[comp.os.minix] hard disk

boh@cullvax.UUCP (Brian P. O'Halloran) (07/06/87)

 

I am attempting to get MINIX 1.1 up on my hard disk.  I have made quite a bit
of progress however there is still a problem w/ at_wini.c reading the
partition table (I think).  I should also make you all aware that I am not a
professional developer.  However I am very interested in learing MINIX so
please if bear with me as I try to explain my problem.

I am running an IBM PC/AT (6MHz) w/ 32MByte hard disk (? on the hard disk
make, I think Seagate), one 360K floppy, one 1.2MByte floppy, 640K RAM.

I have diffs that Matt Weinstein posted for at_wini.c.  As a result of these
changes I have successfully partitioned my 32MByte hard disk into two
partitions cylinders 0 to 600 for DOS and cylinders 601 to 732 for MINIX
(approx.  5.7MBytes).  I am no longer experiencing the winchester won't reset
problem and I can reliably use my hard disk for MINIX development.  I have
tested the hard disk file system by multiple cat's of two rather large files
until I got a disk full error message which met my prediction of where it
would fail.  However, the symptoms of my problem are;

o    fsck at boot time for my hard disk partition returns the
     following errors:
     "error 0x8000 reading block 1, retry"
     "error 0x8000 reading block 1, retry"
     "error 0x20C0 reading block 1, retry"
     "fsck: can't read block 1 (error = 0x8000)"

     "fatal"

     Then goes back to boot menu.

I suspect that there is a primitive form (BIOS call to DOS?) of winchester
driver in fsck and that this needs to be modfied.  I am looking at fsck.c now
for some clues.  Any hints as to what might be happening here?

Of much more importance to me is the following;

o    I can't # /etc/mount /dev/hd2 /user unless I first select
     "h" off of the boot menu and get the above error
     conditions.  It's almost as if I have to "jump start" my
     hard disk.  If I don't select "h" as above and just do "="
     when I issue # /etc/mount /dev/hd2 /user I get the following message
     "unrecoverable disk error on device 3/2, block 1"
     "mount: /dev/hd2 is not a valid file system"

I tried changing PART_TABLE from 0x1C6 to 0x1C2 but this did
not help.  Does anyone have any ideas about what I might be doing wrong?
Thanks in advance.

Brian O'Halloran
boh@cullvax

ken@mcnc.org (Kenneth A. Whitfield) (04/24/88)

Would someone send me the requirements for installing minix on a hard
disk? I have Seagate st225 20Meg hard disk. I do not want to devote
the entire hard disk to minix. If there is a host on the internet
with the "how to do's and bugs and fixes" for minix please send me
email. Has anyone installed TCP/IP on minix ? I would love to hear
from you also !

x110ws%TAMUNIX.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu (Wally Strzelec) (11/17/88)

howdy.... could someone please tell me how to create more than one
partition on a hard disk. With Dos 3.1, I can only make one partition
and with Dos 3.3, I can only make two partitions, but I want to make
three partitions so that I can copy the root disk to /dev/hd3. I have heard
of a "diskfix" program that is around somewhere that will tweak all of the
sector 0's so that that Dos will see it as a non-Dos partition but I am
unable to locate that program.
        See you
        Wally Strzelec
        <x110ws@tamunix.tamu.edu>

kjh@pollux.usc.edu (Kenneth J. Hendrickson) (03/01/90)

Help!  I just got a new Seagate-4096 80Mbyte hard disk.  I want to put
both DOS (yech) and minix partitions on this disk.  I don't yet have
minix, but I will be getting it.

Some software came with the disk (from Everex).  This software allows
for creating logical drives, and formatting them.  Also included is a
driver evdisk.sys that allows DOS to access the "extended DOS
partition".  Software was not included for creating non-DOS partitions.

What should I do?  Does minix use DOS partitions, or does minix come
with software for creating a minix partition on the hard disk?  Can a
minix partition be created, only for minix's use?  Since I have created
the DOS partition at the beginning of the disk, the minix partition will
have to go at the end.  Is this a problem?  Can minix boot from it's
partition, or should I boot from DOS and then mount the minix partition
onto the minix file system.

Please e-mail your response, as I still have more than 200 messages to
read.  I will summarize and post if there is interest in the answers to
these questions.  Thank you.

By the way, I have Tanenbaum's book, Operating Systems Design and
Implementation, and I have RTFM; I didn't find answers for my questions.

Ken Hendrickson N8DGN        kjh@usc.edu        ...!uunet!usc!pollux!kjh