jeff@questar.QUESTAR.MN.ORG (Jeff Holmes) (10/20/88)
I'm currently (anxiously :-) waiting for Minix 1.2 from Prentice-Hall, and have been following this group since I first heard about minix. With the large volume of postings going through here, and alot of Minix-specific terms being used I have a couple of questions. o What would be the simplest (best?) way to upgrade to 1.3 ? - Wait until Prentice-Hall is ready to distribute the upgrade package? (and does anyone know approx. cost of package?) - Get all cdiffs from the net and upgrade that way. (I must say I've been a little overwhelmed by all the diffs being posted, not having been exposed to Minix yet I've gotten a little confused. I was saving everything but there was so much, and I wasn't quite sure what it all was, so I couldn't organize it for identification later when I finally get Minix). - And what the heck is a cdiff anyway? I hope these questions aren't to ignorant, and thanks in advance for any replies. Jeff -- Jeff Holmes DOMAIN: jeff@questar.mn.org Questar Data Systems UUCP: amdahl!bungia!questar!jeff
jeff@questar.QUESTAR.MN.ORG (Jeff Holmes) (03/28/89)
Hi, I was compiling Monty Wall's 'ps' and found EOF to be #defined as (-1) in stdio.h and (-104) in minix/error.h (used by device drivers). I have a conflict here...could someone tell me how they handled this? P.S. Did anyone have problems getting 1.3 compress to work? It compiled with a few incompatible pointer warnings but gives unexpected interrupt errors when run. Any help? (Is there a patch out there that I don't happen to have?) Thanks -jeff- -- Jeff Holmes DOMAIN: jeff@questar.mn.org Questar Data Systems UUCP: amdahl!bungia!questar!jeff
HELMER%SDNET.BITNET@vm1.nodak.edu (Guy Helmer) (05/23/89)
I have Minix 1.3 running great on my 386 except I don't have a termcap file and it's really driving me nuts. I can't edit a file and 'more' is really causing me stress. Thanks in advance for any help. -- Guy Helmer
cracraft@ai.mit.edu (Stuart Cracraft) (09/17/90)
[ A repost of a message posted last night that had mysteriously vanished by this morning. If censored because in the message the view is that Minix has some serious, basic faults, then I'd be even doubly wary of it!] It was disappointing bringing up Minix 1.3. Its seeming total reliance on floppies and lack of well-documented hard disk support made bringing up the hard disk a real chore. fdisk couldn't seem to display any hexadecimal value over FF in the output to the "p" command. When using a hard disk with more than FF sectors I had to guess than the "6" displayed was really FE+6 hex for the end of the partition and subtract from it the starting value of the partition, guesswork at best. Picking the right 2nd parameter for mkfs for /dev/hd2 was hard and I wasn't even sure I got it right since the resulting /usr seemed too small. I run a 100mb ARRL technology Conner disk. I partitioned into two partitions of 50mb each. Eventually I got everything copied over from the floppies to the hard disk, but this too was a disappointment, because there are no clear instructions on exactly what directories on the floppies go to which directories on the hard disk. Another problem was the indication that on an AT "cp /dev/at0 /dev/hd3" would copy the root over. But no mention was made of whether /dev/hd3 would have to be mkfs'd and how that was to be done. This is especially vexing because one would normally make /dev/hd1 or /dev/hd2 the entire partition and only THEN would you find out you need to build a /dev/hd3 also for storing the root. What do you end up doing? Zapping the entire build of hd2 and then making hd3 followed by remaking hd2? And of course the lack of a bootable hard drive is the most notable problem of Minix 1.3 I can only hope that future Minix's correct these problems. Perhaps some of the people running 1.5.xx will comment on them. Eventually I deinstalled Minix and put DOS back up as the sole OS. Stuart
cechew@bruce.cs.monash.OZ.AU (Earl Chew) (09/18/90)
In <10758@life.ai.mit.edu> cracraft@ai.mit.edu (Stuart Cracraft) writes: >It was disappointing bringing up Minix 1.3. Its seeming total >reliance on floppies and lack of well-documented hard disk support >made bringing up the hard disk a real chore. This is true. There is, at present, no bullet proof way to bring up a hard disk. Most people usually make at least one mistake. The method described in the documentation for Minix 1.3 still basically relies on a floppy based boot. Hard disk support is there --- but you have to invest time and effort into understanding how it all fits together. >fdisk couldn't seem to display any hexadecimal value over FF in the Hmm.. I think that the new fdisk (1.5.10) works much better than that in Minix 1.3. You're comments probably do not apply to the new version. >Picking the right 2nd parameter for mkfs for /dev/hd2 was hard and I Why is it hard? It's the just size of the partition in kb. I suppose it could have been hard since you had trouble with the old fdisk. >Eventually I got everything copied over from the floppies to the hard >disk, but this too was a disappointment, because there are no clear >instructions on exactly what directories on the floppies go to which >directories on the hard disk. Hmmm... the way the hard disk is used in 1.3, you have to treat it each partition like a big floppy. Thus instead of mounting a /usr floppy (or a /user floppy) you will mount a /usr hard disk partition, etc. >Another problem was the indication that on an AT "cp /dev/at0 /dev/hd3" >would copy the root over. But no mention was made of whether /dev/hd3 >would have to be mkfs'd and how that was to be done. This is especially Obviously /dev/hd3 needs to be a real partition (ie non zero size). There is no need to mkfs /dev/hd3 because `cp /dev/at0 /dev/hd3' takes an image of the entire floppy and dumps it on /dev/hd3. Thus you will end up with a mirror image of the floppy. This of course means that it is useless allocating much more than 1.2Mb for /dev/hd3. But I agree that this form of hard disk support is a kludge. >And of course the lack of a bootable hard drive is the most notable >problem of Minix 1.3 >I can only hope that future Minix's correct these problems. Perhaps >some of the people running 1.5.xx will comment on them. Shoelace addresses all these problems. It will work on 1.3 and 1.5.10. However, as some people have found out, it is not bullet proof. Minix gives you free and easy access to the entire hard disk. There is more than enough rope to hang yourself. >Eventually I deinstalled Minix and put DOS back up as the sole OS. With such a large hard disk --- you can install Minix and DOS on the same disk :-) Earl -- Earl Chew, Dept of Computer Science, Monash University, Australia 3168 EMAIL: cechew@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au PHONE: 03 5655447 FAX: 03 5655146 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
tvf@cci632.UUCP (Tom Frauenhofer) (09/18/90)
In article <10758@life.ai.mit.edu> cracraft@ai.mit.edu (Stuart Cracraft) writes: >[ A repost of a message posted last night that had mysteriously vanished >by this morning. If censored because in the message the view is that >Minix has some serious, basic faults, then I'd be even doubly wary of >it!] This is a wild assumption, totally unfounded (I read your original posting of this earlier). When you make a statement like the above, you had better offer up some tangible proof, my friend. Anyway, >It was disappointing bringing up Minix 1.3. Its seeming total >reliance on floppies and lack of well-documented hard disk support >made bringing up the hard disk a real chore. I could argue that Minix was designed to be a teaching OS (well, version 1.3 was). It was a vast improvement over 1.2. 1.3 was still not good enough for the "appliance" user (plug it in and it works). 1.5 is pretty close (not quite close enough, but much better for naive users than 1.3 ever was). You still have to be more careful with floppy fs's than I'd like, but nothings perfect. BTW, I recently made the switch to Minix from Microport V/AT, mainly because I am going to upgrade my system to a 386sx, and I could upgrade Minix (at a minimal cost to myself) to run in 32 bit mode. I also like playing with system-level stuff, and I like having the source around to play with. >Picking the right 2nd parameter for mkfs for /dev/hd2 was hard and I >wasn't even sure I got it right since the resulting /usr seemed too >small. I run a 100mb ARRL technology Conner disk. I partitioned into >two partitions of 50mb each. It's no harder than any other PC-based Unix (or Unix on any other system that I've used, for that matter). Unix (and Minix) assumes a higher level of sophistication (yeah, that's the word) from the person doing system set-up than DOS does, but I feel it's worth it for the extra power you get. I am a software developer, and I think in a multi-tasking mode. DOS was uncomfortable for me. I think it's great that it's provided a platform for a lot of people to get a lot of work done. It just wasn't for me. >Eventually I got everything copied over from the floppies to the hard >disk, but this too was a disappointment, because there are no clear >instructions on exactly what directories on the floppies go to which >directories on the hard disk. I thought it was pretty clear, actually. >Another problem was the indication that on an AT "cp /dev/at0 /dev/hd3" >would copy the root over. But no mention was made of whether /dev/hd3 >would have to be mkfs'd and how that was to be done. This is especially This is not clear, you are right. >And of course the lack of a bootable hard drive is the most notable >problem of Minix 1.3 Was not a design goal of Minix 1.3 (or 1.5). You can get shoelace to do bootable hard drives for Minix 1.5 (I think it also ran under 1.3, but I'm not sure). >I can only hope that future Minix's correct these problems. Perhaps >some of the people running 1.5.xx will comment on them. I just have. Sorry you were disappointed. >Eventually I deinstalled Minix and put DOS back up as the sole OS. I do hope you don't give up, but are able to give 1.5 a try. I do think it's much more solid (that I'm now running my machine using Minix is my vote, anyway). -- Thomas V. Frauenhofer, WA2YYW cci632!ccird2!tvf@uunet.uu.net tvf1477@ma.isc.rit.edu atexnet!kodak!swamps!frau!tvf@uunet.uu.net "Why don't you try acting? It's much easier." - Laurence Olivier to Dustin Hoffman during filming of "Marathon Man"
nall@sun8.scri.fsu.edu (John Nall) (09/18/90)
In article <10758@life.ai.mit.edu> cracraft@ai.mit.edu (Stuart Cracraft) writes: >[ A repost of a message posted last night that had mysteriously vanished >by this morning. If censored because in the message the view is that >Minix has some serious, basic faults, then I'd be even doubly wary of >it!] I wouldn't. The earlier message got through ok. Minix is not a moderated newsgroup, and all kinds of junk gets in here, unfortunately. [...a lot of whining deleted about Minix 1.3 deleted...] The primary point made is that Minix 1.3 is on its face floppy based rather than harddisk based. Well, of course it was. That was Andy's initial philosophy for an instructional OS which could be used on the most basic pc. Actually, there was quite a bit of harddisk support there, but one had to read the documentation to pick up on it - it was not in the textbook. And I have to admit that like all good computer documentation, it was often much clearer once you knew how to do it, than before. :-) Anyway, quicherbiching and go to 1.5. -- John W. Nall | Supercomputation Computations Research Institute nall@sun8.scri.fsu.edu | Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306 "Real programmers can write assembly code in any language." - Larry Wall