Questions and Answers Specific to OpenServer Release 5 ****************************************************** NOTE: There are also many questions which apply not only to OSR5 but also to other Unix (and possibly Xenix) versions. If you don't see the answer to your question here, please check the other sections of this FAQ, as your question may be answered there. Graphical characters don't work =============================== OSR5 uses the IBM characters set by default. Try mapchan -n. If that cures the problem, comment out the appropriate line in /etc/rc.d/6/kinit - and make sure you make a note of this change so that you can remake it, if necessary, after a future upgrade. ____________________________________________________________________________ sar doesn't work ================ First off - did you run sar_enable? This is a new command in OSR5 which sets everything up so that sar runs as it did previously. If sar isn't enabled, it simply won't run. Run /usr/lib/sa/sar_enable -y for starters. You will also need to edit root's and sys' crontab files if you wish data to be collected 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Also, if you wish to keep sar data for more than seven days, remove the 'find' command in the last line of /usr/lib/sar/sa2. The file /etc/ps/booted.kernel gives the name of the booted kernel, and sar needs this to work properly. This file gets created each time the system is rebooted. In case it's messed up, try running kernel -uv and see if that cures it. There is another problem, though, which may not be cured by the above. There is a bug in the code in /boot. If the inode number of the kernel is greater than 32767, /boot improperly sign-extends it as a signed short integer rather than an unsigned one, and the end result is a completely wacky inode number. This should only happen on systems without a separate boot filesystem, which generally means those which were upgraded from an earlier release in place. The following is a patch to /boot which should cure the problem in 5.0.0; the TA from which it was derived (482688) states that this problem is for 5.0.0, but it also exists in 5.0.2. Be VERY careful, as always, applying patches; this one in particular may disable your system entirely if not done correctly. # cp -p /boot /boot.orig # what /boot /boot: SCO boot 23 Apr 95 # sum -r /boot 00357 134 /boot If either the results of what, or the results of sum -r, don't match exactly what you see above, stop! Do not apply this patch unless these are identical to the results you see. # echo 3f:feb?h 90 | _fst -w /boot - * 3f:feb?h 90 0x3f:0xfeb: 0x99 = 0x90 # sum -r /boot 09082 134 boot Again, if the results of sum -r don't match exactly what you see, something did not work correctly. You should copy /boot.orig back to /boot. ____________________________________________________________________________ My emergency floppies don't have enough inodes ============================================== The simplest change to this is to edit /usr/lib/mkdev/fd and increase the number of inodes created from the default. This may cause problems, though, as HTFS inodes consume 128 bytes each and a significant increase in the number of inodes would result in a significant drop in the number of data blocks available on the floppy. A better change would be to eliminate unnecessary device nodes from your emergency floppy. Look for a line in /usr/lib/mkdev/fd which sets a variable called NOTREQ (which, roughly, is a list of device drivers not required on an emergency diskette). Add to that list merge mpm spm svdsp svkbd vdsp vkbd mouse If you don't need pseudottys on your emergency diskettes, you might also want to add spt mpt. There is also a bug in this file; change the item ptspwr to pts pwr (by adding a space), and you will cut out a few more unnecessary devices. When editing /usr/lib/mkdev/fd, you should actually make a new copy (e.g. /usr/lib/mkdev/fd.new) and edit, and later use, that rather than /usr/lib/mkdev/fd. Otherwise, you may find your changes vanish at some time in the future. ____________________________________________________________________________ I'm having trouble with licensing and registration ================================================== First off, you may have up to three difference license number/activation key combinations to use. Please read the documentation and the COLA (Certificate Of License and Authenticity) card(s) carefully. If you are upgrading from an old release of an SCO product, you will be asked not only to type in your new SNAK (Serial Number and Activation Key), but also the old SNAK from your old release. Additionally, if you are upgrading to the Enterprise system, you must first install and license the Host system, and then perform an upgrade to Enterprise. Licensing and registration is a two-step process. The first step involves licensing, and this takes place when you enter the SNAK from your COLA. You then fill in a form, included with your software, and send it to SCO in any of a number of ways. SCO sends you a registration key, which you enter to complete the registration process. The registration key is dependent both on your serial number and on a number generated by the system when you install it; this latter half means that should you have to reinstall, you will need to re-register your system. One big problem many people have had is that in the case of an Enterprise upgrade, you must register the Host system before you can register the Enterprise system. If you do not, then you may end up with a system which will appear to accept your registration but which will subsequently complain that it has not been registered, and there is no elegant way out of this situation; SCO recommends reinstalling to cure this. SCO is working on a cure for this but it is not ready yet and it will probably not be able to rescue systems which have already experienced this problem. If you need to do an upgrade or install and cannot wait for the registration information to be sent back to you, there is a procedure you can follow to avoid this problem. Install the Host system, and then install the Enterprise system. Send SCO the registration information for _both_ systems. When you receive your registration keys, perform the following steps: 1. Take the system to single-user (maintenance) mode 2. Remove the Enterprise license. This does not mean removing the software - just the license. 3. Register the Host system license. 4. Register the Enterprise system license. 5. Shut the system down (haltsys) - do not bring it back up to multi-user mode without shutting down first If you find yourself unregistering/unlicensing parts of your system and you have a PANIC, it's possible that you may have upset the kernel streams linker module. Try booting with the boot string defbootstr ksl.disable; if that gets the system running, finish up your licensing and registration work and then reboot with your usual boot string. ____________________________________________________________________________ sysadmsh is missing =================== OSR5 includes sysadmsh, but it's not installed by default. If you wish to use it, you will need to use custom (or SCOAdmin Software) to install it. ____________________________________________________________________________ Will Release 5 run my older binaries? ===================================== In general, yes; binaries from previous versions of SCO Unix or SCO Xenix will run on OSR5. The exceptions tend to be those which probe system internals, where such internals may have changed, or those coded with certain assumptions (e.g. "an inode number is always a 16-bit quantity") which are not necessarily true on OSR5. Examples include programs which read directories from disk rather than using OS directory access routines, or those which look for kernel structures and variables. ____________________________________________________________________________ I loaded a patch but it didn't take effect ========================================== You probably forgot to apply it. Loading a patch places the contents of the patch on the hard drive, but does not activate the patch. Applying the patch does the necessary replacement of system files and whatever other adjustments are required to make the patch take effect. For more detailed information on the actual procedures, consult your manuals. You may wish to load a patch, but not apply it, for several reasons. Another machine on the network can apply a patch directly from your machine's hard drive if you've loaded the patch. Also, you may find that you will have to roll back several patches to replace or remove an earlier one, and then reapply the ones you rolled back; having loaded the patches first saves you from having to use the diskettes again. ____________________________________________________________________________ What patches should I use? ========================== There is information in the file ftp://ftp.sco.com/README.OSR5.Supplements, including a list of currently applicable patches, and some quick summary information on which patches should not be used in conjunction with each other. For more detailed information, read the documentation files accompanying each specific patch. There's also a Web page, http://www.sco.com/support/toolbox/patch.html, with a minimum patch list. ____________________________________________________________________________ What patches are on my system? ============================== To see which patches have been loaded, start SCOAdmin Software or custom and pick Software -> Patch Management -> View Loaded Patches Checking the list of patches which have been applied may be more of a problem; there is no simple way of doing this with SCOAdmin. You can pick Software -> Examine -> Applied Patches, and then pick each component in turn to see what patches have been applied to it. Yes, SCO is aware that this is a pain, so hopefully there will be a better way in a future release. If you are running OSR5.0.0 with the rs500d release supplement applied, or OSR5.0.2 or later, there is a command-line method, customquery listpatches, which will list what patches have been applied. This option to customquery did not exist prior to rs500d; if you do not have rs500d applied to your system, you should. ____________________________________________________________________________ What's this free copy of SCO Unix I keep hearing about? ======================================================= On 19 August 1996, SCO announced that the single-user (desktop) configuration of OpenServer Release 5 would be available free of charge for noncommercial use. The package includes OSR5 Desktop, the development system (C/C++ compilers), SCO Doctor Lite, and SCO ARCserve/Open Lite. Since then, SCO has also released a free version of SCO UnixWare. For full details, including the license terms and on-line ordering information, see http://www.sco.com/offers/. ____________________________________________________________________________ I'm having trouble using my ATAPI CD-ROM ======================================== The two most common problems are that your "IDE" CD-ROM drive may not follow the ATAPI spec, or that you are unsure of what parameters to enter when asked for the configuration of your drive. Check the drive's documentation, or consult the manufacturer, for the first problem. The support for ATAPI CD-ROMs in OSR5 is done by using a driver which makes the drive appear to be a SCSI drive, and so you need to enter the same information as for a SCSI drive. The correct answers are as follows: o Host Adapter Number (HA): 0 if your drive is connected to your primary IDE host adapter, and 1 if it's connected to a secondary. o SCSI ID: 0 if your drive is a master, and 1 if it's a slave o Logical Unit Number (LUN): Always 0 o Bus number: Always 0 If all of these have been done correctly and the drive still does not work, try changing its configuration. If it's the master on the secondary host adapter, try making it a slave on the primary, or vice versa. Also, on some systems there is a conflict with the driver for the Western Digital/Future Domain 7000. If you don't have such a card, and your machine hangs at a line including wdhainit, boot with defbootstr disable=wdha to disable the wdha driver. There have also been reports of conflicts with the dptr and ncr drivers. For more information on disabling drivers, see the section entitled "My kernel locks up at boot time" in section 3. ____________________________________________________________________________ My >2GB ATA hard drive doesn't work with OSR5 ============================================= See the documentation for oss451b to see if it applies to you. The two most commonly reported problems which are fixed by this patch are the system being unable to find the root filesystem, or aborting during installtion with a message similar to "NOTICE: ram: No space on device 31/50", but there are other problems also fixed by it. ____________________________________________________________________________ My floppy drive doesn't work reliably ===================================== First things first - it may be a bad diskette, a bad floppy drive, or the cable connecting your floppy drive to its controller may be loose. However, if the problem gets worse if the system is under load (particularly, when anything is doing DMA - and that usually means a SCSI host adapter) and is particularly bad when trying to format a floppy, you may be running into a problem with the FIFO on the floppy controller. Briefly, older floppy controllers have a one-byte buffer, and the system must grab that byte before the next byte is read from the drive or else you have a problem. If the DMA controller (floppies use DMA) is blocked long enough, usually by a SCSI host adapter, the buffer gets overwritten. Newer controllers generally have a 16-byte buffer, but it may or may not be turned on by your BIOS. SCO Unix doesn't program the buffer by default, but the floppy driver in OSR5 can be set to use the buffer if you wish. Make a backup of /etc/conf/pack.d/fd/space.c (just in case). Now edit the file. At the bottom you will see int fd_enable_FIFO = 0; int fd_FIFOthresh = 0; Change them to int fd_enable_FIFO = 1; int fd_FIFOthresh = 15; The first one simply enables or disables programming of the FIFO; the second one sets the FIFO's size if you've enabled it. There's probably no reason to set it to anything other than 15. Relink and reboot to activate the change. Making this change can actually be counterproductive if your system is working properly. Some floppy drive controllers will not work properly if you try enabling the FIFO, and you will end up with a system with floppy drives which do not work. Trust me on this one. ____________________________________________________________________________ People log out but still show up in who ======================================= This information is logged in /etc/utmp and /etc/utmpx. In 5.0.4, this information is cleared when the system reboots. For earlier releases, edit /etc/bcheckrc as follows. You will see the first of the following three lines already there; add the other two below it. /bin/su bin -c "/etc/devnm / 2>/dev/null" | /etc/setmnt [ -w /etc/utmp ] && > /etc/utmp [ -w /etc/utmpx ] && > /etc/utmpx ____________________________________________________________________________ Can I perform an in-place upgrade? ================================== If you already have your package, consult the documentation (in particular, installation guide and release notes). 5.0.4 +++++ o Can IPU from: 5.0.0 and 5.0.2 o Cannot IPU from: Internet Faststart or ODT 3/Unix 3.2v4.2 or earlier o Caveats: If you IPU, you cannot install Internet Manager; you must do a fresh install if you ever want it. 5.0.2 +++++ o Can IPU from: ODT3/Unix 3.2v4.2 o Cannot IPU from: 5.0.0, Internet Faststart, older Unix versions 5.0.0 +++++ o Can IPU from: ODT3/Unix 3.2v4.2 o Cannot IPU from: Older Unix versions Note that if you are doing an in-place upgrade from ODT3/Unix 3.2v4.2 to OSR5, you will not get a separate boot filesystem, and you cannot upgrade your root filesystem to HTFS. For a brief table of upgrade possibilities, see http://staff.ussinc.com/~steved/scofaq/upgrade.txt ____________________________________________________________________________ How do I access online docs from a browser? =========================================== Point your browser at port 457, and ask for document dochome.html. For example, if your server is server.foo.com, use the URL http://server.foo.com:457/dochome.html You don't have access to the search tools this way, but you can simulate that with the following cgi-bin script. ____________________________________________________________________________ #!/bin/sh # @(#) nftpsearch - wrapper for simple form access to scohelp search engine # call without QUERY_STRING set html form, with QUERY_STRING for search # relies on single Form search field called query # # Install as: /var/scohttp/cgi-bin/nftsearch.sh on OSR5.0.[024] systems. # Access via: URL: (any browser) if [ -z "$QUERY_STRING" ] ; then HELP_SVR="http://localhost:457" # YOUR HELP SERVER system SCRIPT="$HELP_SVR/cgi-bin/nftsearch.sh" # cgi-bin path of this script cat < ScoHelp Search

ScoHelp Search

For scohelp searching from a non ScoHelp Browser
Enter single word search term in search field Below

ScoHelp DocHome EOF exit 0 fi eval $QUERY_STRING QUERY_STRING=$query export QUERY_STRING PATH_TRANSLATED=/usr/lib/scohelp/library.stz PATH_INFO=/library.stz export QUERY_STRING PATH_TRANSLATED PATH_INFO #export GATEWAY_INTERFACE HTTP_ACCEPT HTTP_CONNECTION HTTP_HOST #export HTTP_REFERER HTTP_USER_AGENT PATH REMOTE_ADDR REMOTE_HOST REQUEST_METHOD #export SCRIPT_NAME SERVER_NAME SERVER_PORT SERVER_PROTOCOL SERVER_SOFTWARE exec /var/scohttp/cgi-bin/ftsearch ____________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ Can I use the scohelp server as a Web server? ============================================= Yes, although you'd probably be wiser to consider something like Apache ( http://www.apache.org/; it's also available as part of Skunkware). If you wish to use the scohelp server, follow the instructions in TA 482609 or at http://www.sco.com/Technology/internet/servers/scohttp80.html. ____________________________________________________________________________ Is there a packet sniffer (tcpdump) available? ============================================== A collection of network tools, including the tcpdump packet sniffer, can be found at http://www.sco.com/skunkware/osr5/net/nettools/. Pay particular attention to the requirements mentioned in the README file. For example, you will need a dedicated NIC to make this work. ____________________________________________________________________________