herky@violet.berkeley.edu (George R. Nace) (06/29/89)
I recently started using MINIX on a system with 3.5
inch drives only and had several difficulties getting a
working copy on my 3.5 inch disks. I saw some postings that
indicated others were having similar problems so I am post-
ing my observations in hope they'll be of help to other new
users. My system is a Toshiba T1200 with dual 3.5 inch DSDD
(720K) floppies, however much of the following applies to
other systems with non-360K format disks. I have erred on
the side of explicitness in the hope I can cover most of the
potential pitfalls, but it's unlikely I've covered everything
so I solicit contributions from other more experienced hands.
_1. _M_a_k_i_n_g _a _b_o_o_t_a_b_l_e _c_o_p_y.
You should have ready at least 10 formatted 3.5
inch disks and the MINIX distribution disks. You must
have access to an IBM-PC or compatible that can be con-
figured with a 5.25 inch disk as physical drive 'A' and
a 3.5 inch disk as physical drive 'B'. You can't copy the
distribution disks using MSDOS utilities unless they use
ROM-BIOS disk calls exclusively, and MINIX can do the
job better anyway.
Follow steps 1-9 on pp. 37-38 of the MINIX REFER-
ENCE MANUAL, which is part of the Prentice-Hall distri-
bution package, in order to boot MINIX from the 5.25
inch distribution disks. You should now be logged on to
MINIX and have looked at the directory list for several
directories. Now it's time to transfer MINIX to your
3.5 inch disks, but first we have to unmount the /usr
disk that was mounted in step 7 of the MINIX manual. If
you make copies when you have a mounted file system it
is guaranteed to cause problems, so do the following
steps exactly. (You type in the commands which follow
the "$" prompt, other messages are from the system.)
$ cd /
$ /etc/umount /dev/fd0
/dev/fd0 unmounted
$ /etc/umount /dev/fd1
umount: /dev/fd1 not mounted
You are now ready to make copies - make sure you
label the 3.5 inch disks to correspond with the labels
on the distribution disks then place the disks in their
corresponding drives and issue the following command
for each disk to be copied:
$ cp /dev/fd0 /dev/fd1
You should now have a copy of all the distribution
disks transferred to 3.5 inch disks that your system
can read, however MINIX will only be able to read 360K
of the total capacity of those disks. First test your
disks to be sure that they boot correctly on your sys-
tem from the 3.5 inch format. Remember that an unmodi-
fied MINIX system has to boot from the physical 'A'
drive on the computer and if you need to reconfigure
the system to recognize the 3.5 inch format you should
do it now. Once you verify the system will boot from
the 3.5 inch disks you can make working copies of the
disks.
_2. _M_a_k_i_n_g _a _w_o_r_k_i_n_g _3._5 _i_n_c_h _s_y_s_t_e_m.
You should be careful to keep the original disks
filed away for archival purposes, but first you need to
make a working copy. You need another ten formatted 3.5
inch disks to make a working system. Now follow the
following steps:
1- Boot the MINIX system and login as "root" using
the password "Geheim" (don't type the quotes.)
2- Mount the /user disk in drive 'B' using the com-
mand:
$ /etc/mount /dev/fd1 /user
and copy the files 'fsck', 'mkfs', and 'cpdir' to
the /bin directory. (Some of these files may be on
the /user2 disk.)
3- Unmount the disk in drive 'B' using the command:
$ /etc/umount /dev/fd1
4- Make a file system that will take full advantage
of your disk format capacity which could be 720K
or 1.44M. Place your formatted disks in physical
drive 'B', and for each disk issue the command:
$ mkfs /dev/at1 720
($ mkfs /dev/at1 1440 - for 1.4M disks)
Notice that we are now referring to drive 'B' as
/dev/at1 instead of /dev/fd1. The reason we refer
to it as /dev/at1 is that this designation tells
MINIX that the device can have more than 360
blocks.
5- Now that we have empty file systems for our work-
ing disks we can transfer our MINIX files from the
first generation copies to our working disks, but
first we have to unmount any disks on the system
and make a working copy of the boot disk:
$ /etc/umount /dev/fd0
$ /etc/umount /dev/fd1
Put the first generation boot disk in drive 'A'
and the working disk in drive 'B' and enter the
following command:
$ cp /dev/fd0 /dev/fd1
Now put the first generation "Root File System" in
drive 'A' and the target working disk in drive 'B'
and enter:
$ cp /dev/fd0 /dev/fd1
6- Now we can copy the rest of the disks, I will
illustrate the process with the /usr disk, but the
basic process is the same for all the remaining
disks. Place the first generation disk in follow-
ing commands:
$ /etc/mount /dev/fd0 /usr
$ /etc/mount /dev/at1 /user
$ ls -al /usr
Take note of the directories other than '.' and
'..' in the listing. You can tell the directories
from files because the first digit in the mode
listing will identify it as a directory if the
mode is "d", as in "drw-r--r. For instance in the
MINIX 1.3 distribution the /usr disk contains the
following directories in the /usr listing: /ast,
/bin, /include, and /lib. To copy to the destina-
tion disk issue the following commands:
$ cpdir /usr/ast /user
$ cpdir /usr/bin /user
$ cpdir /usr/include /user
$ cpdir /usr/lib /user
$ /etc/umount /dev/fd0
$ /etc/umount /dev/at1
Repeat the above steps until you have made copies
of all the first generation disks to your working
MINIX system. You should now put away the first
generation disks for archival purposes.
7- You are now ready to start using the MINIX system
without fear of damaging your original distribu-
tion disks. In order to take advantage of the
increased capacity of newer disk formats that have
a higher capacity than 360K make sure you mount
the disks using the block special files /dev/at0
and /dev/at1. Since the /usr disk is mounted by
the MINIX system when it initially boots you
should be sure to modify the /etc/rc file on the
'Root File System' disk to mount the /usr disk as
/dev/at0 instead of /dev/fd0. Make sure you modify
the /etc/rc file on the disk, not on the copy of
/etc/rc in the RAM-disk.
Please feel free to send comments, suggestions, or
corrections
George R. Nace