Unixware7: Boot block corruption

[rajeshbahl]

We met with a problem in our unixware 7 server.One floppy on which some backup was taken got left in the floppy drive of the machine. When the machine got rebooted, the system showed the following message:
INVALID SYSTEM DISK, REPLACE AND PRESS ANY KEY

When pressed, the system never booted.Later investigations showed that the boot block had developed trouble.As no other means were available,we had to reinstall the server OS. Just to confirm the problem we intentionally left one floppy in the drive and rebooted.EXACTLY SAME THING HAPPENED AGAIN, confirming the doubt.
Why does this happen?
Is there any way/command to recover the corrupted boot block as we have the similar "dparam" command in openserver 5?

Also we need to disable the GUI login screen at startup due to some constraints.How can we do that?


Thanks In Advance
Rajesh K. Bahl

 

[pcunix]

Sounds like you had (and perhaps have) a boot sector virus on the floppy.

If you did this with a clean floppy, you'd get that message (if it were a DOS floppy or if your BIOS provides a similar message) but no harm would be done to your hard drive boot sector.

scologin disable, and you can use dd to copy anything to anything.
Tony Lawrence
SCO Unix/Linux Resources

http://pcunix.com

tony@pcunix.com

 

[rajeshbahl]

Tony, does that mean that there is no way to recover the corrupted boot block? Also can a virus affect the UNIX system?

Also, in which file to add scologin disable?Will this prevent the CDE Desktop ?



Rajesh K. Bahl

 

[pcunix]

There's no file: just login as root and type "scologin disable"

A boot sector virus can affect ANY boot sector- that's what a boot sector virus does.

And of course you can recover it- you just have to overwrite it with a proper boot sector.
Tony Lawrence
SCO Unix/Linux Resources

http://pcunix.com

tony@pcunix.com

 

[rajeshbahl]

Thanks for the update , Tony. Can you suggest this procedure for overwriting boot record in Unixware 7?


Thanks
Rajesh K. Bahl

 

[pcunix]

No, I don't have a UW system to look at, sorry. Tony Lawrence
SCO Unix/Linux Resources

http://pcunix.com

tony@pcunix.com