Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!munnari.oz.au!bruce!cechew
From: cechew@bruce.cs.monash.OZ.AU (Earl Chew)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Minix 1.3
Message-ID: <3081@bruce.cs.monash.OZ.AU>
Date: 17 Sep 90 22:56:19 GMT
References: <10758@life.ai.mit.edu>
Organization: Monash Uni. Computer Science, Australia
Lines: 63

In <10758@life.ai.mit.edu> cracraft@ai.mit.edu (Stuart Cracraft) writes:

>It was disappointing bringing up Minix 1.3. Its seeming total
>reliance on floppies and lack of well-documented hard disk support
>made bringing up the hard disk a real chore. 

This is true. There is, at present, no bullet proof way to bring up a hard
disk. Most people usually make at least one mistake. The method described in
the documentation for Minix 1.3 still basically relies on a floppy based boot.
Hard disk support is there --- but you have to invest time and effort into
understanding how it all fits together.

>fdisk couldn't seem to display any hexadecimal value over FF in the

Hmm.. I think that the new fdisk (1.5.10) works much better than that in Minix
1.3. You're comments probably do not apply to the new version.

>Picking the right 2nd parameter for mkfs for /dev/hd2 was hard and I

Why is it hard? It's the just size of the partition in kb. I suppose it could
have been hard since you had trouble with the old fdisk.

>Eventually I got everything copied over from the floppies to the hard
>disk, but this too was a disappointment, because there are no clear
>instructions on exactly what directories on the floppies go to which
>directories on the hard disk.

Hmmm... the way the hard disk is used in 1.3, you have to treat it each
partition like a big floppy. Thus instead of mounting a /usr floppy (or a /user
floppy) you will mount a /usr hard disk partition, etc.

>Another problem was the indication that on an AT "cp /dev/at0 /dev/hd3"
>would copy the root over. But no mention was made of whether /dev/hd3
>would have to be mkfs'd and how that was to be done. This is especially

Obviously /dev/hd3 needs to be a real partition (ie non zero size). There is no
need to mkfs /dev/hd3 because `cp /dev/at0 /dev/hd3' takes an image of the
entire floppy and dumps it on /dev/hd3. Thus you will end up with a mirror
image of the floppy. This of course means that it is useless allocating much
more than 1.2Mb for /dev/hd3. But I agree that this form of hard disk support
is a kludge.

>And of course the lack of a bootable hard drive is the most notable
>problem of Minix 1.3

>I can only hope that future Minix's correct these problems. Perhaps
>some of the people running 1.5.xx will comment on them.

Shoelace addresses all these problems. It will work on 1.3 and 1.5.10. However,
as some people have found out, it is not bullet proof. Minix gives you free
and easy access to the entire hard disk. There is more than enough rope to hang
yourself.

>Eventually I deinstalled Minix and put DOS back up as the sole OS.

With such a large hard disk --- you can install Minix and DOS on the same disk
:-)

Earl
-- 
Earl Chew, Dept of Computer Science, Monash University, Australia 3168
EMAIL: cechew@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au PHONE: 03 5655447 FAX: 03 5655146
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