i have a job tomorrow in which my client has an old PC, i think a Pentium II, that has sco unix (not sure what version yet) on it. They have a scsi backup drive installed but it is not working. They would like me to fix or replace the backup drive (the head just might need to be cleaned) do a complete backup of the data, and build a new computer with the same specs and do a restore on it. It's been about 3 years since I last worked with sco, so my questions are this:

1) what is the command to backup the data, i think it's a tar command with a /dev/(?) command with a capital A at the end in order to do a complete backup with all sub directories.

then i would also like to know what the restore command is and how I should go about restoring this data onto a new hard drive. Should I create a bootable cd and then just do the restore command?

i totally forget how to do this, and I need to find out asap. All help is much appreciated.

I would love it if someone could post the exact commands, thank you

It depends on how tape drive is mounted at your SCO box, I assume its mounted at /dev/rct0, try the following:

To copy a directory and its subdirectories to tape, use the following example: To copy from tape back to a directory, use the following example: This command reads from the file "list" and copies them over to a tape device. This command will allow you to specify files to be backed up. After you are finished entering file names, hit Ctrl+D to execute the command. Here's the example: To restore from cpio archive To view a list of contents on the tape archive: tar Command Options
-c: Create a tar file
-t: List the contents of a tar file
-x: Extract or restore a tar file
-v: Verbose (display the actions tar is taking)
Create a new tar file: Write tar file on a backup tape: To extract files:

here is what happened. (and please let me know what I did or am doing wrong)

First off I am 4 years removed from SCO, so at first I was having some problems navigating around but i did start to remember the commands. Their internal dat backup of their main computer is n/w. I do remember there was a reset command that sometimes worked after it says that the tape drive is offline, and I also remembered that I had to edit a file to take out something, but i can't remember exactly so i configured an external tape drive. and installed it through scoadmin as a generic SCSI 1/SCSI 2 tape drive.

But first, they brought in a separate box, mostly the same specs. Same motherboard, processor, ram, and scsi 2940UW card. The hard drive is a little bigger and the NIC card was different.

So i finally configured the scsi card and hard drive properly, and installed a clean version of SCO 5.0 or 5.5 (can't remember) onto the new box. It seemed to work, as the installation went through properly. Then i configured the external tape drive on the old (main) machine through scoadmin and finally got a backup to go. I did the backup through the scoadmin gui interface. I wasn't sure of the size of the media and put some # in and it seemed to work. Then before I left I restored the tape (using scoadmin) into a /tmp directory on the new machine, but i had to leave before it was finsihed. So i am not sure if that worked or not. I am going back next week but i would really apprecaite if you could tell me what I need to do next in order to get this job completed.

it's a company that is using an inventory program that is 4 generation old, but in order to upgrade them to current, it's going to cost the company $140,000 and they have no intentions of doing. So they wanted me to make an exact duplicate of their old machine to the new one and have this program working off the new one, and have the old one as a spare. What do i need to do in order to accomplish this. I am familiar with sco but def. not an engineer or anything, so please spell it out for me as easy as possible. Is there anyway i can copy this program and whatever scripts they are using right to the new box? i need to install a new NIC card for them and they also want the FTP feature on the new box as well, I'm not familiar with how to do this as well.

Please I really appreciate your help. as i was getting all stressed that nothing was going to work yesterday. and it seemed like i made some progress. Please let me know what I am doing write and/or wrong and what I need to do next. thank you so much. Should I be using tar? cpio? scoadmin? i remember i only use to use tar, but i'm not sure what that copies out, is it all the dir? only some? not sure what files come, and they should all be restored to the exact directories, i don't want to have to start editing files to point them to different directories, I wish i could just use GHOST and have it work perfectly, but this is the unix world and nothing works that easy. i know SCO is very particaular with the hardware, if you change one little thing, it can cause the whole system to stop working, thank you, and sorry for the long post, i was trying to give as much info as possible. If it's easier, maybe you can call me at my office it's 646-744-1095, thank you again