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SCO OpenServer Precompiled Binaries

SCO OpenServer Precompiled Binaries

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Here you can find a collection of precompiled binaries for SCO OpenServer 5.

I created these because SCO OpenServer 5 is very old now, and building modern or even semi-modern open source tools for it can be difficult and time-consuming. These binaries are provided to help people keep legacy SCO systems running, especially where the original system still performs an important business function.

Need help with SCO OpenServer?

I still actively work with SCO OpenServer 5 systems and legacy applications and have achieved some remarkable results modernising them for clients. If you’re running an old SCO system and wondering what’s still possible, get in touch.

Available Binaries

Bootstrap

Working with APIs and JSON

  • jq 1.7.1 — command-line JSON processor. Extract fields from API responses, reshape them into CSV for the application to consume, and build correctly-escaped JSON request bodies. Single self-contained binary with the oniguruma regex engine built in.

Modern Userspace

Programming languages

Printing & document output

Both compiled on OpenServer 5.0.7.

  • GNU a2ps 4.14 – text and source to PostScript, with syntax highlighting, headers and n-up layout. Prints straight to a network printer on port 9100 via bash /dev/tcp. (Installs to a fixed path, /usr/local/a2ps-4.14.)
  • Ghostscript 9.06 – PostScript and PDF interpreter. Reads modern PDFs (PDF 1.7, transparency, embedded fonts), converts PostScript to and from PDF, and rasterizes for printing. Including to non-PostScript PCL and inkjet printers via ~380 built-in drivers. Single self-contained relocatable binary, no support files.

Other / Standalone

Unless otherwise stated the software has been compiled on SCO OpenServer 5.0.6 with

I will add more to the collection as and when I need them. Last updated May 2026.

What these tools actually make possible

SCO OpenServer 5 boxes that are still in production tend to share the same problem: the business application running on them works fine, but the operating system is isolated from the modern world. No TLS support means no communication with external APIs or cloud services. No reliable backup tools means a failing disk is a crisis rather than an inconvenience. No scripting capability beyond the stock shell means automation is off the table.

The tools on this page change that, and they do so without touching the core application at all.

Once curl with TLS is in place, the SCO box can communicate securely with any modern HTTPS endpoint – your own APIs, cloud storage, reporting services, whatever you use elsewhere in your infrastructure. That single binary turns a network-isolated legacy machine into one that can participate in your systems.

jq is what makes that practical rather than theoretical. An API response is JSON, and parsing JSON with sed is how integrations break. jq extracts the fields you want, turns them into CSV your application can read, and more importantly builds valid JSON going the other way, so a customer name with an apostrophe in it doesn’t produce a malformed request.

One example of what that makes possible: you can turn the plain text your application prints into branded PDF invoices and reports with a single curl command, without changing the application.

a2ps and Ghostscript give the box a document pipeline that works with no network at all. a2ps turns the plain text your application prints into properly formatted PostScript – paginated, with headers and borders. Ghostscript turns that into a PDF, or rasterizes it for a printer that doesn’t speak PostScript. It also reads modern PDFs, something the 1998-vintage Ghostscript that SCO shipped cannot do at all.

That solves a different problem from the PDF service. The local tools are for operational output – reports, listings, picking notes, anything that needs to be legible and on paper. When the document is going to a customer and has to look like your letterhead, the service does the stationery overlay, needs nothing installed beyond curl, and lets you change the design without ever touching the legacy box. The two also chain: generate the branded PDF through the service, then use Ghostscript locally to print it on whatever printer is actually attached.

rsync gives you proper incremental backups to a modern Linux or NAS box – and when the time comes to migrate data off SCO entirely, rsync is how you do it live, with minimal disruption.

Python 3.6 with SQLite built in means you can run real data extraction and transformation directly on the machine. Pull records from the legacy database, reshape them, write them to SQLite, push them to an external system via curl – all without a middleware server, without a vendor, and without disturbing the application that still needs to run.

GNU tar, bash, and the modern userspace set (coreutils, grep, findutils, gawk) fill in the interoperability gaps:
archives that unpack on any modern system, shell scripting that behaves predictably, and the standard Unix text-processing pipeline (grep -rE | awk ‘…’ | sort -u) that anyone who’s worked on Linux already knows.

With nano on the box itself, you can write, edit, and run real data-wrangling scripts in place. No need to copy data off to a Linux box, process it, and copy results back.

Together, these tools make a set of things practical that were previously very difficult:

  • Reliable, automated off-site backups
  • Extracting business data from legacy systems for reporting or migration
  • Integrating a SCO box into modern infrastructure without replacing it
  • Sysadmin work on the box itself with the same toolchain
  • In-place log analysis and reporting – find recent files, grep -rE for patterns, awk for column work, sort -u for distinct counts – without leaving SCO
  • Planning and executing a safe, phased move away from SCO – on your terms and timeline, not in a crisis
  • Generating branded PDF documents from the plain text your application prints.
  • Producing and printing PDFs entirely on the SCO box, including to printers that don’t support PostScript.

None of this requires touching the application or the core OS configuration. These are drop-in binaries that sit quietly in /usr/local/bin and give you options you didn’t have before.

Need help with SCO OpenServer?

I still work with SCO OpenServer 5 systems and legacy business applications. If you need help keeping an old SCO system running, recovering from a failing server, virtualising SCO, sourcing missing tools, fixing backups, or planning a modernisation project, please get in touch. 

I can help with:

  • SCO OpenServer 5 troubleshooting and maintenance
  • Legacy server recovery, backup, and virtualisation
  • Printing, terminal, networking, and application environment issues
  • Extracting data from legacy systems for reporting or automation
  • Modernising legacy workflows with APIs, automation, reporting tools, and cloud-based services
  • Planning a safe, phased move away from SCO where appropriate

If you have an old SCO OpenServer system that still matters to your business, I may be able to help you keep it running, reduce risk, and identify sensible opportunities for modernisation. For a full overview of support and modernisation services, visit the SCO OpenServer Support Page.

Get help with SCO OpenServer






PuTTY Settings for SCO OpenServer 5 – Basic Setup and 256-Colour Support

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If you connect to SCO OpenServer 5 using PuTTY, a handful of settings make the difference between a frustrating experience and a comfortable one.

The basics haven’t changed since the platform was mainstream, but there’s now a second set of settings worth knowing about, the ones that give you full 256-colour support and proper syntax highlighting in tools like nano.

Essential Settings

SCO OpenServer 5 has some quirks that trip up PuTTY’s defaults. Change these before you connect and most compatibility problems disappear.

Keyboard settings

Set Backspace key to Control-H. SCO expects the old-style backspace and PuTTY’s default sends the wrong code, which makes editing at the command line awkward.

Set The Function keys and keypad to SCO. This maps the function keys correctly for SCO’s terminal environment.

Correct keyboard settings for using putty with SCO

Terminal Type

Set Terminal-type string to xterm. This is what SCO expects and it gives you a clean, compatible display.

SCOadmin with correct terminal settings

Save the session after making these changes. PuTTY only sends the terminal-type string at connection time, so changes don’t take effect in an already-open session.

256-Colour Support

The settings above give you a working terminal. With one more step you can have a good terminal with full 256-colour support, syntax highlighting in editors, and proper colour output from directory listings and other tools, just like you’d get on a modern Linux box.

SCO OpenServer 5’s stock xterm terminfo entry has no colour capabilities at all. It predates the 8/16/256-colour conventions that everything else takes for granted, which is why the terminal looks flat, editors show no highlighting, and why ls output is a wall of monochrome text.

Step 1 – Install the terminfo entry on the SCO box

My nano repository on GitHub includes a 256-colour xterm-256color terminfo source file, derived from modern ncurses and adjusted for SCO’s 16-bit terminfo number storage. Install it once on the SCO box:

tic extras/xterm-256color-sco.src

Step 2 – Update PuTTY’s settings

With the terminfo entry in place on the server, tell PuTTY to use it:

  • Connection – Data – set Terminal-type string to xterm-256color. SCO will see the correct $TERM at login automatically, so you won’t need to export it manually every session.
  • Window – Colours – tick Allow terminal to specify ANSI colours and Allow terminal to use xterm 256-colour mode. Both need to be on, or PuTTY will silently ignore 256-colour escape sequences.

Step 3 – Verify

tput colors

If it returns 256, everything is working.

What this gives you

Once the terminal is set up correctly, a surprising amount comes to life. A few examples:

Syntax highlighting in nano. Install GNU nano 2.9.8 for SCO and enable the bundled syntax files — C, Python, shell scripts, and 40+ others are highlighted automatically.

Colour directory listings. Install GNU coreutils 8.32 for SCO and add a couple of aliases to your .bashrc:

eval "$(gdircolors)"
alias ls='gls --color=auto'
alias ll='gls -lh --color=auto'

That gives you colour-coded ls output — directories, executables, symlinks and archives all distinct — exactly as you’d see on Linux. The binaries install with a g prefix so they sit alongside SCO’s stock tools without replacing them.

Image of PuTTY running on SCO OpenServer 5.0.7 with 256 Colour Support

General colour output. Any tool that emits colour escape sequences will now render correctly. With a proper $TERM set and the xterm-256color terminfo in place, the terminal behaves the way modern tooling expects.

Taking It Further

Getting PuTTY set up correctly is a good first step – but if you’re regularly working on a SCO OpenServer 5 system, it’s worth knowing there’s now a full set of modern tools available for it too.

From curl with TLS to Python, rsync, bash, and the GNU userspace utilities, the SCO OpenServer precompiled binaries page has everything you need to turn an isolated legacy box into one that can hold its own in a modern infrastructure, all without touching the business application running on it.

If you’re looking for broader help, such as virtualising ageing hardware, keeping the system patched and secure, integrating with modern services, or planning a migration my SCO OpenServer support page covers what’s possible and how to get started.

How to add a USB 3 PCIe card to a Dell PowerEdge Server

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Adding a USB 3 PCIe card to a Dell PowerEdge Server is easy, but most USB 3 PCIe cards require an internal power source, and Dell servers do not have any.

The HighPoint RocketU 1344A PCIe card works perfectly with Dell PowerEdge servers and does not require any additional power source. I’ve used it on many times and not a problem.

  • It is a PCIe x4 card and can supply up to 25W of power
    (most add-in cards which are PCIe x1 and provide only 10W of power).
  • It has 4x Dedicated 10Gb/s USB 3.1 ports..

It is more expensive than many USB3 cards, but I have found it to be very good.

[aawp box=”B0797HL9Z3″ title=”High Point RocketU 1344A PCI-Express 3.0″]

I did some testing by copying a Windows Server ISO to a Samsung Portable SSD, it took 16 seconds with the USB 3 card:

Image showing file copy from Dell PowerEdge to Samsung Portable SSD T5 over USB 3 using a Highpoint USB PCIe card

The same file from the USB2 ports took 2 minutes and 57 seconds to complete:

Image showing a file copy from a Dell PowerEdge to a Smasung Portable SSD T5 over USB2

This is the Samsung SSD from Amazon I used for testing. It is tiny, smaller than a credit card!

Here is the card installed in the server:

Image of Dell PowerEdge Server with HighPoint Four Port USB 3 Card Installed

Migrating from SBS 2003 to Windows Server 2012 r2 Essentials in Azure

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I’ve been considering the idea of migrating customer systems from on-premise Windows Server 2003 SBS to Windows Server 2012 r2 Essentials hosted on Azure for a while now. For one reason or another I’ve stuck to on-premises deployments, mainly due to lack of decent internet connectivity at client sites.

I’ve just completed the first full migration to a fully Azure based infrastructure and it is working well. It was a good fit for this customer because:

  • The old SBS 2003 server was due for replacement anyway.
  • Despite only having six users they have a huge amount of email which was shifted to Office 365.
  • They have closed their office premises and will be working from home based offices from now on.
  • They have a small line of business application which needs a central server to run on.
  • SSL VPN functionality of Essentials makes connectivity straightforward and cheap.

The main benefits of running Windows Server Essentials Experience in the cloud as I see it

  • No hardware to purchase or maintain. The customer had a competitive quote from another IT service provider quoting for physical hardware, which was much more expensive. Cheaper for the customer/more competitive for the partner.
  • Takes a very short time to get up an running, even in a migration scenario. I was able to start the work without waiting for a box to turn up.
  • The server resources can be easily modified to suit customer requirements.
  • The Azure edition of Windows Server Essentials Experience does not have any of the locks or limits of the on-premises edition as it is actually Windows Server 2012 r2 Datacenter edition.
  • The SSL VPN functionality of Essentials Edition enables remote workers to connect and join to the domain without having to be on the same premises as with previous versions.
  • The installation of Windows Server Essentials Experience from the Azure gallery is pre-customized to suit a cloud based deployment.

The good news is that if you have completed an on-premise migration to Windows Server Essentials, then the process of migrating to Azure is really not all that different.

Because the process is so similar and because there is so much documentation that already covers the migration procedure already this post is really only documenting the process that I went though and my thoughts on it where that process would differ from a regular on-premise migration.

Broadly speaking, I followed the procedure laid out on Technet here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn408633.aspx 

Create your Windows Server Essentials Virtual Machine, storage and network

Follow the instructions on this technet article to build your virtual resources within Azure.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn520828.aspx#BKMK_CreateVM

For this deployment I have started with a “Small” virtual machine just to see how it runs, I may well increase it in the future.

I was really surprised at how good the performance of a Small Azure Virtual Machinee is, honestly I expected it to be diabolical, but actually it is perfectly adequate for a lot of tasks. There were a couple of parts of the setup procedure which could have used more resources though, so I did at one stage increase the virtual machine size temporarily.

In addition to the base disk I also added a 10Gb drive for storage of active directory and a 180Gb drive for data storage.

Linking the Azure virtual network linked to your on-premise LAN

This step is not strictly necessary as there are a number of different approaches you could take to move data from the on-premise network into Azure. But I chose to link the local network with the Azure virtual network using the Azure site-site VPN capability. This makes joining the new essentials server on to the existing domain easy and makes transferring data more simple.

In this case the customer had a Draytek router and I have written a separate post on how to create a site to site link between a Draytek and Microsoft Azure. There are lots of guides on the net that explain how to achieve the same thing with different router vendors.

In this scenario the link back to the local network will be removed when the migration is complete, but clearly this approach would work well for providing access to office based clients. In this instance the server will be accessed by clients using the SSTP VPN provided by Azure.

This is how the virtual network looked after transferring data from on-premise LAN to Azure:

Screenshot of Azure Virtual Network after data transfer from on-premise network

Install the and configure Azure Powershell

You need to install the Azure Powershell in order to be able to assign your new virtual machine a Static Internal IP Address as all IPs in Azure are dynamic.

Follow the instructions here to install Azure Powershell:

http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/install-configure-powershell/

Installation of Azure Powershell Modules using the Web Platform Installer

Set a Static Internal IP address on your new Essentials VM

Because all VMs in Azure are assigned IP addresses automatically we need to ensure that the essentials server has a static IP address so that we can set that server as a DNS target for the virtual network. In Azure this is referred to as a DIP – I have no idea what the D in DIP stands for, so if anyone knows, please let me know!

This will allow the server itself, clients and other virtual machines to function properly within the AD domain.

Join the essentials server to the domain and promote to a domain controller.

You should now have everything in place to allow you to move forward and install Active Directory services and promote your new Windows Server Essentials virtual machine to a domain controller. Depending on the speed of your link this may take a while. For me it took around 20 minutes while AD was upgraded on the existing server and the Windows Essentials machine was rebooted.

At this stage you can continue with the migration just as if it were an on-premise deployment, you may need to plan well ahead if you have lots of data to transfer and do not have access to a fast internet connection to do it with.

For copying the data from the source system I just used Robocopy and was able to maintain at least 5Mb upload most of the time.

Allow anywhere access

Anywhere access is one of the things in Essentials that makes it work so well in Azure. The SSL-VPN means that you need only open ports 80 and 443, which I think is really neat..

A word of warning though, if you are migrating from SBS 2003, some of the existing group polices made it difficult for me to run the anywhere access wizard. If you get problems with the VPN wizard failing, see this post.

After you have successfully run the VPN wizard, you need to assign a static address pool in RRAS administrator. See this document for more details:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd469667.aspx

Add an additional UPN suffix to local domain(Optional)

I always like to add an additional UPN suffix the the local AD so that users can use the same sign-in information on 365 as their regular resources. See here…

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/243629

Conclusion

Migrating from SBS 2003 to Office 365 and Azure hosted essentials is mostly straightforward. If I was migrating a system with so few users again then I would just fresh install and lose the existing AD, but this was a good opportunity to prove the concept as I will be moving some customer resouces with more sophisticated requirements and greater number of users in the near future and the process will be much the same.

I do have a confession to make though….

I am running Storagecraft Shadowprotect on the VM and sending the data out of Azure back to our own storage running in a co-lo facility near our offices. Why? This is the first real infrastructure that I have run in the cloud that is not on our own hardware where we have complete control over it, having the system backed up to our own servers makes me sleep well at night. Because the upload capacity of Azure is so good it hardly takes any time to run a Storagecraft Backup so I feel OK about it

VPN was not configured successfully in Windows Server 2012 Essentials

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During a recent SBS 2003 to Windows Server 2012 r2 Essentials migration I was having a number of problems setting up anywhere access. The two problems that I was getting were:

  • Anywhere access to your server is blocked
  • VPN was not configured successfully

Windows Server Essentials Anywhere access - VPN was not configured successfully

I searched all over but couldn’t come up with anything useful and the dashboard.log file didn’t show anything useful, just the error:

ConnectivityCenter: RemoteAccessAnalyzer: VPN server deployment result: InstallationFailed

The ports 80 and 443 required for Remote Web Access and VPN were without doubt open but it seemed to me that the wizard always failed at the verification stage, so I figured that it must be seeing something different than I was picking up in my tests.

Now, this server has been configured with a custom domain name of remote.companydomain.com and externally this resolved no problems at all.

But if I tried to ping that address or use nslookup on the essentials server to resolve the external DNS address that had been assigned to the server it failed. Then I realized what was going on.

This system/customer is new to me and I had made the new essentials server a domain controller which also meant that it would have replicated DNS records from the source domain controller.

Although the internal domain name was companyname.local there was also a forward lookup zone for the main companyname.com address space, because the essentials server was rightly using itself as a DNS server it was unable to resolve remote.companyname.com using its own DNS forward lookup zone for the external domain as the record for remote.companyname.com had not been added.

So I had two choices, remove the forward lookup zone or add the remote.companyname.com address to it as an A record. It was obvious after a little investigation why the external domain name had been added to the active directory DNS, but the reason it was include it was no longer appropriate, so I deleted the whole zone.

I then restarted the DNS server and cleared the DNS cache from a command prompt with:

ipconfig /flushdns

and tried to resolve the external domain name again and this now resolved correctly.

So I once again tried to run the Windows Essentials Anywhere Access Wizard and it still failed with the exact same issue! Infuriating! .

It did show one less error this time though and I was down to “VPN was not configured successfully” only this time. This error took make ages to figure out though.

Fixing the VPN was not configured successfully error

I ended up looking through the CBS.LOG file in quite some detail and figured out what the problem was. Thanks to someone on this thread on technet for the inspiration to look there.

When the VPN is being enabled Windows Essentials attempts to setup a Windows Internal Database and in my case failed to do so due to a logon failure as it did not have the “Logon as a Service” privilege. Here is a sample of the log:

2014-08-29 23:04:32, Error CSI 00000001 (F) Logged @2014/8/29:22:04:32.768 : [ml:130{65},l:128{64}]"Attempting to start service {MSSQL$MICROSOFT##WID} synchronously"
[gle=0x80004005]
2014-08-29 23:04:32, Error CSI 00000002 (F) Logged @2014/8/29:22:04:32.893 : [ml:84{42},l:82{41}]"start service MSSQL$MICROSOFT##WID (1069)"
[gle=0x80004005]
2014-08-29 23:04:32, Error CSI 00000003@2014/8/29:22:04:32.893 (F) CMIADAPTER: Inner Error Message from AI HRESULT = HRESULT_FROM_WIN32(1069)
 [
[51]"The service did not start due to a logon failure.

Now I felt I was getting close to the source of the issue, light at the end of the tunnel (you have no idea how long I spent trying to figure this out).

The knowledge base article 2832204 from Microsoft explains how to make the appropriate group policy changes to stop this prevent the specific issue of being unable to start the MSSQL$MICROSOFT##WID service, which is actually the root cause of the wizard not being able to finish.

Here is a screenshot of how I the corrected group policy looked on the system I was working on:

Changing the logon as a service policy to resolve the error "VPN was not configured" on Windows Server Essentials Experience

After you have changed the policy run a quick “gpupdate” to make the new policy active and then try running the VPN wizard again, the wizard took a long time to complete but I was fairly confident it was going to work as I could see the SQL database becoming active in Task Manager:

Essentials Anywhere Access Creating a Windows Internal SQL Database

The wizard finally finished with success! I spent a long time trying to figure out the cause of this problem and I am so glad to see the back of it. I really hope this helps you if you are having the same issue.