[comp.os.minix] MINIX on partitioned hard disk

jco@mtuni.ATT.COM (J.OMALLEY) (10/22/87)

I also have hard disk problems.  I have an AT&T PC 6300 with
a DTC controller and a 10 MB Seagate drive.  I acquired a
driver for the hard disk, recompiled the kernel, etc.,
formatted the hard disk and made a file system of the whole
10 MB on /dev/hd0.  After succeeding with this, I would really
prefer to have a DOS partition in the first 100 cylinders of
the disk, and the remaining 205 cylinders for MINIX.  I
partitioned and reformatted the hard disk accordingly.
I then tried to do a mkfs on /dev/hd2 for 6970 blocks.
mkfs failed stating put_block couldn't write, reporting
unrecoverable disk errors on block 6969 (the last block)
and blocks 0 -15.
I have tried reducing the size of the file system to no avail.
I tried creating a proto file and got the message "file system
too large for minor device", or words to that effect.

What is the way out of this bind???  

Jan O'Malley (AT&T, Room 2E-329, 200 Laurel Ave., Middletown, NJ 07748)

Please send email to
jco@mtuni.att.com
or
...[ihnp4!]mtune!mtuni!jco

or call me at 201-957-2724.

mikko@penet.UUCP (Mikko Voipio) (10/25/87)

In article <299@mtuni.ATT.COM> jco@mtuni.UUCP (J.OMALLEY) writes:
>I then tried to do a mkfs on /dev/hd2 for 6970 blocks.
>mkfs failed stating put_block couldn't write, reporting
>unrecoverable disk errors on block 6969 (the last block)
>and blocks 0 -15.
>
I have had equally problems, too. I tried to make 5MB MINIX
partition to my brother's XT clone with 20 MB disk. I think
it is some kind of timing problems in driver.

For all DTC users I can tell that I have modified MINIX 1.1
xt_wini.c so that it works with DTC 5150BX and my Miniscribe
3650 40MB disk. In that disk I have all four partitions in use.
First two is PC/IX partitions ( 10 + 14MB). Then there is 6MB
DOS and last 10MB is for MINIX. I haven't had any problems
with any of these four partitions. My machine is a Turbo-XT -clone.

I haven't tested my driver with 5150CX but if I remember
right BX and CX model are software compatibel. So the
driver can be tried to use with 5150CX.