SCO OpenServer Release 6.0.0 new features and notes

Backup and Restore

This section discusses the following backup utilities:

Emergency Recovery boot media

SCO OpenServer Release 6.0.0 adds support for creating bootable emergency recovery CD-ROMs with the new emergency_disk(ADM) command. You can use CD-R or CD-RW media on an IDE, SCSI, or USB recordable CD-ROM drive.

NOTE: You can no longer create emergency recovery floppy diskettes because of the size limitations of a floppy disk.

To create an emergency recovery boot CD-ROM, run:

# emergency_disk cdrom1
To create an emergency recovery ISO image, run:

# emergency_disk -i image_dir -m cdrom

This creates a file named drf.image.iso and places it in the specified image_dir directory. This file can be written to a CD-ROM at a later time. This is especially handy if you want to create an emergency recovery CD but your system doesn't have a writable CD-ROM drive. You can move the ISO image to a system that has the necessary hardware.

See the emergency_disk(ADM) manual page for more information.

The following CD drives are known to work with the SCO OpenServer emergency recovery command:

CenDyne/AOpen 48X12X50 USB
KHypermedia/BenQ 48X24X48 ATAPI
LITE-ON LTR-52246S IE
Plextor CD-RW 16/10/4A ATAPI
Plextor CD-RW 24/10/24U PX-W2410A USB
Yamaha CD-RW CRW8824S SCSI

The cpio(C) command

A new version of cpio(C) is supplied in SCO OpenServer Release 6.0.0. There are some minor differences from the SCO OpenServer Release 5 version of cpio:

the command is now large-file aware and works with VxFS filesystems.
the default archive format generated by cpio -c is now the same as that generated by -Hnewc. To generate the old -c format, use -Hodc.
cpio -i -I file1, file2,... works as expected only if file1, file2,... are devices, not regular files. For the same effect with regular files, use:

# cat file1 file2 ... | cpio -i
the format of the table-of-contents listing that is generated by cpio -itv is somewhat different.
the -n option is not supported.

The Release 5 version of cpio is included on the system in the event that any of the differences in the new command cause problems with existing script and so forth. The Release 5 version is located in the /osr5/usr/bin directory. Note that the Release 5 version of cpio cannot handle files larger than 2GB and is not able to access the 32-bit device nodes used in SCO OpenServer Release 6.0.0. This means that the Release 5 version of cpio cannot successfully backup and restore the /dev directory.