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I'm helping to sort out an ancient Intergraph 6800 machine at work, running CLIX, a proprietary Unix.

Binning the system is not an option. It is a certified safety-critical system that would cost $millions to replace. Please do not post suggestions that the system could be replaced as it is utterly infeasible to do so, even if the problem detailed in this posting cannot be addressed.

Recently the hard-disk died so (before I was involved) the OS (1999 vintage) was installed on a new hard disk. A recovery company got all the files off the old hard disk and most of my involvement has been copying applications and data off the CD supplied by the recovery company and setting ownership and permissions correctly on the fresh installation.

One point however is that the system used to allow at least six users to log in but now if more than two do, /bin/login says:

Too many users logged on.
Try again later.

Those strings are in the /bin/login executable.

The system does use a licencing system and I suspect that a crucial licencing file is missing from the fresh installation. I'm sure it will be on the recovery CD but does anyone with knowledge of these old licencing systems have any suggestions about where the files are so I can copy them across from the CD ?

PS, if anyone has a licence for Intergraph NFS that they want to liquidate, we might be interested.

HopelessN00b
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Michael restore Monica Cellio
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    Binning the system is always an option. It just might cost money. The question is whether it will cost more money to keep it running than to replace it. – Michael Hampton Jan 17 '14 at 10:23
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    What was the point of that comment ? – Michael restore Monica Cellio Jan 17 '14 at 10:47
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    Its a comment. The point of it is to put across something unsuitable to being an answer. While I suppose these systems were built like a brick outhouse, at some point, something you can't find a replacement for may break, or you simply may no longer have the folk who remember how these things are fixed. Someone may know the answer to your immediate problem, but this is something any sysadmin keeps in mind on the longer term – Journeyman Geek Jan 17 '14 at 10:51
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    @Michael Correcting a factual error? The truth? Adding information? Lots of good reasons for that comment. I mean, good luck with getting a proper answer you can use, but Michael Hampton's comment is accurate and valid. To add to it, I'd point out that you're trusting your safety to a piece of software that's legally old enough to drink. Would not make me feel remotely safe. – HopelessN00b Jan 17 '14 at 10:51
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    What they said. Seriously, I do wish you luck in solving this, but I suspect you're going to be waiting a long while. When I tried to Google this, I got referred to an archaeologist...I suspect the same happened to you. – Michael Hampton Jan 17 '14 at 10:53
  • Actually, that might be an idea - older software would almost certainly come with paper manuals, and I wouldn't be surprised if an organisation that relied on such relics kept them around. – Journeyman Geek Jan 17 '14 at 10:57
  • A bit of googling points me to I/LICENSE or I_LICENSE as the software used to determine how many users can log in. – Dennis Kaarsemaker Jan 17 '14 at 11:05
  • https://support.intergraph.com/itservices/sysdocs/software/dsa086600.pdf looks interesting, and thats probably the right place to start digging - the software is mentioned on page 7, and mentions a licence server. Good luck! – Journeyman Geek Jan 17 '14 at 12:01
  • Thanks for the tips. We do have a lot of dead-tree documentation, including the two volumes of the system administration manual, and I spent several hours perusing it, but information of that sort would not normally be required of course. I might have to perform an hierarchical file-by-file comparison of the old and new systems. By the way, the 'find' command had me perplexed for a while, since without an explicit '-print' option, it output nothing. I think SCO was the last system I used that did that. – Michael restore Monica Cellio Jan 17 '14 at 20:21
  • Ok, I will say nothing about replacing it. I also wouldn't know where to find a compiler for it. That said, is there no more support for it? Then how in the world is it responsible still running something on it? At least for mainframe stuff like BS2000 and AS400 there is still support, and those systems cost a hell of a lot of money, but at least you're not left in uncharted waters when something breaks... Nevertheless I wish you good luck (honestly). – Marki Jan 26 '14 at 14:54

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