SCO OpenServer 6.0.0 NICs do not work (PCI BUS not recognized?)

[Brad House]

Under SCO OpenServer 6.0.0, the NIC(s) are not detected as it appears there is an issue reading the PCI Bus provided by VirtualBox. The OS works under VMWare Server 1.0.8, VMWare Fusion 2.0.4, and somewhat under Linux KVM (NICs are detecting during install, but can't boot the OS afterwards due to other issues).

Here's all the information I can provide:

VirtualBox 3.0.10 Guest Settings:

• OS: Other
• Version: Other/Unknown
• Base Memory Size: 512MB
• 10GB Dynamic Disk - PIIX4 - IDE Primary Master
• Net1: PCnet-Fast III (Am79C973) - nat
• Net2: PCnet-PCI II (Am79C970A) - nat
• Net3: Intel PRO/1000 T Server (82543GC)
• Net4: Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop (82540EM)
• ACPI: On
• IOAPIC: Off
• CPUs: 1
• PAE/NX: Off
• VT-X/AMD-V: On
• Nested Paging: On
• USB: On
• USB2 (EHCI): On

Host:

• AMD Phenom II X4 940
• 8GB DDR2 RAM
• Gentoo Linux amd64

NIC detection fails during installation of SCO OpenServer 6.0.0, only allows you to choose non-detectable ISA NICs. Not a single one of the 4 configured NICs is detected, yet all 4 I believe are actually supported by SCO 6.

The rest of the installation goes through as expected. Upon reboot after installation, it detects the hard disk as Generic IDE, possibly suggesting it can't detect the IDE controller on the PCI bus either, and is in compatibility mode.

The current theory I have is that SCO OpenServer 6 cannot enumerate the VirtualBox PCI Bus for some reason, and the stuff that does work, works strictly through fallbacks (possibly BIOS calls for disk access?).

To list the PCI bus on SCO OpenServer 6.0.0, you run hw -r pci, and the output of that running under VirtualBox is:

# hw -r pci

Report about PCI for scosysv on Wed Nov 11 14:46:55 2009

#

Obviously, it looks like SCO OpenServer 6.0.0 just can't read the bus... now, if you run the same command on the same OS, but instead running under VMWare Fusion 2.0.4, you get a report that is over 1000 lines long, I'll attach it to this ticket.

I'm also going to attach my VBox.log and VBox.log.1 for completeness.

Thanks!

[Brad House]

SCO OpenServer 6.0.0 PCI Output Under VMWare Fusion

[Brad House]

VBox.log from installation

[Brad House]

VBox.log from after reboot of installed OS

[Brad House]

I should also note that installing SCO6 Maintenance Pack 4 does _not_ resolve the issue, the hw -r pci request still returns no results ....

Please feel free to ask me any questions, I'd also be happy test patches, etc.

Thanks!

[Brad House]

Ticket Can Be Closed

As of VirtualBox 3.2.0, SCO OpenServer 6.0.0 can enumerate the PCI BUS. Great job guys! (I'm sure it had nothing to do with this ticket, but always nice to see things work that didn't previously).

Some other notes:

• Used the LSILogic SCSI controller as the IDE controller was really slow and ate a ton of CPU on the host.
• Used the Intel Pro 1000 T Server (82543GC) NIC
• Due to clock skew issues (2x clock) in the OS (the bootloader didn't have the issue interestingly), I had to turn on WarpDrive:

  VBoxManage setextradata "SCO 6" "VBoxInternal/TM/WarpDrivePercentage" 50
  

• I didn't test out USB as I have no need for it (I actually disabled it in the VM config), same with audio
• My previous settings/notes still otherwise apply