Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!yale!ox.com!hela!widener!ukma!eng.ufl.edu!math.ufl.edu!uflorida!caen!umich!vela!m.cs.uiuc.edu!wuarchive!decwrl!uunet!email!vmars!hp From: hp@vmars.tuwien.ac.at (Peter Holzer) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: Re: (PC) Novice questions Message-ID: <1991May28.161317.22215@email.tuwien.ac.at> Date: 28 May 91 16:13:17 GMT References: Sender: news@email.tuwien.ac.at Distribution: "world" Organization: Technical University of Vienna, Dept. for Realtime Systems Lines: 70 Nntp-Posting-Host: nowhere.vmars.tuwien.ac.at Steve_Gale@TRANSARC.COM writes: >Hello all, >1. I'm having some trouble getting Minix 1.5.10 up on my 386 box (RLL > controller). I know that some people with RLL controllers have to > rebuild the kernel; is that really need if you use the -s26 switch > to fdisk? If so, I think I can rebuild the kernel w/o a friend's > computer by installing the Universal (BIOS) version, rebuilding, > and then installing the freshly rebuilt kernel. Will this work? First, minix tries to get disk parameters from the hard disk bios, only if this fails it uses the compiled-in default of 17 sectors/4 heads. So many RLL-disks work without recompiling the kernel (mine does). Of course you still have to use -s26 for fdisk. Second, if Minix fails to recognize your RLL-disk, I don't think you can do much with it. Third, the BIOS version should work with any hard disk that works with DOS, so installing the BIOS version, rebuilding the kernel and installing the new kernel should work. >2. I can't find the executables dd and mkfs. I looked on all the > disks labeled "System Executables #n" in the /bin directory, in > the /usr/bin directory on the "System Executables #1 (/usr)" disk, > and in the /bin and /etc directories on the "Root File System" > disk. Where can these be found? (As you can guess, I'm totally > hosed without mkfs.) I don't have the disks at hand (they are at home), but I am sure the files are on the /usr disk. >3. I'd like to keep a DOS partition on my disk. For now it's ok to > use a boot disk to start DOS -- later I'd like a dual-boot option > (is there such a thing available?) I guess I'll assign partitions > 1, 3, and 4 to Minix and partition 2 to DOS. Should I mark the DOS > partition as "Active" (the manual says that DOS cares, but it > doesn't say which way) ? If you have plain Minix, you cannot boot directly from the hard disk, so you can just leave the DOS partition active. There are a lot of packages available to allow you to boot Minix from HD. The best-known of them is shoelace, which prompts you for the partition you want to boot from. If you don't answer within 15 seconds, it boots from the active partition, which is the Minix-partition on my computer. DOS does not seem to care about that. >4. Since there are only 4 partition entries in the table, partition > 3 is used for the RAM disk, and partitions have a maximum of 32 > meg, a single disk is limited to 32 * 3 + RAM disk ~= 100 meg. > Is this right or am I missing something? How can people who use > DOS have 300 meg drives? First, the partition table allows partitions of up to 4 GB, so any OS is free to use very large partitions. DOS < 4.0 restricted the size to 32MB and Minix restricts it to 64MB (This restriction may go away in version 2.0, from what I heard). If you want many small partitions, you can divide a partition into subpartitions (by using the first sector of the partition as a secondary partition table). This is done by DOS >= 3.3 (They call the partition `extended partition' and the subpartitions `logical drives'), Interactive Unix, and maybe others. So, a PC with a 300MB disk and MSDOS 3.3 would probably have a 32MB and a 268MB partition, the latter devided into 9 `logical drives' <= 32 MB. -- | _ | Peter J. Holzer | Think of it | | |_|_) | Technical University Vienna | as evolution | | | | | Dept. for Real-Time Systems | in action! | | __/ | hp@vmars.tuwien.ac.at | Tony Rand |