adnan@sgtech.uucp (Adnan Yaqub) (09/26/90)
Currently I find myself involved in driver development for multiple Unix-like operating systems for 386 boxes (PS/2, ISA, et al). When I produce a new version of a driver, I am obligated to test it on several platforms to make sure it installs properly and works as advertized. However, around here, it is a real pain to be able to find a "virgin" disk with the OS you need to test. I suppose we could build up some disks just for testing, one OS per disk, but that would still not guarantee a "fresh" OS (i.e., the guy before you may have really hosed things up). Also, this ties up a lot of resources. (I don't know about you, but we still find disks expensive.) An ideal situation, IMHO, would be to have a bunch of operating systems on tape which you could dump onto a disk. Thus, when it comes time to test your driver with an OS, you grab the tape, run some magical program which makes the disk "right" for the OS and blasts the OS from tape to disk. You then load your driver and test to your hearts content. I know Interactive allows you to load from tape, but not other common OS companies. Is any one doing this? Do you have any other ideas on how to solve this nightmare? Thanks. -- Adnan Yaqub (adnan@sgtech.uucp) Star Gate Technologies 29300 Aurora Rd, Solon, OH, 44139, USA, +1 216 349 1860
pf@artcom0.north.de (Peter Funk) (09/28/90)
adnan@sgtech.uucp (Adnan Yaqub) writes: [...about installing some flavour of PC-UNIX from tape...] ay> not other common OS companies. Is any one doing this? Do you have ay> any other ideas on how to solve this nightmare? It is our practice to install SCO Xenix from streamer cartridge tape. We have prepared a special BOOT N1 Floppy for this purpose : A small shell script calls 'fdisk' and 'divvy -b 1 -c 1 -i' and so on. Afterwards the OS is installed using 'cpio -icvdumB < /dev/erct0' from cartridge tape. Someone, who is involved in driver development, should be able to prepare such a shell-beast in at least one hour. Take the original installation shell script provided by SCO as an example. Branding and serialization is also possible, if you need so : you must copy the original unbranded versions of libsys.a and getty onto the tape or else onto the prepared boot disk. This procedure cuts the time needed for the complete OS-Installation (including several applications as well) down to about 15 Minutes. Using the standard floppy-disk approach is indeed a nightmare. :-) A special hint: you need to copy 'mkdir' to the /bin directory of the boot disk, or 'cpio' will not work otherwise. It is good practise, to copy some other useful tools to that bootup disk also. The 'emergency boot disk' created by 'mkdev fd' is nearly useless, since 'cp', 'rm', 'ls', 'rmdir'... are missing. Just another (not so serious) question : How do you solve the multiple peripheral device nightmare ? Exotic peripherals, such as an IEEE-488 coupled color photocopier (the CANON CLC 500) or an EXAbyte SCSI tape for instance, cann't be saved to tape ;-) and are also heavily needed during driver development and testing. They are also even more expensive than harddisks... :-( -=- Peter Funk \\ ArtCom GmbH, Schwachhauser Heerstr. 78, D-2800 Bremen 1 Work at home: Oldenburger Str.86, D-2875 Ganderkesee 1/+49 4222 6018 (8am-6pm) >> PLEASE Don't send BIG mails (oversea) ! I've to pay for it : $0.4/kB Don't use the bang path of this news article for mails (They will bounce). Only the address 'pf@artcom0.north.de' will work. Thank You ! <<
ts@cup.portal.com (Tim W Smith) (10/01/90)
How about putting a SyQuest drive on a couple of your machines? You can then have a cartridge for each setup you wish to test with. Cartridges are 40 meg, and about $80. Tim Smith