[SGVLUG] Linux and then SCO !

[Tom Emerson]

On Saturday 27 August 2005 10:39 am, Michael Proctor-Smith wrote:
> > > I'm asked to do maintenance on a Unix SCO machine. ... is there any
> > > difference between Linux and Unix SCO?

Depending on who you talk to and their agenda, there is either no difference 
at all [from the "they stole our source" camp] to a world of difference [from 
the "and your evidence is where?" camp] but politics aside, in general SCO 
should not be /much/ more different than, say, red hat vs. SuSE.

As a fer-instance -- I got a call this morning from my brother-in-law: seems 
their redhat server was "down" and he needed to "fix it", but he's a 
died-in-the-wool windows fan [yes, this is the one that is "getting away..."]  
It turns out [or so he claims] the previous admin did some really funky 
things.  One of which we ran into once I decided he really did have to reboot 
[he was at some sort of register dump screen - it's been so long since I've 
seen such that I almost forgot they existed...)  It turns out the "default" 
entry in grub is to boot an SMP kernel, but the previous admin "never got it 
working right"; there was also a single-processer kernel configured in grub, 
and that booted just fine.  When I asked why the previous admin left a 
known-not-working entry as the default (as in "what happens when the server 
burps at midnight?"), his response was "so the admin would HAVE to go in, and 
could then claim overtime" [ok, smart cookie maybe, but silly antics like 
this only convince my brother-in-law to stick with windows because he /knows/ 
it will start...)

Another thing he did, which my brother-in-law thinks is funky (but I have no 
problem with) was to NOT install X-windows at all -- strictly command line 
access (*) [the merits of this are fodder for another thread]  Of course, my 
brother-in-law is "kind of" lost here, but he does remember command lines 
back when he used "dos", so at least he's not afraid of it.  but I'm 
digressing -- my point here is that this system is a redhat system of unknown 
vintage -- pre "core" certainly -- and the things I know from administering a 
SuSE system didn't actually apply -- where in SuSE I would use rc<service> 
commands, under red hat there is a specific "service" command (i.e., "service 
smb restart" vs. "rcsmb restart") 

and yet some things were still identical -- ifconfig eth0 <ipaddress> worked 
to get his network "working" again [though why the startup scripts didn't set 
the IP correctly to begin with is still a mystery, but alas this is an 
internal-access only machine, so I couldn't "dial in" in any way to check the 
scripts directly.

Tom

(*) as a p.s. of sorts -- at least he installed "vi", albeit "colorized", so 
at the end of the call I was able to walk him through 
editing /boot/grub/menu.lst so that the "correct" kernel boots next time :)


-- 
blogref temporarily disabled for the Rabbi's benefit ;)
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