Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!psuvm!cunyvm!maine.bitnet!tar From: TAR@MAINE.BITNET (Thom Rounds) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: Re: How to use a hard disk with Minix Message-ID: <89337.181547TAR@MAINE.BITNET> Date: 3 Dec 89 23:15:47 GMT References: <1727@bruce.OZ> Lines: 85 In article <1727@bruce.OZ>, Earl Chew says: > >From article <89334.224050TAR@MAINE.BITNET>, by TAR@MAINE.BITNET (Thom >Rounds): >> You don't NEED shoelace to do that. Any fdisk (Minix or MS-DOS) will w >allo >> you to select the active partition. The point is, you would have a very >funny >> setup if you booted off the hard disk. Minix needs to load the ramdisk, and >> having THAT on hdisk would just mean duplicate roots. Plus, the bootblock is >> NOT compatible with Minix data (i.e., it MUST be on a seperate disk). Having >> a teeny-tiny partition on your hdisk for the bootblok is rather silly, don't >> you think? > >No, you're missing the my point. Booting off the hard disk is *not* a funny >setup. Requiring a floppy to boot off the hard disk *is* a funny setup. Just >count how many commercial machines require you to put a floppy in to boot off >the hard disk! > MINIX IS NOT a commercial grade operating system!! That is a very lame argument, not to mention a cop-out. >Selecting active partitions is not what's at issue here. I agree, any fdisk >will allow you to select *active* partitions. But all that does is set a bit >in the partition table. It has little to do with booting Minix off the hard >disk. > It has everything to do with it. You can't put the bootblock with the root directory. They are incompatible. >Yes, Minix needs to load the ram disk. Yes, that does mean that you need an >image of the ram disk on secondary memory. Having it on a hard disk is just as >good as having the image on floppy disk --- mind you, the hard disk version >loads much faster. I can't see what you're objecting to. You already have a >duplicate image of the root file system (on floppy). Some people even keep >their ram disk image in /dev/hd3. > Why not keep it on floppy? The floppy is something you can replace with something else! Putting root on the hdisk means less space for other stuff, and that IS very, very ridiculous. >Yes, the bootblock is incompatible with Minix data. Yes, teeny-tiny partitions >are silly. The solution is to throw bootblock away. > >AST has allocated one block for bootstraps at the beginning of all Minix >file systems (check the book). BootLace fits in there. It will read in >ShoeLace >which will load Minix from the file system. No special boot disk is necessary. >You can keep the Minix kernel image as a normal file anywhere on the hard disk >partition (eg /etc/system/minix). Or, you can keep the a.out files for the >kernel (eg /etc/system/kernel, /etc/system/mm, /etc/system/fs and >/etc/system/init) and ShoeLace will build the Minix at boot time. > >This also means that you can construct a single stand-alone boot floppy >instead >of the current two (one kernel image and one root file image). > You lost me. Please re-iterate. >WiniBoot resides in the partition table sector (cylinder 0, head 0, sector 1) >and will prompt you for the partition that you wish to boot. In this way you >can boot dos or Minix on separate partitions. > >> The Moral: No, you cannot have your cake and eat it too, >> even if the cake is called ShoeLace. > >I *can* have my cake and eat it too. In fact, I'm eating it now and having >been >feasting for quite some time now. > It doesn't sound that way to me. >Earl Thom >-- >Earl Chew, Dept of Computer Science, Monash University, Australia 3168 >ARPA: cechew%bruce.cs.monash.oz.au@uunet.uu.net ACS : cechew@bruce.oz >---------------------------------------------------------------------- ------- | Thom Rounds _ /| | \'o.O' | INTERNET: tar@maine.caps.maine.edu =(___)= | BITNET: TAR@MAINE U | UUCP path: psuvax!psuvm!maine!tar Ack! Phht! | | Disclaimer: NONE