Benefits of using CD-ROM with SCO Unix on
Apricot hardware
Unix Support recommend utilising the CD-ROM drive that is standard on
many Apricot machines for the reasons below:
Installation of SCO Unix
Installation from CD-ROM is considerably faster than from tape or
floppies. The speed increase is especially noticeable when Open Server 3.0 is installed.
Make sure that the CD-ROM is connected to the primary SCSI adapter with
the root hard disc and that it is set to SCSI ID 5, this being an SCO requirement.
After installation from CD-ROM a device that SCO refer to as a
"CD-ROM/Tape device" will have been set-up. This is the device that reads the
SCO Unix CD-ROM distribution media - it is not a High Sierra filesystem CD. Once the
operating system has been installed however, you should add support for
High-Sierra/ISO9660 filesystem CD's. Do this with the mkdev cdrom command. This is very
similar to the mkdev hd command - it will ask which SCSI adapter controls the CD-ROM, the
SCSI ID, and the LUN. For a standard configuration the answers to these questions would be
0, 5, 0 respectively. The mkdev cdrom script will then call the mkdev high-sierra script
and ask whether you want to add High-Sierra file system support - answer "y" to
this.
If custom is used to re-install operating system files or packages the
CD-ROM/Tape device will be automatically selected to read the SCO CD-ROM distribution.
Accessing files on the Insight CD
The Insight CD contains all the files from area 39 of
the Apricot Insight BBS. This means that for installations and support
visits all that is needed for a complete set of routine supplements and fixes is the Insight
CD.
After adding High Sierra filesystem support with the mkdev cdrom command
the UOD374A supplement should be installed with custom. This stops files without three
character extensions being listed with a trailing dot, and the "killed" error
message when attempting to run executable files on the CD-ROM. This was referred to in IPB 3183. Supplements can be extracted from the Insight CD-ROM
without UOD374A being applied. The supplements are in the /unix/images directory of
Insight.
Refer to IPB 3178 for other directory contents.
Mounting the Insight CD-ROM:
mount -fHS,lower,showhidden /dev/cd0 /cdrom
This will mount the CD-ROM under the /cdrom directory. Note the lower
and showhidden arguments. These are optional and display filenames in lower case and list
hidden files respectively.
If the Korn shell is used for the superuser then aliases could be set up
to mount and unmount the CD-ROM by adding entries to the /.kshrc file as below:
alias cdon="mount -fHS,lower,showhidden /dev/cd0
/cdrom" alias cdoff="umount /dev/cd0"
With the Insight CD-ROM mounted as above use the
following commands to produce the Console Keyboard (UOD369B) supplement:
cp /cdrom/unix/images/uod369b.z /tmp/uod369b.Z
cd /tmp
uncompress uod369b
dd if=uod369b of=/dev/fd0 bs=9k
Note here that the file has to be renamed with an upper case Z extension
for uncompress to accept it. It is assumed that /dev/fd0 is the 1.44MB floppy - if it is
not then substitute the correct device.
Price
At the time of writing the RRP's of the CD-ROM versions of Open Server
Enterprise Edition 3.0 and Open Server Network Edition 3.0 are lower than their tape
equivalents.
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When adding a CD-ROM to a system that has been installed from tape or
floppy use mkdev cdrom as above to add CD-ROM and High-Sierra filesystem support to the
operating system. The script offers the option of adding support for a CD-ROM/Tape device.
This is only necessary if you wish to read the SCO CD-ROM distribution media. It is likely
in this case that this device will not be required.
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