Release Notes
Chapter 1, Read this before installation

Installation limitations and workarounds

Installation limitations and workarounds

These notes supplement or correct the installation instructions in ``Installing or upgrading an SCO system'' in the SCO OpenServer Handbook.


NOTE: Before you install any new system software, back up your current system and verify that the backup was successful. For more information, see ``Running unscheduled filesystem backups'' in the System Administration Guide.

Resolving installation problems requires you to be familiar with the hardware configuration information displayed when your system boots. Copy this information down, if necessary.


Licensing and registration
A Certificate of License and Authenticity (COLA) is no longer shipped with the SCO OpenServer media. See www.sco.com/buyeval for information on how to acquire licenses for the enclosed software. References in the SCO OpenServer Handbook to enclosed, hard-copy COLAs are incorrect.

Certain commercial versions of SCO software require registration, which you can perform online at the SCO web site, or with an SCO Registration Center. (Registering your software is different from licensing it. You license most SCO OpenServer software when you install it.) Wait until you are confident your system is properly installed before registering it. When you register your system, you must supply the current SCO System ID. However, a new System ID is generated whenever you:

If you perform one of these operations during reinstallation, you must contact an SCO Registration Center to obtain a new Registration Key and repeat the registration process. For more information, see Chapter 6, ``Licensing and registering SCO products'' in the SCO OpenServer Handbook. SCO Software Support Library (SSL) articles #482659 and #482755 also describe commonly encountered licensing problems; see ``SCO Support and Online Information Services'' for information about accessing SSL articles.

Boot-time loadable driver (BTLD) support
Use link(HW) to overwrite BTLDs; the ahslink functionality included in previous releases has been incorporated into link. BTLDs are drivers that can be link-edited into the SCO OpenServer system kernel during the booting process. The link-editing is done by link after the driver is loaded into memory (RAM), but before the kernel is started. A BTLD enables SCO OpenServer to be installed either onto, or using, new hardware as soon as a driver for the hardware is available. SCO OpenServer supports installations using BTLDs for hard disk, tape controllers, and CD-ROM.


NOTE: The Sjk and mc drivers are not boot-time loadable.

With certain BTLDs, the installation will stop and prompt you for BTLD configuration towards the end of the installation before proceeding.

On some Compaq models, you must boot from the boot floppy to load a BTLD. If you boot from the hard disk, the BTLD installation will fail.

Installing from a serial console
To install SCO OpenServer from a serial console onto a machine that does not have a video adapter, the required settings are 9600 baud, 8 data bits, one stop bit, and direct connect (usually to com1).


NOTE: If your system does not have a video adapter, you will not be able to run the SCO Internet Manager on the system as it requires a forms- and tables-capable browser. In this case, you will either need to add a video adapter or configure your system to allow remote administration using a forms- and tables-capable browser on another system.

Installing the Lightweight Character Configuration
If you choose not to install the graphical interface, you must also de-select Netscape Communicator to avoid problems with the installation.

Installation halts with a Signal error
If your installation halts with a Signal error, start the installation again from the beginning and enter the following at the boot prompt:

defbootstr nbuf=100

This bootstring makes more of your system's memory available for installation processes, such as booting from the CD-ROM and badtracking hard disks.

Bootstring needed to boot off Mylex controller
To install with a Mylex controller, you must start the installation by typing the following bootstring at the boot prompt:

defbootstr Sdsk=mdac(0,0,0,1)

This bootstring specifies ID=0 LUN=1 as the first Mylex system drive and is needed because of a change in ID/LUN mapping in the Mylex mdac driver.

UDMA hangs system during installation
With certain combinations of hard disk and motherboard, the installation might hang when using Ultra Direct Memory Access (UDMA) mode, although the standard Programmed I/O (PIO) mode will work correctly.

To avoid this problem, start the installation by typing the following bootstring at the boot prompt:

defbootstr wd.udma=off

This problem has been seen on an Intel C820 desktop motherboard, but other systems might be affected as well.

Disabled Symbios controller
If a Symbios controller is in the system and it is disabled in the BIOS, start the installation by typing the following bootstring at the boot prompt:

defbootstr disable=slha

IBM Thinkpad 600E system hangs during installation
During installation on an IBM Thinkpad 600E system, the installation might hang after loading the ramfs image.

To avoid this problem, start the installation by typing the following bootstring at the boot prompt:

defbootstr mem=1m-65280k

Toshiba notebook might require bootstring
If your notebook has trouble reading from the floppy drive, verify that the bootstring contains fd.fifo=0. If not, add it to your installation bootstring. See bootstring(HW) for more information.

After the installation is complete, you should also add this bootstring to the /etc/default/boot file. For more information, see boot(HW).

Mouse on Toshiba notebook requires bootstring
By default, SCO OpenServer does not correctly detect or handle the built-in mouse (buttons and movement) on a Toshiba notebook.

To configure the mouse correctly for a Toshiba notebook, add kbm.id2chk to your bootstring when you start the installation. At the boot prompt, enter:

defbootstr kbm.id2chk

Network card not detected
If your PCI, EISA, or Microchannel network card is not detected by netconfig(ADM) during initial installation or in the Network Manager, it might not be configured by the BIOS. To solve this, enter BIOS setup and set ``Plug-and-Play operating system: No''.

If your network card is not detected during initial installation, do no try to select it manually. Instead, do either one of the following:

Media speed on some SMC 9332 not autodetected correctly
Automatic media speed detection is not supported on the SMC EtherPower 9332 adapter based on the Digital 21140-A* chip set. Do not configure your SMC 9332 adapter to use AUTO_MEDIA_DETECT for the media type when running the Network Configuration Manager. Instead, use 10Mbit (default) or 100Mbit media type as appropriate. SMC 9332 adapters using later revisions of the chip set can be autodetected correctly.

If you misconfigure the media type, you might see the message:

   WARNING: smpw(iobase 0x0000EC00): Possible cable fault!

IBM Microchannel systems require bootstring
If you have an IBM® Microchannel(TM) system and the primary hard disk is a SCSI drive with a capacity greater than 1GB, you need to specify the biosgeom bootstring at the boot prompt as follows:

biosgeom defbootstr

This ensures that the contents of the disk are interpreted correctly by both the hardware and the software.

If you do not specify biosgeom during installation, or at a subsequent boot from the hard disk, the installation will appear to be successful, but you will not be able to boot the system from the hard disk. See boot(HW) for more information.

NCR Microchannel systems using NCR 77C22 or 77C22E video chip
If you have an NCR® Microchannel® system with an NCR 77C22 or 77C22E video chip integrated on the motherboard, select the IBM VGA 640x480 with 16 colors setting during installation.

After the installation completes, run the Video Configuration Manager (or scoadmin video at the command line) in character mode and then select NCR VGA. NCR VGA automatically detects which video chip is installed on the motherboard.


NOTE: During installation, you will see the error:
VGA MAP_CLASS failed ...
You can safely ignore this error message, which denotes a recognition problem of the NCR chip set.

If you have one of these chip sets, you must always run the Video Configuration Manager in character mode after initial installation. Your NCR chip set might not be recognized properly in graphical mode.

Use ATI and Diamond DOS setup programs for higher graphics resolution
To access resolutions higher than 640x480 and to correctly initialize certain ATI and Diamond adapters, you must boot DOS and run the manufacturer-supplied programs according to the instructions for those programs. This applies to the ATI Ultra Pro, Ultra Plus, and Mach64 graphics adapters, and the Diamond SpeedStar Pro, Stealth 24, and Stealth Pro graphics adapters.

Compaq Proliant slow when booting from floppy disk
The Compaq Proliant might run very slowly when booting from a floppy disk. To avoid this, set the option System Configuration Power-On Defaults Set Power-On Speed in the EISA Configuration program to ``High'' rather than ``Auto''. (The EISA Configuration program is the utility used to configure the EISA bus cards in the machine. All EISA bus machines are shipped with a utility to do this. Compaq normally ships its version on the SmartStart CD-ROM.)

Installing Compaq IDA devices on non-Compaq platforms
The Compaq IDA driver checks the system BIOS to verify that it is on a Compaq system. If you use Compaq IDA hardware on non-Compaq platforms, you must add ida.nocheck to your installation bootstring or the driver will not function. See bootstring(HW) for more information.

After the installation is complete, you must also add this bootstring to the /etc/default/boot file. See boot(HW) for more information.

Installing on a machine with an Adaptec 1542CP
To install a system with an Adaptec 1542CP host adapter, you must disable ``Plug & Play'' on the card by setting DIP switch 1 to ON.

Installing on a machine with multiple host adapters
If your system contains more than one type of host adapter, SCO OpenServer might find the secondary adapter first and assume it is the controller for the root disk. In this case, Upgrade might not be offered as an option for Installation type. If this happens, restart the installation and specify the location of your root hard disk at the boot prompt. For example, if the root disk is at ID 0 on the first bus of an Adaptec 294x host adapter, enter the following at the boot prompt:

defbootstr Sdsk=alad(0,0,0,0)

If the root disk is on a second adapter of the same type, enter the following:

defbootstr Sdsk=alad(1,0,0,0)

If you have a different SCSI host adapter, use the appropriate driver name from the following table instead of alad:

 --------------------------------------------------------------------
 Host adapter                                             Driver name
 --------------------------------------------------------------------
 Adaptec 151x, 152x (6260 & 6360 Chip)                    smad
 Adaptec 154x, 164x, 174x (Standard mode)                 ad
 Adaptec 174x (Enhanced mode)                             eiad
 Adaptec 274x (7770 Chip)                                 arad
 Adaptec 2916x, 3916x (7892, 7899 Chip)                   ad160
 Adaptec 292x, Future Domain 16x0, 600, 700 (18x0 Chip)   fdhb
 Adaptec 294x (7870 & 7880 Chip)                          alad
 Advanced Micro Devices PCscsi                            ams
 BusLogic MultiMaster Adapters                            blc
 BusLogic 93x FlashPoint Adapters                         flashpt
 Compaq Array Controller                                  clad
 Corollary 386/486 CBUS SCSI-CPU                          ciha
 DPT SCSI & RAID Host Adapters                            dptr
 Enhanced IDE, ATAPI Interface (for tapes and CD-ROMs)    wd
 Future Domain (formerly Western Digital) 7000            wdha
 Future Domain (formerly Western Digital) 7000EX          wdex
 Future Domain 845, 850, 860, 885 (950 Chip)              tmcha
 IBM HardFile Host Adapters                               hf
 Mylex Disk Array Controller                              mdac
 NCR Microchannel Systems Host Adapters                   ncr
 Olivetti ESC-1, ESC-2, and EFP Adapters                  efp
 Storage Plus SCSI-AT (SUMO)                              sumo
 Symbios Logic (formerly NCR MPD) 53c8xx Host Adapters    slha
 Tricord Intelligent I/O Processor                        iiop
See the boot(HW) and bootstring(HW) manual pages and ``Using bootstrings'' in the SCO OpenServer Handbook for more information.

Wangtek 5150ES SCSI tape drive with SCSI hard disk installation failure
If your system is configured with both a Wangtek 5150ES SCSI tape drive (with Firmware Versions FA03 or FA23) and a SCSI hard disk on an Adaptec 7870 chip set device (controlled by the alad driver), the installation procedure might fail when the tape is accessed to transfer files to the hard disk. To prevent this problem, use the Adaptec SCSI Select BIOS configuration to disable the SCSI bus parity checking. This solution is not known to work in all cases. The problem has been corrected in the most recent version of the firmware.

Wangtek QIC-80 cartridge tape drives
mkdev(ADM) incorrectly creates device nodes for this device with minor numbers 1 and 129. These should be deleted and replaced with minor numbers 5 and 9 respectively using mknod(C).

Limit of four disks configurable during installation
During initial system load, you can configure a maximum of four disks under the Interactive fdisk/divvy disk setup option. Any additional disks on your system are recognized by SCO OpenServer, but they are not displayed for configuration during initial system load. You can configure these disks after initial system load using the Hardware/Kernel Manager or the mkdev hd command (described in the mkdev(ADM) manual page).

Running badtrk with CIHA SCSI adapters
When using badtrk(ADM) to lock out defective disk blocks, you can choose to use the target device's defect management or the SCO OpenServer system's own defect management. If the SCSI host adapter controlling the defective disk is a Corollary Integrated Host Adapter (CIHA), you must choose the target device's defect management to prevent file corruption. To access this badtrk option, you must select the Interactive fdisk/divvy disk setup option during installation.

Not running badtrk during installation
If you choose not to run badtrk during installation, no space is reserved for the defect list maintained by the operating system. This means that on non-SCSI disks, you will not to be able to map any bad blocks found in this partition and for SCSI disks you will only be able to use the device-maintained defect list.

DPT PM 2022 SCSI Disk Controller
SCO OpenServer installs correctly on a DPT PM2022 with SmartROM BIOS 2B and Firmware FW-0230-005E-E/O, but the kernel reboot fails. You can prevent this by upgrading to SmartROM BIOS 2.D1 and Firmware FW-0230-005E-E/O, which is the current release of the Firmware as of this writing.

The SCO OpenServer system is known to work correctly on the DPT PM2122 with SmartROM BIOS 2D and Firmware FW-0215-005E, which is the current Firmware as of this writing.

ISA bus support disabled for DPT SCSI host adapters
Default ISA bus support for DPT SCSI host adapters has been removed for this SCO OpenServer release. To re-enable ISA support for DPT SCSI devices, add dptr.isa=1 to the installation bootstring. See bootstring(HW) for more information.

The installation will update the driver configuration files, so you do not need to add the bootstring to your default boot file.

Do not set the installation CD-ROM or tape drive SCSI ID higher than 7
SCO OpenServer does not support CD-ROMs or tape drives with SCSI IDs set to a value greater than 7 for installation. IDs greater than 7 are supported after installation on wide SCSI adapters.

Obsolete tape drives
Selections for Emerald, Mountain, and Everex cartridge tape drives are provided in mkdev tape for backwards compatibility only. These drives are no longer supported; in particular, they cannot be used for installations.

Future Domain flopticals
21MB disks cannot be used as boot devices or removable hard disks.

Adaptec Arrow SCSI chip sets
Intermittent disk errors occur on 284x cards. This will be fixed in a future release.

Adaptec 154x series clone devices
Adaptec 154x clone devices might not install properly using the ad(HW) driver. If you encounter problems, add ad.nocheck to your bootstring so that the device can be recognized. See bootstring(HW) for more information.

Some Adaptec 154x clone devices might also be recognized by the BusLogic driver. In this case, disable the blc driver by adding disable=blc to your bootstring.

This does not apply to BusLogic MultiMastering devices using the blc driver.

Network installation fails at reboot
After selecting a supported adapter for networked installation and rebooting the system, you may see an error message similar to this:
   E63: can't init controller (i/o port)
This message appears if your network adapter contains a chip set newer than is supported by this release of SCO OpenServer.

Hewlett-Packard HP J2585A 10/100VG PCI Network Adapter
If you configure a Hewlett-Packard HP J2585A 10/100VG PCI Adapter during installation, the process will eventually halt with an error message indicating that the network adapter was not found. Although the adapter is successfully detected, it cannot be configured during installation. Configure the adapter after the installation is complete.

SMC 8432/8434 EtherPower PCI network adapters
Standard Microsystems SMC 8432 and 8434 EtherPower PCI Ethernet Adapters do not auto-detect properly for BNC connectors. You must explicitly select BNC in the Advanced Options window.

Laptop display resolution
On certain laptop systems, setting the resolution to a rate such as 1024x768x256 might result in a system where the display is unreadable and locked. To avoid this, choose a lower setting. The following two settings are available for use with laptop systems:

LCD 12.1 800x600
LCD 13.3 1024x768

Configuring mice on laptops
When configuring internal mice on most laptops, select Keyboard mouse when prompted for the mouse type. 

Configuring email
At installation, you can choose between two Mail Transfer Agents (MTAs) provided with SCO systems, mmdf(ADM) and sendmail(ADMN). The default MTA is MMDF, but we recommend sendmail to take full advantage of Internet Services mail capabilities; in particular, MMDF does not support e-mail with virtual domains. For more information, see ``Comparison of sendmail with MMDF'', Chapter 1, ``Using and administering electronic mail'' in the Mail and Messaging Guide, and ``Changing Mail Transfer Agents'' in the Mail and Messaging Guide.


NOTE: sendmail does not support maildelivery(F) (except for vacation) and mail notification in scocal(XC).

Installing Internet Services
If you want to install Internet Services, be sure the component is selected during initial system load. You cannot use the Software Manager to add the Internet Services after initial system load (whether Fresh or Upgrade installations).

Internet Server hostname and domain
To properly configure the Netscape web servers, the System Name and Domain Name that you enter during installation must exactly match (including case) the fully qualified domain name returned by your nameserver's PTR record for your IP address.

For example, if your nameserver's PTR record for your IP address returns mymachine.mycompany.COM, you must enter exactly that text when prompted for the System Name and Domain Name during the installation. If you enter mymachine.mycompany.com (lower case com), the Netscape web servers will not be properly configured.

Deferred TCP/IP configuration
If you defer configuration of TCP/IP during installation and do not configure a network card before running the Internet Manager for the first time, the Internet Manager will add a line to /etc/hosts of the form:
   127.0.0.1 host.full.domain host 
host.full.domain is the fully qualified domain name of your machine. This entry will work in most cases, but if you configure a PPP link with a fixed IP address (that is, if you do not select ``dynamic''), you should edit /etc/hosts and change the IP address on this line to the local IP address on your PPP link.

If you configure a network card after the Internet Manager adds this line, it will add a line to /etc/hosts with the IP address of that network card, but it will be after the line added by the Internet Manager. Edit /etc/hosts and remove the line added by the Internet Manager.

Minimum display requirements
Netscape Communicator requires your display to support 256 colors or better and a resolution of 800x600 or better. See your Internet Services documentation for more information.

Modem support
SCO OpenServer supports serial lines up to 115K baud. In addition, the Internet Manager includes support for the modems listed in Table 24-1, ``Dialers file entries'' in the SCO OpenServer Handbook.

See Chapter 24, ``Adding modems'' in the SCO OpenServer Handbook for general information about installing and configuring modems.