Interactive and me - An open letter to ISC.

[Wm E. Davidsen Jr]

  The biggest complaint I have about serializing is that there is no
documented way to reserialize the system. If I have ten machines and ten
legal *paid for* copies of {SCO,ISC} I can't just install one from the
72 disks (that's full ODT, others may vary) and then do the rest of the
boxes by copting the installed system and reserializing.

  I could copy onto tape, over TCP, or by dropping the disk from systems
2-10 into system 1 and doing a physical copy. But the method for
reserializing is arcane enough that I can't be sure that I have it
right, and no one gives me the command to do it.

  As a result I either waste a few days of my time reinstalling from
disk, buy unix from someone who doesn't serialize, or run one serial
number on ten machines. Take a guess...

  This is a really stupid thing to do, since it in no way keeps the
dishonest person from taking the key to another machine as well as the
disks. All it does is create a great hassle. And if you lose those damn
cards and have to reinstall... bah, one of the things I don't like about
SCO.

  Hint, you can NFS mount a file with the serial info for each machine
and copy it frequently to each machine so if the main box dies you don't
lose it. You used to be able to xerox the black on white cards from SCO,
but now they're black on red and maybe you can read it, maybe you can't.
-- 
bill davidsen - davidsen at sixhub.uucp (uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen)
    sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX
    moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc and 80386 mailing list
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me