Current State of OpenServer Users and Implementations?
Robert L. Cochran
has an OpenServer 5 system which is very old and which became rather
broken after a power surge hit the hardware.
I'd like to state my perception of the "big picture". If I'm wrong in my
perceptions please correct me, that is why I am posting here, to get a
more correct sense of where the wind is blowing.
My understanding is that SCO is in bankruptcy and it's assets are in
liquidation. If this is correct, it would seem to me that many users of
SCO products would wish to migrate to supported operating systems such
as Red Hat Enterprise Linux. So SCO's user base is constantly shrinking.
Is this correct?
I looked on EBay and discovered there is one vendor still selling SCO
OpenServer media and licenses at what looks like pretty high prices. Is
there really a market for these products now? Or is the company just
trying to get what it can for OpenServer media it has already paid for?
Are official patches for OpenServer 5.0.4 still available?
Can I upgrade my friend's system from 5.0.4 to, say, 5.0.7 for free?
I have a copy of the Russel and Gaus book "SCO OpenServer The Windows
Network Solution". Is there other reading aimed at someone interested in
migrating from an OpenServer implementation to a Linux one?
Thanks
Bob Cochran
Jean-Pierre Radley
> I'm very new to OpenServer 5.x.x. I want to help a friend who currently
> has an OpenServer 5 system which is very old and which became rather
> broken after a power surge hit the hardware.
>
> liquidation. If this is correct, it would seem to me that many users of
> SCO products would wish to migrate to supported operating systems such
> as Red Hat Enterprise Linux. So SCO's user base is constantly shrinking.
> Is this correct?
Some may be switching, but many see no cause to abandon the reliability
and stability of SCO-issued operating systems.
> I looked on EBay and discovered there is one vendor still selling SCO
> OpenServer media and licenses at what looks like pretty high prices. Is
> there really a market for these products now? Or is the company just
> trying to get what it can for OpenServer media it has already paid for?
I just ten minutes ago sent off some orders for SCO licenses to my
distributor. SCO's last-issued price list is still in force, so the
cost will be just as it would have been last year.
> Are official patches for OpenServer 5.0.4 still available?
I don't recall when the last patch for 5.0.4 was produced; that release
stopped being supported some years back. Bankrupt or not, SCO is still
issuing fixes and patches for its current products: OpenServer 5.0.7,
OpenServer 6.0.0, UnixWare 7.1.4.
> Can I upgrade my friend's system from 5.0.4 to, say, 5.0.7 for free?
As I said, SCO's price list has not been revoked...
--
JP
Bill Campbell
>Robert L. Cochran typed (on Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 05:05:03PM -0400):
>> I'm very new to OpenServer 5.x.x. I want to help a friend who currently
>> has an OpenServer 5 system which is very old and which became rather
>> broken after a power surge hit the hardware.
>>
>> My understanding is that SCO is in bankruptcy and it's assets are in
>> liquidation. If this is correct, it would seem to me that many users of
>> SCO products would wish to migrate to supported operating systems such
>> as Red Hat Enterprise Linux. So SCO's user base is constantly shrinking.
>> Is this correct?
SCO is in Chapter 11 at this time, but the period where SCO was the only
one who could present plans has expired, the trustee has recommended going
to Chapter 7. See www.groklaw.net for details.
>Some may be switching, but many see no cause to abandon the reliability
>and stability of SCO-issued operating systems.
Most of our OpenServer clients have moved to other alternatives, mostly
Linux.
For those of our clients still running OpenServer <= 5.0.6a who have (had)
hardware dying of old age, we have moved them to VMware virtual machines on
CentOS Linux which avoids the problems of hardware compatibility, and is
generally much faster than the ancient iron it replaces.
Bill
--
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Voice: (206) 236-1676 Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820
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from too much government. --Thomas Jefferson.
Stephen M. Dunn
$My understanding is that SCO is in bankruptcy and it's assets are in
$liquidation. If this is correct, it would seem to me that many users of
$SCO products would wish to migrate to supported operating systems such
$as Red Hat Enterprise Linux. So SCO's user base is constantly shrinking.
$Is this correct?
I haven't seen (nor have I looked for) figures on this. I suspect
you're correct that the user base is shrinking. Here's my very small
and unscientific sample: among the four OSR5 clients I had several
years ago,
* One was happy with OSR5, but switched to Linux because their app vendor
stopped supporting OSR5
* One switched to Linux because of persistent data corruption problems
which their app vendor said were SCO bugs (and, whether this is true
or not, the Linux version of the app, running on the very same server
box, has been rock solid)
* One migrated to OSR6 on a nice new server, and was very happy with it,
but then got bought out by a larger competitor, who decommissioned the
SCO box once they'd imported the data into their systems - so SCO can't
be blamed in any way for this one
* One is still running an ancient, unsupported OSR5 version on ancient,
unsupported hardware, despite my reminders that this is a disaster
waiting to happen. On the bright side, this could be taken as an
endorsement of OSR5, as it's run well for them.
$Are official patches for OpenServer 5.0.4 still available?
Well, I don't think they've been removed from SCO's Web and FTP
sites, but 5.0.4, released over a decade ago, has been unsupported
now for several years. I'm pretty sure that they released Y2K patches
for it; I'm not sure what in the way of patches were released for it
after that.
If you need to upgrade/replace hardware, you'll have severe problems
finding stuff that's compatible, short of buying decade-old used hardware
(i.e. around the same vintage as 5.0.4). Few vendors release OSR5
drivers for their hardware, and those who do stopped supporting such
old versions long ago. Heck, I'm running 5.0.7 at home, and driver
support for that is limited, too. So unless you plan on continuing
to run this old system on its old hardware, you're going to have to do
some sort of upgrade. Here are some options.
5.0.4 doesn't support running in a VM - officially, that is.
But what's technically possible and what's officially supported are
different things, and some folks in this newsgroup continue to run
unsupported OSR5 versions on modern hardware by way of virtualization.
You get the performance advantages of not being stuck with decade-old
hardware, along with the familiar old stable environment.
5.0.7 is at least somewhat supported, and is a fairly easy upgrade
to do from older OSR5 versions. 6 is supported, and while it's a bit
more work, it's still not a big deal. 6 is a much more modern OS
in many ways, and if I had to choose between upgrading an old OSR5
version to either 5.0.7 or 6, I'd pick 6 unless there was an extremely
good reason not to. There is still the question of ongoing support
and viability, of course, since SCO has had legal and financial issues
for some time now, and until these are settled, nobody can say with
certainty what the future holds.
And, of course, migrating to Linux is something you should consider.
It's more work than migrating to a newer OpenServer release, but you
get to choose between free Linux (which obviously costs less than an
OpenServer license upgrade) and commercial Linux (which probably still
costs less than OpenServer), and there don't seem to be anywhere near
the number of people predicting the imminent death of Linux as there
are for SCO.
$Can I upgrade my friend's system from 5.0.4 to, say, 5.0.7 for free?
SCO may be bankrupt, but it's not because they were in the habit of
giving unlimited free upgrades to anyone who asks - they're not *that*
stupid.
--
Stephen M. Dunn <ste...@stevedunn.ca>
>>>----------------> http://www.stevedunn.ca/ <----------------<<<
------------------------------------------------------------------
Say hi to my cat -- http://www.stevedunn.ca/photos/toby/
Nico Kadel-Garcia
wrote:
> I'm very new to OpenServer 5.x.x. I want to help a friend who currently
> has an OpenServer 5 system which is very old and which became rather
> broken after a power surge hit the hardware.
>
> I'd like to state my perception of the "big picture". If I'm wrong in my
> perceptions please correct me, that is why I am posting here, to get a
> more correct sense of where the wind is blowing.
>
> My understanding is that SCO is in bankruptcy and it's assets are in
> liquidation. If this is correct, it would seem to me that many users of
> SCO products would wish to migrate to supported operating systems such
> as Red Hat Enterprise Linux. So SCO's user base is constantly shrinking.
> Is this correct?
>
> I looked on EBay and discovered there is one vendor still selling SCO
> OpenServer media and licenses at what looks like pretty high prices. Is
> there really a market for these products now? Or is the company just
> trying to get what it can for OpenServer media it has already paid for?
SCO Licenses, as I understand them from looking at the agreement on a
consulting gig last year, cannot be resold by users. This may or may
not be legally the case in your state, because such laws vary. But
good look getting anything resembling any support or licensing changes
from SCO without that clean paperwork, especially the license number,
in hand.
> Are official patches for OpenServer 5.0.4 still available?
SCO has a public FTP site for such old patches, but it's seriously not
with the trouble.
> Can I upgrade my friend's system from 5.0.4 to, say, 5.0.7 for free?
Only if you can liberate an unused 5.0.7 license from someone. Good
luck with that, I looked for cheap ones and had trouble.
Don't waste your friend's time and money and trouble with 5.0.4: the
patches needed are many, and tricky, and he'll be better served
jumping straight to 5.0.7 if at all possible. 5.0.7 has SSH built-in,
and a workable GNU toolchain, to avoid the incompatible nastiness of
trying to port anything wrtten in the open source world to work with
the SCO compiler.
> I have a copy of the Russel and Gaus book "SCO OpenServer The Windows
> Network Solution". Is there other reading aimed at someone interested in
> migrating from an OpenServer implementation to a Linux one?
>
> Thanks
>
> Bob Cochran
This newsgroup, comp.os.linux.setup, and the AP Lawrence's website.
The difficulty depends really heavily on what's being ported: basic
mail and file and print services are trivial. Proprietary database
code is.... more of an adventure.
Brian K. White
Stephen M. Dunn wrote:
> $Are official patches for OpenServer 5.0.4 still available?
>
> Well, I don't think they've been removed from SCO's Web and FTP
> sites, but 5.0.4, released over a decade ago, has been unsupported
> now for several years. I'm pretty sure that they released Y2K patches
> for it; I'm not sure what in the way of patches were released for it
> after that.
>
Speaking of y2k patches.
Just one teeny iota of insight into the kind of company SCO used to be
and why so many people liked them and why their inertia carried them so
far after they stopped being all that great.
Before y2k SCO not only made a patch for the already ancient and
unsupported Xenix, not only did it for free, but the nature of the patch
always blew my mind. It didn't merely replace some binaries and
libraries, it included a program that actually binary patched other
binaries, including ones not produced by SCO! It didn't magically solve
all problems of course because you can't actually change a programs
high level programming, but it at least made the system compatibile and
the low level instructions all compatible. Some programs were actually
fixed.
Can you imagine trying to write such a thing? Just to give it to a small
number of your remaining users who are using a 10 year old product?
What Linux vendor, no matter how much you pay them for RHEL or SLES
etc.. would do something like that?
--
bkw
Pepe
> Before y2k SCO not only made a patch for the already ancient and
> unsupported Xenix, not only did it for free, but the nature of the patch
> always blew my mind. It didn't merely replace some binaries and
> libraries, it included a program that actually binary patched other
>
> Can you imagine trying to write such a thing? Just to give it to a small
> number of your remaining users who are using a 10 year old product?
> What Linux vendor, no matter how much you pay them for RHEL or SLES
> etc.. would do something like that?
I certainly cannot see why a linux vendor would need to patch the
binaries of an open source operating system...
A working kludge of a solution, is a kludge nonetheless.
Brian K. White
binaries != operating system
all open source apps != all necessary binaries for a given user
"something like that" != "exactly that"
--
bkw