Known Problems and Limitations

The most serious known problems and limitations with SCO Skunkware 5 include :
+ Xmcd & IDE CD-ROM Drives
SCO OpenServer Release 5 contains support for IDE CD-ROM drives. However, xmcd 1.4 supports only SCSI and SUN/Linux IDE CD-ROM drives. Fortunately, on SCO OpenServer 5 an IDE CD-ROM looks like a SCSI CD-ROM to the system. If you have an IDE CD-ROM which you would like to configure for use with xmcd, you can select "Other" from the list of supported drives and accept the default settings. This mostly works. An upgraded version of xmcd with SCO IDE CD-ROM support should be available soon.

+ Performance
The access times on the High-Sierra Rockridge CD-ROM are (subjectively) slow. If you find that you are using a component frequently, it may be worth your while to copy the relevant files over to a hard disk filesystem. See the section on Installation in Limitations below.

+ MIME
If you have created a personal $HOME/.mailcap you may need to modify it in order to take advantage of the multimedia tools available on SCO Skunkware 5. For instance, AVI files can be played with /usr/skunk/bin/X11/xanim. A Skunkware system mailcap file is available in /usr/skunk/lib/mosaic/mailcap.

+ Mail
One user reported that after he added /usr/skunk/bin/X11/xanim to his $HOME/.mailcap file that mail would inexplicably pause between messages while the CD-ROM was accessed. This was not reproducable. If you experience excessive delays between mail messages you may want to selectively remove Skunkware components from your $HOME/.mailcap if one exists.

+ Custom
When using the SCO custom utility to remove the SKUNK package, the VTCLRefGuide subpackage gets an error complaining about "awk: can't open source awk"

+ Installation
Some binaries have /usr/skunk compiled in as the path to support files. If you choose to install one or more of these on your hard disk, you may need to patch the binary. The bpatch utility is useful for this. Some of these, notably the GNU development system, are custom installable.

+ GNU Debugger
The GNU debugger, gdb, is out-of-date. A new revision will be made available via an SCO Skunkware Update.

+ GNU libg++
The GNU C++ library, libg++, is out-of-date. A new revision will be made available via an SCO Skunkware Update. For this reason, most of the C++ builds in SCO Skunkware 5 use the SCO C++ compiler, CC.

+ Emacs
The version of emacs, 19.22, is out-of-date. A new revision will be made available via an SCO Skunkware Update.

+ HP-UX Visual Tcl
An improved port of IXI Visual Tcl for HP-UX will be made available via an SCO Skunkware Update.

+ Mounting on ODT 3.0
The Rockridge extensions to the High-Sierra filesystem format are not supported under SCO ODT 3.0. In order to mount the SCO Skunkware 5 CD-ROM on an ODT 3.0 system, use the command : 
        # mount -r -f HS,lower /dev/cd0 /usr/skunk
All filenames will be mapped to lower case and truncated to a maximum of 8 characters with a 3 character suffix (i.e. 8.3 file naming as in MS-DOS). Although the ELF binary format and use of DLL's prevents execution on ODT 3.0 systems, you will still be able to read and copy files to your system (e.g. you may want to apply one or more of the Technical Level Supplements in /usr/skunk/tls to your ODT 3.0 system).

+ Extracting Source Archives on ODT 3.0
Under SCO UNIX 3.2v4 it may be necessary to use pax rather than tar to extract the compressed source archives. That is, rather than the command : 
        # gzcat filename.tar.gz | tar xf -
it may be necessary to use the command : 
        # gzcat filename.tar.gz | pax -rmopLvf -

+ Microsoft Windows 3.x, Windows NT and Windows 95
SCO Skunkware 5 is readable on systems running Microsoft Windows 3.x, Windows for Workgroups, Windows NT and Windows 95. The filenames may be truncated and the case mapped. However, you can view the GIF images and play many of the animations (if you have the appropriate applications installed). To do so, simply use the File Manager or Windows Explorer to view the contents of the /pics/gif and /pics/anim directories. Double-click on one of the files in the subdirectories there

Unfortunately most (all ?) Windows WWW browsers do not, as yet, understand relative URL's. This, among other things, makes it difficult to browse the SCO Skunkware 5 CD-ROM when on a Windows platform. You can browse to the extent that your browser will let you "Open File", select the CD-ROM drive, double-click your way down to the lib/x11/mosaic directory and then double-click an HTML document (e.g. index.html).

Alternatively, if you have internet access from your Windows system, you can browse the SCO Skunkware 5 contents by pointing your browser at the URL http://skunkware.dev/skunkware/95/

+ Microsoft Windows 95
On at least one system with the June 95 Pre-release of Microsoft Windows 95, the SCO Skunkware 5 CD-ROM was unreadable. After attempting to read the Skunkware CD-ROM, no other CD-ROM could be read until after rebooting Windows. This problem was due to Windows 95 mis-identifying the CD-ROM drive as a 4X rather than 3X drive. If you should encounter a similar problem (i.e. no files or directories appear in the Windows Explorer when you click on the CD-ROM drive containing SCO Skunkware 5), you may need to configure your CD-ROM drive settings and reboot your system in order to restore the CD-ROM drive to a useable state.

+ Mounting SCO Skunkware 2.0
Both SCO Skunkware 5 and SCO Skunkware 2.0 use /usr/skunk as their default mount point. It is not possible to mount and run both of these CD-ROM's simultaneously without some modification to the symbolic links created by the SCO Skunkware installation script /usr/skunk/bin/spray. If you would like to mount and run both of these CD-ROM's simultaneously, one will need to be mounted on an alternate mount-point (e.g. /usr/skunk2). The appropriate symbolic links in /usr/local and /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults and elsewhere will need to be created by hand.

+ Running /usr/skunk/bin/spray on a Localized OpenServer 5 System
On some localized systems, the id command when run as root returns a foreign language equivalent to root. The spray script verifies that it is being run by the root user by parsing the string returned by the id command. If you are running on a localized system on which the id command returns something other than "uid=0(root)" as the first field, then you will need to modify the spray script as follows : 
        # cp /usr/skunk/bin/spray /tmp/spray
        # vi /tmp/spray
Comment out the lines 
        fuid=`id`
        uid=`echo $fuid | awk ' { print $1 } '`
        [ "$uid" = "uid=0(root)" ] || {
        echo "You must have root priveleges to run spray."
        usage
        exit 1
        }
And then run the command "/tmp/spray" as the root user.

+ Unknown Problems
SCO Skunkware 5 is the first release of Skunkware designed specifically for SCO OpenServer Release 5. As such, there may be programs which do not function correctly or which exhibit previously undiscovered problems. Please feel free to assist us in finding and fixing all such problems. SCO Skunkware 5 includes source to most of the programs allowing the user to fix and recompile when problems arise. Please return any such improvements to rr@ronrecord.com for inclusion in subsequent releases.

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