Boyd Lynn Gerber, replying to Nico Kadel-Garcia:

Nico>> I've been dealing with VMware to run SCO OpenServer 5.0.6 for
Nico>> legacy software, and for various reasons it's making me unhappy.

Don't you mean you are using "VMware" to run "SCO"?

When you identify the virtualization platform only by the company name
you are committing the same error that so many comp.unix.sco.misc users
have been called on in the past. The company is not the product.

Nico>> See, installing Xen 5.0.6 on VMware seems to require using the
Nico>> 5.0.7 boot floppy image and manually installing BusLogic SCSI
Nico>> adapter drivers. But the Xen setup tools don't include options
Nico>> for setting this up from the command line, and I'm short of time
Nico>> to take my VMWare server down and experiment.

I think you mean "SCO [OpenServer] 5.0.6" the first time the word "Xen"
appears in the above lines.

Here is where the choice of VMware virtualization platform makes a big
difference. VMware's _hosted_ platforms (VMware Server, Workstation,
Player, ACE, and Fusion) support the presentation of emulated IDE disks
to the guest OS. VMware ESX does not; it supports only emulated SCSI
disks (on emulated BusLogic BT-958 and LSI Logic 53c1030 HBAs).

No release of OSR5 has LSI 1030 drivers in its boot image. They do have
BusLogic drivers, but the build-in "blc" driver has a bug which prevents
it from operating the VMware emulated adapter. You end up having to use
a BTLD in both cases (either to supply the 1030 driver or to replace the
BusLogic driver with a debugged version).

You can avoid these issues on the hosted platforms by using IDE disk
emulation.

Boyd> What problems are you having? Mine seems to run really well
Boyd> I am using SATA disks.

Here I think you are talking about the physical disks. This is
irrelevant as long as they work with your virtualization platform.

Boyd> I have this in my osr507.vmx file.

Boyd> ide0:0.present = "TRUE"
Boyd> ide0:0.fileName = "osr507.vmdk"

This shows an emulated IDE disk, therefore you are apparently using one
of the hosted products. IDE is definitely the easiest choice if you are
able to take it.

I keep hoping that ESX will eventually add support for IDE disk
emulation. Then all the pain of installing OSR5 with BTLDs could be
avoided. This would also benefit various other guest OSes.

>Bela<