Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ucsd!usc!samsung!shadooby!sharkey!cfctech!rphroy!trux!car
From: car@trux.UUCP (Chris Rende)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: How to use a hard disk with Minix
Keywords: hard disk
Message-ID: <312@trux.UUCP>
Date: 27 Nov 89 21:01:53 GMT
Organization: Central Cartage, Sterling Hgts., MI
Lines: 47

After a year of on and off hacking at xt_wini I finally had it patched to
work with my 5Mb and 10Mb hard disk. This past weekend I was able to do a
"mkfs /dev/hd0 5000; /etc/mount /dev/hd0 /user" and load all kinds of stuff
onto the hard disk.

(I used hd0 because I don't have the partitioning part of xt_wini working
yet...).

I have some questions about using a hard disk with minix:
(I have Minix 1.2 but plan to upgrade now that my HD works).

1) I supose that the correct "way" is to use hd1-hd4 instead of hd0, right?
   This is probably where fdisk comes in...

2) If you only have a 5Mb hard disk to use, what's the best way to use it?
   Make one big 5Mb partition? Mount it on /user? Mount it on /usr?
   Make two partitions? Mount one on /user and one on /usr?

   What Minix directories are best used as mount points for the hard disk?

3) I'd like to the RAM disk for as little as possible (if at all). Is it
   wise to use the hard disk as the ROOT FS?
   How do you move the ROOT FS from the RAM disk to the HD?
   How do you get rid of or reduce the RAM disk in order to free up RAM?

4) When I get my second drive (10Mb) to work, what would be a good disk layout
   for using the two drives together?

5) How can I boot from the hard drive? - I'd like to get the floppies out
   of the boot process, if possible.

Any pointers about HD use with Minix would be greatly appreciated.

Observation:
I can see the head positioning mechanism moving on the HD while the disk is
operating. Minix seems to do alot of seeks back to the start of the file
system, cyl 0, super block, or whatever. While doing a "cat somefile" the
head seeks to a block from somefile, returns to the start of the disk, seeks
to the next block of somefile, returns to the start of the disk, etc...
Why does the head keep returning "home"? How can this be reduced?

car.
-- 
Christopher A. Rende           Central Cartage (Nixdorf/Pyramid/SysVR2/BSD4.3)
uunet!edsews!rphroy!trux!car   Multics,DTSS,Unix,Shortwave,Scanners,StarTrek
 trux!car@uunet.uu.net         Minix,PC/XT,Mac+,TRS-80 Model I,1802 ELF
       "I don't ever remember forgetting anything." - Chris Rende