Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!decvax!tektronix!reed!psu-cs!mmason
From: mmason@psu-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Future Patches To Make Minix Usable in the Real World
Message-ID: <421@psu-cs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 11-Jun-87 03:12:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: psu-cs.421
Posted: Thu Jun 11 03:12:54 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 13-Jun-87 09:17:52 EDT
References: <114@jc3b21.UUCP>
Reply-To: mmason@psu-cs.UUCP (Mark C. Mason)
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, Portland State University; Portland OR
Lines: 87


In article <114@jc3b21.UUCP> you write:
>I am not trying to insult Mr. Tanenbaum and MINIX. I think MINIX is the

... etc. I won't argue with this, but:

>(1) the C compiler and MINIX upchucks floating point numbers at run time.
>    the documentation coyly warns of this. God, how do you write any kind
>    of applications even for fun only without real numbers?? HELP!!

I'm using MSC as a cross-compiling environment (the compiler that came
with MINIX is a joke).  With it I'm running graphics applications with
floating point.  It's simply a matter of using the libraries that came with
Microsoft C.

>(2) The boot operation leaves me wondering why a hard disk was not used
>    right off the top. Who would ever try to run UNIX on floppies??

I normally boot on DOS, and use the MINIX boot diskette to run
MINIX.  There was a trivial change to get it to read the ramdisk
from the hard disk.  It now boots MINIX in under 30 seconds
(not at all bad for a UN*X system).

>(3) There is no multi-user capabilities provided as I read it. I only
>    need one for testing purposes. I know the processor is brain dead and
>    that is the basic problem. Has anyone written a /dev/tty02 or higher
>     that works??

I just picked one up from the net.  Haven't tried it yet.

>(4) The / directory is a flying joke. This must be because of the need to
>    use 2 floppy drives instead of a hard disk. If you accidentally copy
>    a large directory into slash / you are up for some entertainment.

No comment, except that I like the idea.

>(5) The ram disk uses up too much memory that could be used by other tasks.
>    Can this be killed and sent to disk where it belongs??

Easily done (I've got diffs from the net).  My solution will be to
add expansion memory to use for the root filesystem.

>(6) NO SWAPPING IMPLEMENTED IS A HORROR!! What can I say?

Exercize for the reader?  More memory is probably the easiest solution.

>(7) MINIX does not appear to work with more than 640k of ram. Can this be
>    expanded??

It shouldn't be difficult.

>(8) This is a rephrase of #2 above: can you boot directly to hard disk
>    without any floppys? I can get /dev/hd0 to work as /dev/hd0 but I
>    can not boot directly to /dev/hd0.

I've collected two different set of diffs to do just this.

>(9) FSCK should be renamed "Fragment,Crash,Collate,Kill". If you use an 
>    entire hard disk partition for MINIX which works fine by the way, FSCK
>    will screw it up because FSCK is expecting partitions 1-4 and not
>    partition 0.. If I ignore running FSCK I have no problems.

You shouldn't be using /dev/hd0 for a filesystem (this is mentioned in
the readme file in /user/doc).  This isn't just MINIX, but BSD 4.X and
XENIX also use the zeroth partition for the entire drive, which includes
bad block tables, etc.  In the case of MINIX, it includes the partition
table.  I've used partitions 1 and 2 with no trouble from FSCK.

MINIX differs from OS9 and uniflex in that it is (for the most part)
system call compatible with V7 UNIX.  This implies a greater degree
of compatibility with existing software and eliminates the need
for the software developer to learn a new (and probably transient)
system interface.  UNIX is fast becomming a standard.

From what I've seen of MINIX it would be possible to run it in a
production environment (I'm planning to run OS project classes on
it), but it would probably take an experienced UNIX systems
programmer to prepare and maintain it for such purposes.  But don't
forget that MINIX is extremely young at this point.  There are many
people contributing useful additions and fixes to it, and many more
people banging away at it.  I expect to see it mature into a user-
managable OS in a relatively short time (3-5 years).



					Mark Mason
					...!tektronix!psu-cs!mmason