly, while it helps alot with
some of the driver problems, here there be dragons.  You need to have
original media available and all the license keys.  You may need the
developer license key and install, depending on if you have to build
some third party packages (the SCO "Skunk Works" CD may help there).

As far as the system backup goes, I cleared as much as I could off the
system I was converting by rsyncing it to another system and made room
for a full (tar) backup (gzip compressed).  Then move and then untar and
then restore the cruft you had to clear to the side.  Alternative is to
do a tar backup into ssh or seeing if you can get a decent version of
rsync onto that SCO system and rsyncing the whole bloody thing.  Another
option may be to add another drive to that system and back it up to that
drive.  If you have a free slot in the chasis, that may be your easy way
out there.

Restoring the system area and kernel in the VM is going to put you back
into the driver problems with the P2V route, so you haven't gained much.

> Anyone have any experience in doing this?

> --
> Allen Beddingfield
> Systems Engineer
> The University of Alabama

Regards,
Mike
-- 
Michael H. Warfield (AI4NB) | (770) 978-7061 |  mhw at WittsEnd.com
   /\/\|=mhw=|\/\/          | (678) 463-0932 |  http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
   NIC whois: MHW9          | An optimist believes we live in the best of all
 PGP Key: 0x674627FF        | possible worlds.  A pessimist is sure of it!

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 482 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20140415/34af5ed1/attachment.sig>