Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!fub!opal!unido!pcsbst!jkh From: jkh@bambam.pcs.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: Some initial impressions of Amiga MINIX Message-ID: Date: 1 Feb 91 10:43:19 GMT Sender: news@pcsbst.pcs.com Distribution: comp Organization: PCS Computer Systems, GmbH Lines: 169 My efforts to join the ranks of Amiga Minix users have not been easy, I'm afraid. First, I had absolutely no luck at all with Prentice-Hall's U.K. distribution office (International Book Distributors, Ltd): After an initial delay of some 3 months (partly due to the fact that Amiga Minix was still in the "announced" phase and not in the "shipping" phase), I finally received Minix version 1.5 for the IBM PC. The invoice clearly stated "Minix 1.5 for the Amiga", but that was most definately not what I got. A few phone calls ensued, and at some point IBD conceded that they had made a mistake and if I would be so good as to send it BACK, they'd send me a correct copy. This I did, incurring another DM50 in postage costs from Germany -> U.K., but what the heck, in for a penny in for a pound, as they say.. Three more months passed. Numerous phone calls. Package somehow now stated as missing in shipping and receiving. I'm out L125. More phone calls. Postal records are tracked down. Finally talk to someone who says that the mystery package has been located and I've been granted a "refund". Oh. I wanted MINIX, not the money? Well, we could certainly start the order process over again from the beginning if I wanted.. Ahem. "No thanks, " says I, I've learned my lesson (and still have yet to see any sign of that "refund", not to mention the DM50 I'm out for postage). Color me an unsatisfied customer, eh? So. I finally went out last week and purchased a copy from a local store for DM298, actually a bit cheaper than the british "direct from PH" price (about DM75 cheaper). Fancy that. Pity it took as long as it did to get into the stores or I could have done that in the first place. Get it home, boot it up, GRONK. Hmm. Yup, kernel definately blown. Good think I'd read about that in advance, eh? Sort of a pity that the thing didn't even come with an errata slip (they had over six months to stick one in) though - what if I'd been Joe Blow off the street without USENET access? I'd be more than a bit upset, I daresay. Download new kernel that Steven was so kind as to post to the net and bring it up. Yippe! Boots! Hmmm. Better back up them there disks. Lesse, use transfer -f to format disks (so says the manual), then diskcopy. Zilch. Diskcopy reports errors left right up and down. Check diskettes for media errors (and these are brand-new Sony 2DD diskettes). None. Hmmmmm(!). How am I going to duplicate these damn things?? Try a software nibble copier - no good. Disks "appear" to be copied, but root disk copy loads veeery slowly and then hangs. This doesn't happen with original, so we're hosed there. Then I try a *hardware assisted* copier (the Syncro Express). NO GO! Same results, in fact. Finally, in desperation, I try the nibble copier again. It works! Hmmmmmmm!! Try long and laborious elimination-trial process that I won't go into here (except that it took all night) that finally reveals that (for me, at least), disk can ONLY be copied if the Syncro Express is used first to "format" the disk and then the nibble copier is used to lay down the data. For some reason, neither one alone does the trick. Sigh. Anyway, no matter, the thing works and I have my backups.. Time to TEST it. cd /usr/test... /usr/test? Where is /usr/test? Mentioned in the manual, in the AMIGA section (no, I haven't gone into the Macintosh section by mistake), but it just ain't there. Double sigh. Oh well, let's evaluate this thing anyway.. Response isn't the zippiest, but it sort of works.. Let's do a "ps", that should be interesting.. 2 pages of "processes" roll by, almost all with horribly bogus values. What's going on here? How do I see if a getty is running or not? Yeargh! kermit? Yes! It works! I can log into my other unix machine! 9600 baud max, but hey, I can live with that.. Um.. Can't I? No I can't. The thing is slower than molasses in January! I can type 10 characters, count to 3, and there they are! All at once! Output speed looks to be around 1200 baud, with a tailwind. Catting a page of text causes kermit to reject the last 3rd of the output (2/3 of the page prints, then nothing). What the !$@%#@!! is going on here?? I can get 19200 baud SUSTAINED INPUT into the amiga with AZCOMM (and that's under AmigaDOS with several other things running), so I know the machine's got the woof to do it, even with multi-tasking going on. What is Minix doing on the serial port between reads? Calculating PI?!? I'm running only ONE THING!! [Editors note: We beg the reader's forebearance while the author of this article, suffering the effects of over 6 months of accumulated minix-related stress, has a minor nervous breakdown. We sincerely regret the inconvenience.] ARGHH!! SCREEAM! WAIL! GNASH! EYAAAAAAAAAAEEYAEEYYAAAA!!!! CLAW REND RIP SLASH! STOMP! YEEEEEYAAAAAAAAAEERGRGGGHHH!!!!! GGGGGGGGHHHHHHHNNNNN.....!! WHIMPER... SOB... moan... [ We're back. Thanks again. - Ed ] Ah.. Wheew! I feel a lot better now. How much do I owe ya, doc? Now that I've gotten that out of my system, let me be the _first_ to correct myself and say "I know this isn't BSD 4.4 BSD here and what do I expect for DM300, VMS compatability??" I also don't want to cast aspersions on the developers, some of whom I've entered into friendly correspondence with over the last few months and would hate to offend. I do feel, however, that this release leaves a few things to be desired. In hopes of rectifing this situation as much as possible, I have the following questions: 1. What's with the horrible serial performance? I was actually sort of hoping to do SLIP'y style stuff over it, given the lack of direct hard disk support and the fact that my other Unix machines have disk space aplenty (as well as various useful forms of ancillary backup media attached). I have no Ethernet for the Amiga, so serial looks like _it_. 2. What's with things like ps, and this legendary "test" directory? 3. Why Elvis and not Stevie? Stevie seems to be much more vi-like, from what I've seen. And it's free. 4. What's this ELLE, um, editor? It's just close enough to Emacs to make you think you know what you're doing until you actually try to do something with it. Why not simply link elle to /bin/rm and save the user the trouble of wiping out his files more painfully? Ok, ok, I'm sorry, that was a cheap shot. But seriously, I think "mg" (or uEmacs) and "stevie" would make a much better pair than these other two rather less standard utilities (and Minix does go on a bit about "standards", so I know *someone* thinks they're important). For me, at least, ELLE now occupies the great bit-bucket in the sky. A shame, since it could have been compatible (^S for "fork a shell?", ^W to write the file? C'mon!) 5. Given that the serial driver can be given the appropriate laxatives to speed it up, has anyone done a simple "file server" client that ports easily to Unix? I can easily see a very simplistic (but useful) NFS implementation build around a few simple message types between a device driver (/dev/snfs?) and this client. The AMOEBA stuff looks also interesting, but I don't know how much "amoeba-ness" has to be present at the other end to get it to work. I'd naturally like to interfere with my running (production) Unix boxes as little as possible. Simple user mode clients hanging off a serial channel I can easily live with - kernel tweaks or really complicated Amoeba file server clients I can do without at the moment. 6. Does a format utility exist under Minix? I can't find one.. I would hate to have to shutdown minix and reboot with the AmigaDOS boot disk just to run BOOT:c/transfer -f everytime I decide I need to make a temporary filesystem. 7. I have 2.5MB of memory in my Amiga. I'd like more of it to be used for the root file system so I could have a larger /tmp. Ideally, I'd like it to grow dynamically, competing with processes for memory, but I realize that this might be a bit much to ask for. Simply being able to resize it to another fixed size would be nice. 8. There is no question number 8. 7 is enough for one posting. Many thanks, vielen danke, etc etc. Jordan -- PCS Computer Systeme GmbH, Munich, West Germany UUCP: pyramid!pcsbst!jkh jkh@meepmeep.pcs.com EUNET: unido!pcsbst!jkh ARPA: jkh@violet.berkeley.edu or hubbard@decwrl.dec.com