Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!snorkelwacker!ai-lab!cracraft@ai.mit.edu
From: cracraft@ai.mit.edu (Stuart Cracraft)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Minix 1.5 --> up
Message-ID: <10936@life.ai.mit.edu>
Date: 24 Sep 90 03:58:19 GMT
Sender: news@ai.mit.edu
Organization: Project GNU
Lines: 47

I changed my opinion after installing Minix 1.5 on a
Toshiba 5100 laptop. The distribution finally arrived
from Prentice Hall after tremendous delays. I had 
received and installed 1.3 and found it lacking; 
however, after putting up 1.5, it is clear that Minix
wins -- BIG.

My partitioning has about 40mb on partition 1 (/dev/hd1)
for DOS, 57mb on partition 2 (/dev/hd2) for /usr and
user directories, and 3mb on partition 3 (/dev/hd3)
for root on a ram disk of the same size.

My only two problems were really related to DOS and
shoelace rather than Minix. After separating the 
partitions with Minix fdisk, I found the DOS partition
couldn't readily be installed. All sorts of weird root
director entries upon restore, Norton couldn't fix
it with Disk Doctor, and so forth. When I did the fdisk
on the DOS side and repartitioned only the DOS partition
with it, leaving the other partitions intact, it worked.
Minix reported a "-" at the end of the DOS partition
line in Minix fdisk, so maybe it had to do with the even/odd
partition size. Earlier I had made an even-only partition
size believing that would work.

The other problem had to do with shoelace. I installed
it fairly readily but then probably botched the two
calls to 'laceup' in order to install the boot strap.
Also, the presence of the ram disk image on the hard disk
confused me and I may not have selected the proper
partition. Chew may have a reply to this, but I'm sure
that part was my misreading of his documentation, not
the fine code he's made available.

Minix 1.5 is well-documented with extended manual pages,
easy installation, and fast protected-mode running.
Building a kernel is trivial, surprisingly so. My only
nit so far is that the "term" command is minimal. For
terminal communication with the outside world, it's an
important command. I'll try to improve it for myself and
if useful return the mods to AST.

Well, that's the report from Chaos Manor Minix. Minix
1.5 up on a 386, pre-shoelace, pre-Evans, but running
great.

Stuart