[comp.os.minix] Problems with version 1.5.3

XBR4D75G%DDATHD21.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu (02/22/90)

I am running MINIX 1.5.0 on an XT- and an AT-clone since 20-JAN-90
without major problems. After the official release end december last year,
I only applied 4 fixes sent to the net, related to the routines

         peekpoke.c  portio.c  signal.c   getpwent.c

My crcs do not match with the official ones and I had to apply the
patches with the -l option because I am following the MINIX developement
for more than 2 years from the BITNET-side. Nevertheless I was conviced
until yesterday, that my system, running on two different PC's, is very close
to the official release (only the new kermit version had to be cross-compiled
because asld got out of memory).

When I applied the new patches to generate version 1.5.3, I ran into the
following problems:
 a) patches to directories include, minix, sys, tools, fs, mm and lib/....
    were applied without problems
 b) compilation and generation of the new library without problems
 c) compiling and linking of kernel mm fs and tools without problems
 d) when I started the system, loading the root file system from floppy,
    the commands in /etc/rc were executed, but init could not start
    login!!!!! Changing execle(LOGIN......) in init.c to the old
    library-call execn(LOGIN1) ; execn(LOGIN2); generated a running
    version of 1.5.3, but I think this is not the intesion of the
    authors. After this hack, I was able to mount and use my hard-disk
    partition. Nevertheless this intermediate version is not able to
    load the root-file system directly from hard-disk (illegal inodes
    detected by th FS-system).

Has anyone similar problem with 1.5.3 and perhaps some solutions to
generate a fairly stable system?

Thanks in advance

    Hans-Juergen Knobloch

XBR4D75G%DDATHD21.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu (02/23/90)

Sorry about my too quick problem report concearning the update of
version 1.5.0 to version 1.5.3.
This evening I found a solution to the startup problem:

The library routine exec.c version 1.5.3 does not work correctly
to start login in init.c.
If you just link exec.s from version 1.5.0 with the init.s version
1.5.3, you will get a normal running system 1.5.3.
There are no problems anymore when loading the rootfile system
from harddisk.
Disk speed has increased by a factor of 4 on my XT-clone with the new
version.
Running "time fsck /dev/hd2" on a 5 MB partition took only 35 sec real time,
compared to 2:08.0 minutes with version 1.5.0.

Hans-Juergen Knobloch