hacking SCO....

[Matt Emmerton]

> This may be a dumb question, but if you make a cpio tape archive from
> data on an SCO system (HTFS filesystem), you can still restore the data
> off the tape to another system, like FreeBSD with a UFS filesystem,
> right?

This should work.  If you run into any issues they will be incompatibilities
between SCO's cpio and the GNU cpio that FreeBSD uses.

> And the followup, can FreeBSD run SCO binaries (SCO Unix 5.0.1)? I am
> going to try and convert these people from their SCO box over to a
> FreeBSD system. Just want to make sure the data will come off the tape.

Yes, but support is really limited.  You need to copy a bunch of core
libraries onto the FreeBSD machine from the SCO machine to make things work.
(We just emulate the syscall interface -- you need libc and friends from
SCO.)

Matt

>
> -John
>
> On Oct 9, 2004, at 6:51 AM, Doug Russell wrote:
>
> >
> > On Fri, 8 Oct 2004, Sergey Babkin wrote:
> >
> >> Try to use the "Verify" menu from the Adaptec BIOS. It finds and tries
> >> to re-map the bad sectors (it tries to preserve data during this too,
> >> unless the sector is completely unreadable).
> >
> > The verify commands issued by the BIOS are virtually useless compared
> > to
> > the type of tests done my sformat.  If you enable automatic read
> > re-allocation, it is almost the same as simply reading your whole disk
> > with dd.
> >
> >>> I do the full 14 pattern tests before I put a SCSI disk in service.
> >>
> >> When a disk starts losing blocks like this, usually they only multiply
> >> over time. The best thing you can do is replace the disk and
> >> move the data before you lost more of it.
> >
> > NO!  Not necessarily!
> >
> > If a disk has simply grown a few new defects since it was new, it does
> > not
> > necessarily mean it is going to die.  I have many disks that had minor
> > bad
> > spots on them that weren't even always found by the factory format
> > routines, or had appeared since (due to transport, debris in the HDA,
> > poor
> > holding power for the magnetic fields in some area, etc).  If the drive
> > passes through a few full patern tests without problems and doesn't
> > continue to grow new defects, it is likely just fine.
> >
> > I've got all kinds of old SCSI disks that were 'discarded' due to
> > errors.
> > Only a couple are truly dead...  the rest have been running for years
> > with
> > no problems after making a real grown defect list from the pattern
> > tests.
> >
> > This is something I learned many many years ago when running my old
> > Miniscribe 3650s on a Perstor high density controller.  It formated the
> > drives to 31 sectors per track instead of 17.  Hard on the disks, and
> > the
> > media, but a good drive, after being properly tested, would run
> > flawlessly
> > for years being hammered 24/7 on BBS machines.  Got 78 megs per drive
> > instead of 42.whatever it was.  :)
> >
> > Later...... <Doug>
> >
> >
> >
> John Von Essen (john at essenz.com)
> President, Essenz Consulting (www.essenz.com)
> Phone: (800) 248-1736
> Fax: (800) 852-3387
>
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