who is familiar with xenix?
 

is anyone here still familiar with xenix? i'm looking for a way to access a xenix computer remotely. something that is the equivalent to remote desktop. i'm not even sure it's possibly since it's and older software, but if anyone had suggestions that'd be great. thanks.

Moved: This thread is more suitable in Other *Nix and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

I thought Xenix was no more - SCO bought it and put it into Unix. Since it is so old, I'd suggest digging out a Unix manual from the 80s and seeing if that throws up any ideas.

thanks for moving it. i wasn't sure exactly where to put it.

xenix was originally a microsoft version of unix, but obviously they don't support it anymore. it hasn't been updated in at least 15 years. at least not that i'm aware of.

Telnet is about your only option. I don't think Xenix had X, but if it did, you could setup an X server on your remote to connect to the Xenis server's X client...

Ah my old pal Xenix...

Once upon a time I worked on SCO Xenix (there apparently was once a MS Xenix if you can beleive that). (I know SCO is dirty word for Linux folks but SCO Unix was actually pretty good and came out after Xenix.) Xenix actually ran on the 286 PC if you'll believe that.

Anyway if you're using Xenix that old you likely don't have a TCP/IP on it. Originally TCP/IP was an add on prroduct for SCO Unix too.

The commands us old farts used back before the days of namby/pamby networking and GUIs were:
cu:
Command to connect - could use it either for dial out to modem or for cross over serial connections. (Similar in function to telnet but different in usage - there were a series of commands you could use with it that all started with "~". I recall ~. was what one hit to exit. I THINK ~put and ~get were the put and get commands for transferring a single file from/to the host you'd dialed into.

uucp:
Used for transferring files over same serial style connections noted above. This was rather complicated to get going but would allow you to even schedule the file sends.

Not sure if that answered you.

If you're looking for a remote console it didn't have one as I recall.

However if you're running on PC hardware you can likely find a KVM that will let you do it. We use Raritan products here and hook most of our servers up to get remote access to the consoles. This is because we don't actually have monitors/keyboards attached to the servers as they're in our data center.

One thing I like about Raritan is it has a web browser we can use to access it instead of needing a physical device. This comes in quite handy for doing Systems Administration over VPN from my home to the office.

Their web site is: http://www.raritan.com

There are likely other KVM vendors that can do similar things. This just happens to be the one they were using here when I got here. My guess is none of them will be able to answer you specifically about Xenix. You probably would need to see if your monitor is VGA/SVGA (or worse yet XGA or -shudder- RGB) and your keyboard PS2 or whatever and just verify they have a attachment that supports that. The Raritan stuff we use here does most PCs (Linux/Windoze) and also has serial stuff for HP-UX servers.

And of course not having TCP/IP it didn't have X either - that TOO was an add on product.

When SCO relaunched their SCO Unix as SCO OpenDeskTop the main change was that they included TCP/IP and X-Windows in the distribution but until then you didn't get these without paying an extra cost.

I had thought that everything newer than Xenix on the old RadioShack computers had included TCP/IP :) Now I know better! :)

Yep - actually there was AT&T Unix that ran on 386 machines before that - back when AT&T was still trying to make computers. AT&T Unix on the AT&T 6386 and the 3B2 (Motorola chip based systems) was the first Unix I worked on. That later became NCR Unix when AT&T bought NCR and let them run the PC division.

It amazed me 3 years ago when I found out a large retailer based in Arkansas was still using NCR Unix on the NCR 3430/40 in their stores. They wanted me to work on a bare metal restore solution for them and the headhunter was rather annoyed when I passed up that opportunity. He asked why I'd put it on my resume - told him it was to show the breadth of my experience - it hadn't occurred to me anyone was still using that.