VM Sco Openserver

[akatsuki]

hi,

I`m looking to put our old UNIX box which is SCO Openserver into the VM, we run ESX version. The server we use for SCO it is old Compaq machine with 6 drives, anyone have any tips how to migrate this thing to VM, I tried to use Ghost but ghost is not detecting raid controller ...

thanks

[videokid]

I had a similar situation and I successfully migrated a SCO 505 from compaq box to the VMware ESX Server.. It's running really fine.

[devzero]

any hints for this?

maybe some "receipe" ?

i`m not good in sco administration, but i would like to migrate an older SCO box to vmware

roland

[continuum]

If you can boot that system into BartPE this procedure may help

http://www.sanbarrow.com/moa-video-vdiskmanager-as-ghost.html

Successfully tried this on OpenBSD, NetBSD, NT4 and newer

Message was edited by:

continuum

[devzero]

thanks - but - transferring the harddisk to a vmware image is the smallest problem. what i´m expecting to be more difficult is to adjust the sco unix so it works and boots on a different (now virtual) hardware

roland

[continuum]

Yes - you sure need a reference install to steal from ...

[devzero]

>Yes - you sure need a reference install to steal from ...

and deep knowledge, how an SCO system boots

[kseba]

I am looking for a similar solution. Any luck with your P2V of SCO OpenServer ?

[devzero]

unfortunately, not (yet).

but - i just came across a backup-tool (backupEdge/recoverEdge) which looks really interesting and seems to be able to do p2v/bare-metal-restore:

http://www.rcmb.ca/sco-restore.htm

http://www.microlite.com/BackupEDGE_Products/Product_Facts/product_facts.html

[cheitun]

Hi Devzero,

I'm facing the same problem but don't know what to do. BackupEdge seems to be a good start but I'm not sure it works (or if I can make it work). I was just wondering if you have been lucky or not?

I appreciate any help.

Best Regards

[Rato]

Well, I now had to copy an SCO server to VMWare.

The answer is quite simple: IT WORKS!

Here's what I did:

1) Intalled Acronis True Image and burned a CD with it.

2) Boot the original server with the Acronis True Image CD.

3) Did the disks backup (note: these original disk are 4 SCSI HD (2x2 RAID 1) to an external USB Hard Drive (could also burned a DVD)

4) Created a new VM in VMWare (operating system: "Other"). Everything default in the VM's option. The disks were created with the same size as the originals (could be larger, no problem as True Image creates a partition with the original size).

5) Booted up the VM with the Acronis True Image CD and restored the backup I did of the original server on the USB Hard Drive (16.88 gb = 10 minutes restore time).

6) Booted up the VM and the only thing I needed to configure was the LAN card. Used "netconfig", deleted the old, added a new one. And 'voilá'... SCO automatically found the new adapter.

7) "init 6" and everything worked!

Some notes as I tried various configurations:

\- Dual processors: Can't get it to work.

\- Disk: Works as a VMWare Disk Image and on another separated Hard Disk (or partition).

\- The disk as to be IDE (even though the originals were SCSI, SCO doesn't seem to boot with the SCSI configuration in VMWARE).

\- Everything else works.

\- Please note that SCO in VMWare is a little CPU intensive (if you're doing CPU operations, of corse). Tried in a MacMini 1.83, MacBook Pro 2.00, MacPro Quad 3.00 and in a standard PC Athlon XP 4200+ (2.2 Ghz). To mimic my original server (Pentim III 1Ghz) in both CPU and HD intensive operations using the software I have, in execution time, the MacBook Pro (dual 2.00 even though only using one core) came pretty close. The Athlon at 2.2 is a bit slower and the QuadCore 3.00 works at more than the double of speed (again, only using one core).

\- It works with VMWare Workstation (XP, VISTA (6.0 beta with or without the debug)), VMWare Server (Windows Server 2003) and even with Fusion beta 2 in Mac OSX (just don't know how to remove the debug option.)

\- Doesn't work in Parallels Workstation (Mac OSX)... Gives me an "APM32" something error...

Resuming: It's almost "plug-and-play". Create an image backup of the original and restore it in VMWare.

I've tried with Acronis True Image... don't know if other will or will not work (P2V, Norton Ghost, etc).

Have fun!

[morenos]

I've moved an Unix SCO Operating System's image (Rel.5.0.6) from a Pentium3 hardware to a new generation hardware's Server. This virtual machine works correctly, it's very fast in disk access, but it's very slow in memory calculations. I give you a simple example.

I've written a simple script that performs a loop of 100000 cicles and increase a variable by 1 in every cycle. At the end print the result.

I run this script on the physical machine (Pentium 3 1.2Ghz) and it finishes after 2'18". The same script on the virtual machine (with Xion's CPU 1.60GHz hardware) finishes after 16'49". If I try the same script in a Linux's virtual machine on the same vmware's server, it finish after 0'42".

During the execution of this script, if I try the sar unix command, I find that the CPU's queue is always full (100%).

Have you any idea how can I resolve this problem?

Thanks a lot.

This is the simple shell script (/tmp/a):

##########################

i=0

while \[ $i -lt 100000 ]

do

i=`expr $i \+ 1`

done

echo $i

[mikes1p]

What version of Acronis True Image did you use? Business, Home, free trial, or??

>> Well, I now had to copy an SCO server to VMWare.

>> The answer is quite simple: IT WORKS!

>> Here's what I did:

>> 1) Intalled Acronis True Image and burned a CD with it.

>> 2) Boot the original server with the Acronis True Image CD.

>>....

[bbricker]

Thought I would update this thread for anyone else out there searching -- a friend of mine had success this way: (in his own words)

"I couldn’t get Acronis to run on the server without it giving me a kernel panic.

So, I used Ghost 11.5 to create a .GHO image. Afterwards, I used Ghost32.exe to convert the .GHO into a .VMDK

I created a .VMX separately, configured for SCO, and attached the .VMDK. Even though the VM was setup as IDE emulation, and the original server was all SCSI, it booted perfectly, except for the NIC. I had to manually specify the VMWare supported NIC, and it all worked."

[continuum]

interesting - but I guess thats a rare coincidence.

When the source machine uses a Intel-chipset similar to the one that VMware uses migration is less trouble than in other cases

___________________________________

VMX-parameters- VMware-liveCD - VM-Sickbay

[Nexgen]

Ghost will work fine. I just did this with Ghost, but you can use any backup software that boots and images (I personally used the Ghost from the Symantec Ghost Solutions Suite 2.5).

1. Note down the manufacturer and model of each piece of hardware in your existing machine, most importantly hard disk type and controller, video card brand/resolution, and NIC information.

2. Get your image ready to copy. In my case the prior computer was completely dead so the drive(s) had to be connected to another working computer. If you do not know what kind of drive(s)/drive controller(s) you have you can bring them up in an OS on a machine and see how they are recognized. Don't add the disk(s) to a new machine because you do not want to overwrite any of the flags on the drive sectors, you want it to remain a clean bootable disk, you would just want any adapter or controller to be recognized with the volume remaining unrecognized or unmounted.

3. Make a boot cd or floppy or usb key in your imaging software that will boot the image you want to transfer. If you have a problem with the SCSI adapter you make have to add drivers to the boot disk. In my case with Ghost it boots into Windows PE and you would have to find Windows Vista drivers to support your hardware if it is not preincluded on the boot disk. This is how you do it with Ghost http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH110136&locale=en_US . Put your image in the ready state to transfer, I think via TCPIP connection would be the easiest.

4. Load VMWare on to your target computer

5. Create a new virtual machine according to these instructions: http://aplawrence.com/SCO_OSR5/smithosr5vmware.html . Make sure your vitual machine has a virtual CD ROM. Make sure your virtual machine has a virtual NIC in bridge mode.

6. Create a bootable ISO image with the same version of the imaging software

7. Mount the bootable image to your virtual machine. You can burn the image to CD, and link the CD drive to your virtual machine CD drive. Or you can just mount the iso image as a vitual drive on the host computer and connect your virtual machine CD drive to the mounted image.

8. Boot your virtual machine using the iso image.

9. Copy your image across from your source to your virtual machine. Wth TCPIP you just give both computers an IP address in the same subnet and let it copy across the network. Wait a few hours...

10. Once the image is copied, reboot the virtual machine to boot from the image you just copied (check your virtual machine BIOS if you are not booting from the virtual hard drive). Most likely you will get a kernel panic and shutdown (if not you are lucky or doing something wrong).

11. Prepare btld floppy with the blc drivers (can be vitual or actual floppy same as with CD Rom above) http://groups.google.com/group/comp.unix.sco.misc/msg/9bad2852a40218aa

12. Follow this procedure to install the blc drivers and get the SCO booting into level 2 on the virtual machine: http://www.rcmb.ca/sco-restore.htm - Start from "Reboot, this time from the HD." Follow the screen shots and you should be home free.

13. If you cannot get into single user mode you may need to boot from an install disk, then mount the HD: http://aplawrence.com/Unixart/lost_root_password.html - start from "How do I crash out of the install script?" If you happen not to have root on the UNIX box this page may be useful as well. Tweek your kernel this way until you can get it bootable at least into single user mode directly from the HD of the virtual machine.

Optional:

a) tweak your kernel to better match your new hardware. Look at the list of previous hardware and look at the configuration of your virtual machine. Remove any drivers from the kernel that are no longer being used. Relink (rebuild) & make bootable (install).

b) configure networking - adding a default gateway, from command prompt, "# route add default your.gateway.IP.address" I do not know why it does not take "gateway" or "gw" or "default gateway" - I found this confusing.

c) add any patches or maintenance packs. Make sure FTP is in Binary mode. ASCII dowloads form SCO didn't work for me.

Enjoy!