I have a friend who is running his business on an old OpenServer machine, and would love to be able to just run a copy in a VM. The issue is that it talks to the old serial terminals through a multiport card. Any hope that I could get KVM to provide usable serial ports to the VM using a modern card? Or even not so new, I have a case of unused "HUB6" cards and would be glad to find a home for one, since modem pools are not a big thing anymore.
I last did SCO admin for a living in 1993, and have done little but Linux since, so I'm not right on top of this OS any more :-(
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
On 10/23/2011 03:34 PM, Bill Davidsen wrote:
I have a friend who is running his business on an old OpenServer machine, and would love to be able to just run a copy in a VM. The issue is that it talks to the old serial terminals through a multiport card. Any hope that I could get KVM to provide usable serial ports to the VM using a modern card? Or even not so new, I have a case of unused "HUB6" cards and would be glad to find a home for one, since modem pools are not a big thing anymore.
I last did SCO admin for a living in 1993, and have done little but Linux since, so I'm not right on top of this OS any more :-(
I have not tried it, so this is just an idea. If Linux supports the multi-port card, and it does support some, then map that many serial ports from the VM to the actual ports. You will have to check if your VM has enough virtual ports to make it work.
Mikkel - --
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!
Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
On 10/23/2011 03:34 PM, Bill Davidsen wrote:
I have a friend who is running his business on an old OpenServer machine, and would love to be able to just run a copy in a VM. The issue is that it talks to the old serial terminals through a multiport card. Any hope that I could get KVM to provide usable serial ports to the VM using a modern card? Or even not so new, I have a case of unused "HUB6" cards and would be glad to find a home for one, since modem pools are not a big thing anymore.
I last did SCO admin for a living in 1993, and have done little but Linux since, so I'm not right on top of this OS any more :-(
I have not tried it, so this is just an idea. If Linux supports the multi-port card, and it does support some, then map that many serial ports from the VM to the actual ports. You will have to check if your VM has enough virtual ports to make it work.
Mikkel
I will look into that, hoped someone had done it, as I don't really see a way to fake the device.
Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
On 10/23/2011 03:34 PM, Bill Davidsen wrote:
I have a friend who is running his business on an old OpenServer machine, and would love to be able to just run a copy in a VM. The issue is that it talks to the old serial terminals through a multiport card. Any hope that I could get KVM to provide usable serial ports to the VM using a modern card? Or even not so new, I have a case of unused "HUB6" cards and would be glad to find a home for one, since modem pools are not a big thing anymore.
I last did SCO admin for a living in 1993, and have done little but Linux since, so I'm not right on top of this OS any more :-(
I have not tried it, so this is just an idea. If Linux supports the multi-port card, and it does support some, then map that many serial ports from the VM to the actual ports. You will have to check if your VM has enough virtual ports to make it work.
Progress - I have the physical disk image in a file, and I start it with qemu-kvm and it comes up to the "boot:" prompt. At that point things I type are echoed to the console. If I hit ENTER the next part of the boot continues, and it gets to the prompt "Enter control-d for normal boot or root password for maintenance" At that point it ignores the keyboard, and if I go into QEMU and try to send the character with that, "sendkey cntl-d" it ignores that as well. This was in a *very* old system and I bet it's looking for an AT keyboard rather than PS/2. Any thoughts?
I can take it to the KVM list, but there is a tendency to suggest going to the latest version of KVM before really looking at the problem. I can't do that, this is a production KVM host, and I can't really risk an upgrade.
On Sun, 2011-10-23 at 22:51 -0400, Bill Davidsen wrote:
Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
On 10/23/2011 03:34 PM, Bill Davidsen wrote:
I have a friend who is running his business on an old OpenServer machine, and would love to be able to just run a copy in a VM. The issue is that it talks to the old serial terminals through a multiport card. Any hope that I could get KVM to provide usable serial ports to the VM using a modern card? Or even not so new, I have a case of unused "HUB6" cards and would be glad to find a home for one, since modem pools are not a big thing anymore.
I last did SCO admin for a living in 1993, and have done little but Linux since, so I'm not right on top of this OS any more :-(
I have not tried it, so this is just an idea. If Linux supports the multi-port card, and it does support some, then map that many serial ports from the VM to the actual ports. You will have to check if your VM has enough virtual ports to make it work.
Progress - I have the physical disk image in a file, and I start it with qemu-kvm and it comes up to the "boot:" prompt. At that point things I type are echoed to the console. If I hit ENTER the next part of the boot continues, and it gets to the prompt "Enter control-d for normal boot or root password for maintenance" At that point it ignores the keyboard, and if I go into QEMU and try to send the character with that, "sendkey cntl-d" it ignores that as well. This was in a *very* old system and I bet it's looking for an AT keyboard rather than PS/2. Any thoughts?
Well...
(1) SCO Open Server was first released in 1989, and the PS/2 was released two years earlier. More importantly...
(2) An AT and a PS/2 keyboard are the same, with different physical connectors. (XT keyboards used different codes).
Is your VM emulating a USB or PS/2 keyboard?
-Chris
Chris Tyler wrote:
On Sun, 2011-10-23 at 22:51 -0400, Bill Davidsen wrote:
Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
On 10/23/2011 03:34 PM, Bill Davidsen wrote:
I have a friend who is running his business on an old OpenServer machine, and would love to be able to just run a copy in a VM. The issue is that it talks to the old serial terminals through a multiport card. Any hope that I could get KVM to provide usable serial ports to the VM using a modern card? Or even not so new, I have a case of unused "HUB6" cards and would be glad to find a home for one, since modem pools are not a big thing anymore.
I last did SCO admin for a living in 1993, and have done little but Linux since, so I'm not right on top of this OS any more :-(
I have not tried it, so this is just an idea. If Linux supports the multi-port card, and it does support some, then map that many serial ports from the VM to the actual ports. You will have to check if your VM has enough virtual ports to make it work.
Progress - I have the physical disk image in a file, and I start it with qemu-kvm and it comes up to the "boot:" prompt. At that point things I type are echoed to the console. If I hit ENTER the next part of the boot continues, and it gets to the prompt "Enter control-d for normal boot or root password for maintenance" At that point it ignores the keyboard, and if I go into QEMU and try to send the character with that, "sendkey cntl-d" it ignores that as well. This was in a *very* old system and I bet it's looking for an AT keyboard rather than PS/2. Any thoughts?
Well...
(1) SCO Open Server was first released in 1989, and the PS/2 was released two years earlier. More importantly...
(2) An AT and a PS/2 keyboard are the same, with different physical connectors. (XT keyboards used different codes).
Is your VM emulating a USB or PS/2 keyboard?
Supposedly a PS/2, I didn't use the "-usbdevice" option, to the keyboard and mouse should be PS/2, only being a server it isn't going to use a mouse, presumably. Man page says it does PS/2 by default, that appears to be the case for Linux in a VM, I don't think I have a bootable machine with AT keyboard left to see if it's different in some way.
Odd that the boot manager would see the keystrokes, if I type printing characters they echo, BS deletes them, ENTER starts the boot, and after that kb is ignored.
On 10/23/2011 03:34 PM, Bill Davidsen wrote:
Any hope that I could get KVM to provide usable serial ports to the VM using a modern card?
I don't think KVM will run SCO. It wouldn't last time I tried.
I have SCO running under VirtualBox and I have passed it serial ports from a PCI-Express card without a problem. SCO sees it as a dummy serial card.