From: wa4cyb!jmd (John Dashner)
Subject: LILO coexists with SCO SysV 3.2.v4/ODT 2.0
Reply-To: wa4cyb!jmd (John Dashner)
Organization: The Internet
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 15:41:50 GMT

In the event that someone is keeping score, or for those "Inquiring
minds.." that "..want to know," I installed LILO ver 6 this week with
the following configuration:

/dev/hda4	SCO ODT 2.0/System V Rel 3.2v4 (330 megs)
(no other OS' installed this drive & LILO installed as the MBR)

/dev/hdb1	Linux 0.98.pl1 Minix Root Partition (64 megs)
/dev/hdb2	Swap (8 megs)
/dev/hdb3	Extended File System (120 megs)
/dev/hdb4	SCO eafs (Extended Acer File System) 400 megs

The disk configuration is 2 ESDI drives: 330 MB Micropolis and
a 660 MB Maxtor using a WD1007V controller.

Rest of system is a 16 Meg 486-33 ISA Micronics motherboard in some
REALLY ugly hand-me-down tower box!!

Note that this is with *NO* Linux installed on /dev/hda, using LILO as
the MBR (Master Boot Record) and mounting /dev/hdb1 (2nd drive) as
root for Linux.  I took the liberty of setting a small delay in the
install script (-d 30) to give one a chance to hit a shift key since
my system wants to complain if you hit a key too early in the boot
sequence and it immediately reads the 1st drive after POST tests are
done (I've configured my CMOS settings to boot first from the hard
drive as a half hearted security measure - this I change alot when
fooling around with Linux upgrades ;-) This configuration will boot
the 1st configured OS in the install script, which in this case is
SCO:

$ROOT/etc/lilo/lilo -b /dev/hda -c -d 30 -i /etc/lilo/boot.b $* \
	sco=/etc/lilo/chain.b+/dev/hda4@/dev/hda \
	/linux \
	/linux.backup

Note that I renamed the ``Image'' files in the root directory to
``linux'' and ``linux.backup'' respectively.  I didn't do this because
the LILO examples did it this way, but rather, because I like my OS
load modules to say what they are.  This is strickly a personal
preference and does not change anything!  You should be aware that the
Makefiles that recompile the source will name the the result
``Image'', not ``linux''.  The are not automatically moved to the
root directory, either.

What I haven't tried yet is what happens if that partition isn't
marked active - would it go on to the next configuration?  I kinda
doubt it from my read of the documentation.  At least not perhaps
without Linux being installed in a small starter partition on
/dev/hda that would itself have to be marked active.

Which reminds me. Is anyone working on doing an Acer or Extended Acer
file system for Linux?  Sure would make my life easier since I earn my
living supporting SCO systems (but, in truth, absolutely worship the
ground Torvalds Linus walks on for his creation.)

Also, if we had a COFF object file loader, having commercial software
available for Linux would cease to be a problem.  I have consistently
run binaries that were linked, say for SCO, on ISC and Esix for
example as well as any other way around.  Really, the only time I seem
to get in trouble is with the differences between the various ``pty''
implementations.  I want to believe that this would be possible with
Linux.  Did I not read a message where Xenix ``a.out'' (actually,
x.out) format was supported now?  I hope that means that the system
call interface was reasonable and that the same could be expected of
SCO Unix.  What about the ``kludge'' we had with gcc a few years back
known as ``COFF encapsulation''?  Perhaps that might be a place to
start.

Yea, I know, I can just hear it now, "If you're so good at finding
things that need to be done, why don't you do it yourself?" Believe
me, if I thought I could, I would -- go ya one better: If the file system
Maven (Remy Card?) wants to give me some pointers or if he needs to have
structures of the superblock/inode stuff, I'm your man.

Well, this started out as a short announcement in the hope that it would
encourage some of the faint at heart out there.  It has instead, turned
into a soapbox from which I have declared  Yet Another Linux Project
er, YALP, as in yacc, and such was not my intent.  But whatta ya think
out there - is this something we need to be about?  Volunteers accepted,
BTW.

All the best to LinuxLand, pappy

-- 
========================================================================
     John M Dashner    | This here's a Place where |
      aka "pappy"      |  Southern Fried Unix is   | This space for rent