asked on

How can I mount/read an old SCO Unix SystemV Hard Disk with Ubuntu Linux?

I have to get data off of an old Medical Manager system drive that will no long boot from its original machine.

I have an Ubuntu 6.06 install up and running. I put an Adaptec 2930 scsi controller in and I can see the drive when I do fdisk -l

fdisk -l returns:

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda4 * 1 1110 8916043+ 63 GNU HURD or SysV

I created a directory under /mnt/medman as the mount point.

I edited fstab and put in the follow line

FILE SYSTEM MOUNT POINT TYPE OPTIONS DUMP PASS
/dev/sda4 /mnt/medman ???? ro,umask=000 0 0

Under TYPE I have tried sysv, ufs, and several others.

I seem to get this error after I type: mount /dev/sda4
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad suberblock on /dev/sda4
missing codepage or other error.

I am pretty sure it is the type and it looks like Ubuntu doesn't support the needed type.

I found that the listed file systems for SCO Unix OpenSystem V are

File systems S51K, AFS, EAFS, HTFS, DTFS

and that the following applies:

Installation Must boot from S51K, AFS, EAFS file system types, which restricts the partition size to 2 GB maximum. HTFS and DTFS file systems support up to 1 TB in size, but cannot used to boot SCO Open Server.

Is there a work around to get Ubuntu Linux to recognize this SCO Unix disk?

yuzh

To To mount SCO file system you have to use the kernel with these enabled
- System V/Xenix/V7/Coherent file system support
- UFS file system support

You need to find out which version of SCO you have in the disk. You can plug the disk
to an old PC and boot up to single user mode, then run "divvy" command to find out.

HTFS and DTFS only available start from SCO 5.x, the older version of SCO are likely
use AFS or EAFS.

sppalser

From the above it appears that you are attempting to mount the entire fdisk partition as a filesystem which for SCO OpenServer5 would not be correct. One has to remember that SCO in OpenServer5 further divides the fdisk partition into divisions where the filesystems would be created. From above it appears that the drive is a boot drive so the at a minimum you would have the following slices:

boot slice 0 fstype = EAFS
swap slice 1 fstype = Not-Used
root slice 2 fstype = HTFS
- slice 3 if used fstype = HTFS
- slice 4
- slice 5
recover slice 6 fstype = Not-used
wholedisk slice 7 whole disk so fstype is N/A

It is possible that slice 3 could be labled "u" if the whoever set it up specified a separate /u filesystem at install time. Of course slice 4 & 5 could have been set up as well. You would need some sort of docs from the original setup to know how the disk was configured. Another alternative would be if you have emergency boot & root floppies for this drive hook the hard disk up as a boot drive but boot from the emergency floppies then run the divvy command to see the slice table. If that works you may be able to mount the filesystems and retrieve your data to tape. You will have to check your ubuntu docs to see if it even supports the SCO Unix methods of drive slicing. If it does then there should be a unique device node for each of the slices mentioned above.

Another option is if you have the original OpenServer5 install media you may want to take a look at SCO TA #105094 and TA #105312. These TA's tell how to use the boot media as emergency recovery media.

Good luck!

mkcsoftware

ASKER

The answer is that Ubuntu will not recognize the AFS (Acer File System) nor the EAFS (Enhanced Acer File System). I had to boot the old drive from a different PC and could only get into single user mode. I had to split the huge files and copy the pieces to floppies and then reassemble them on my PC to extract the data. Got it done with elbow grease!

Thanks for all the helpful info.

Steve

PS This topic can be closed.

yuzh

what's wrong with my answer in http:#17886317 ?

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Computer101

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial