Xenix anyone?

[ceedj]

Xenix anyone? - 20,000 files ARGHHH!

Ok smarty-types, see if you can crack this one.

At our bowling center, our lanes use a Xenix based system for scoring, cash register, etc. It's a decent little machine, but I don't know a whole lot about Xenix. I DO know it's a variant of Linux, and about 20 years old, but I'm having a problem with backups.

I've been getting this "huge directory error" when we try to use the backup tapes. What sucks is that Brunswick sold us a $300 tape drive, $60 repair disk, and THEN said that we're unsupported, since we bought the system from another center and didn't get a license from Brunswick. (The funny thing is, my boss, who is a great guy, is a multi-millionaire, but I have to drag him kicking and screaming to get something as small as a mouse replacement).

Anyway, I'd like to try to solve this before I say screw it and slap the tape drive in our Windows machine and pray I don't have to re-enter about 40-50 hours of data in the middle of our season.

So, can anyone help? Anyone know about this crappy OS? Don't even ask about uprgrading to Windows, as we'd have to spend about $5000 or so on new software and interface epuipment.

Thanks in advance.

 

[AlphaWolf]

I DO know it's a variant of Linux, and about 20 years old

Maybe unix, but certainly not linux, as linux is 9 years old.

I hardly know anything about that OS, but my guess is that you are using a old and small hard disk, so it wouldn't hurt to just directly back up the entire hard disk, compress the disk images, and store that to the tapes. That will work for anything.

 

[ceedj]

Sorry about that, I DID mean Unix.

As for backing up the images, I can't even do that because of the huge directory error. If can clear that, I should be ok.

Thanks for trying though. Anyone else?

 

[Trotterwatch]

Just searched Google and found a couple of things of interest in Google groups, hopefully one of these postings will give you an idea of what to do next:

Google Groups

 

[ceedj]

This has been a HUGE help, and I found a few solutions, but I need a bit more direction.

I'm booting from a floppy (remember, this is a Unix variant, not DOS), and I can get the HD mounted with

mnt /hd0root

But I can't seem to switch from the floppy drive to the hard drive. "mount" tells me that it's mounted, I just can't get any directory action (any of the directory commands, like "L" or "ls" just list the floppy directory). Any ideas?

Thanks again, making BIG progress!

 

[Cyberman]

Umm Creedj I think you don't understand Unix too well

Unix - UNIFIED IO system <what it's short for>
Instead of having seperate 'devices' it has mount POINTS.

mount /hd0 root likely mounted the hard disk as
/root

I suggest creating a mount point called
/mnt/hdisk0

then mount /dev/hd0 /mnt/hdisk0

you should look at the man pages for mount

man mount
and READ it very carefully.


also find out where the devices directory is hidden in the file system I'm assuming it's /dev.. but Xenix is a variant so it COULD be /dev.

if you don't have the man pages, I suggest looking for the user manuals ASAP .. Xenix is very old, microsoft I believe programed the shell for it, Xenix was distributed by Radio shack and a bunch of other companies a LONG time ago.

also if you know how to use usenet

comp.unix.xenix.misc <- check there for help
comp.unix.xenix.sco is another good places to look

 

[ceedj]

Thanks for the reply.

That's what I thought too. My mount goes like this

/mnt /dev/hd0root

With hd0root being my hard drive. I've tried a few different variants, but this is the only one that works, so that's what I do.

As for manuals, the only ones we have are the Brunswick manuals, which tell me nothing about the OS. So I've been searching everywhere.

You're right, I don't know a whole lot about Unix; I've been researching a TON of material (esp the links you provided).

Mounting the drive is not a problem; I just can't figure out how to browse the drive once it's mounted. As I said, I'm using a Brunswick Boot disk and 'pushing' to the shell. It's once I have the shell that I'm running into problems.

Anymore insight would be greatly apprecitated.

Thanks again!

 

[Malcolm]

ok

when you do a mount you'd enter the following command

mount /dev/hda[partition number] /[folder on present drive]

so your should enter this to make everything work right

mkdir /mnt/hdd
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/hdd
cd /mnt/hdd
ls

you should now be looking at the files on the local hard drive.

 

[ceedj]

I really appreciate all of the help guys. Malcom, I'll try your code when I can get to work before we're "open".

Thanks a million!

 

[ceedj]

Update

Well, I got it all to work, so I can now browse the files.

ALL 20,000 of them!!!

Is there any way to 'filter' a mass delete? I'm not sure I want to spend x-number of days going through each file like this

tp231.dat - need it
tp232.dat - don't need it

etc.

Basically, the files I need seem to correspond with the league number. For example, league 231 uses all files with a 231 in them. Since we don't use say 901, and it doesn't show up as a league in the program, I'm fairly sure I can get rid of it. I can also check by date, seeing as how there are a TON of entries with a 1999-2000 date (we installed it in 2001). Just looking for a way to get rid of the problem ones.

I think that the house that had it before us didn't clean out the old files; just deleted the leagues. Any help is once again greatly appreciated.

Thanks again!

 

[Malcolm]

well you could do this:

rm tp23[2-9]*
rm tp[0-1]*
rm tp[3-9]*

that will remove:
tp232 -> tp 239
tp0** -> tp1**
tp3** -> tp9**

that what you're lookin' for?

 

[icepir8]

I many have some old SCO Xenix manuals somewhere I will check.
I hated SCO back then. If I remember correctly they had a admin shell that let you do most things through a menu system. Not to elegent but it worked.

 

[Malcolm]

midnight commander?

 

[icepir8]

no a really novel name.. "adminshell"

 

[ceedj]

YES YES YES

well you could do this:

rm tp23[2-9]*
rm tp[0-1]*
rm tp[3-9]*

that will remove:
tp232 -> tp 239
tp0** -> tp1**
tp3** -> tp9**

that what you're lookin' for?

'Tis exactly what I'm looking for. Wasn't sure how to use the wildcards.

Boy, all this Xenix work should turn me into a halfway decent Unix guy. j/k

Thanks again. BTW Ice, do you have any publishing info for that manual? Or where I might be able to get one?

 

[ceedj]

Befire I forget...

Is there anything special I need to do with the INODE count? Or will this fix itself once I clean up the directory?

Mucho Gratzi Again.

 

[icepir8]

The manuals were from SCO. I got them when I was working as a programer/unstaller for a company that sold Realworld accounting software. I spent a lot of time converting old data to a form that Realworld would understand. This was back in 1987 to 1991.

 

[ceedj]

Well, I got rid of the old files (yay!) but I need to reduce the size of the directory. Problem is, most of the shell commands I need are not on the Brunswick repair disk. So anyone know how I can push to the shell from a normal boot?

Thanks again, this has been a HUGE help!

 

[Slougi]

So anyone know how I can push to the shell from a normal boot?

What exactly do you mean?

 

[ceedj]

Well, what I'd like to be able to do is boot it into a "shell" mode, so I can play with the files without using the Brunswick Repair disk. I get the normal startup srceen, and I was sure there was a key I could press to get into Maintenece Mode when it asks for a new date. I think I did it before, but I can't figure out what it was. Or, is there a disk set I could download somewhere that has the more advanced commands that I need, that I can boot from?

Thanks again!