Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!kjm
From: kjm@ut-emx.UUCP (kjm)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Minix 1.2 Bustedness
Message-ID: <11641@ut-emx.UUCP>
Date: 1 Apr 89 08:13:29 GMT
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas
Lines: 65

I just recently received a copy of Minix 1.2.  I just tried to use it this
evening.  So far, I am severely underwhelmed.

This is the deal:

I'm running on a semi-homebrew AT clone, based on the Jameco Baby AT board.
(It uses the Award BIOS; runs PHOENIX MS-DOS 3.3 OK.)  I can boot Minix OK,
mount and unmount floppies OK, run programs on the floppies OK, but I have
two rather wierd problems:

1)  The cursor sometimes goes away when it is in the bottom half or so of
    the screen.  Doing 'clr', moving it to the top half or so of the screen
    (in mined), or just continuing on will generally bring it back a little
    bit later.  This cycle repeats ad nauseam.

2)  I am completely unable to make a file system on my hard disk and mount
    it successfully.  The following is a (not necessarily complete) list
    of the gyrations I have gone through this evening:

      - Use 'dd' to read the first 1000 blocks of /dev/hd0; works OK
      - Decide that it would be neat to have multiple mounted HD file systems
      - Lay out the partition sizes:
            part    unit    dir     1st cy  #cyls   #blks   comments
            1       hd6     /usr    0       145     6161    /usr + sources
            2       hd7     /tmp    145     102     4334
            3       hd8     /h      247     121     5141    home directory(s)
            4       hd9     /x      368     363     15640   projects
        The blocks counts are based on the parameters displayed by the BIOS
        setup menu for my (type 8) disks: 733 cylinders, 5 heads/cylinder,
        17 sectors/track.
      - Run Minix fdisk to set them
      - Do 5 mknod's (for drive D; I have DOS on drive C and don't really
        want to move it)
      - Run 'mkfs' for hd[6-9] with corresponding block counts; hd6 looks OK,
        but others complain about not being able to write the disk
      - Use 'dd' to read the first 1000 blocks of each of /dev/hd[6-9]; OK
      - Attempt to 'fsck' hd6; discover that 'fsck' is not on the /usr floppy
      - Reboot and select 'check hard disk' option, specifying unit 6; the
        system proceeds to tell me that the file system is totally busted
      - Get started up without the hard disk; run 'fdisk' again, changing
        origin of hd6 to cylinder 1; remake file systems -- no joy
      - Make a file system using the full disk (30MB) on /dev/hd5; looks OK
      - Get a panic ("out of buffers 20", or some such) from FS, after getting
        the message indicating that the file system got mounted OK.
      - Give up and post this message to comp.os.minix...

I've got about 5-6 days left in which I can return this thing and get a
refund.  I bought Minix hoping to get an inexpensive, friendly, UNIX-oid
development environment for some personal projects.  I cannot afford to
own a $100+ toy.  If I can't get it to use my hard disk, I'm going to have
to send it back, and be stuck with MS-GROSS (which at least can drive the
hard disks)...

Is Minix really just broken?  Am I doing something bizarre and/or wrong
to it?  Help!

--
The above viewpoints are mine.  They are unrelated to those of
anyone else, including my wife, our cats, and my employer.

Kenneth J. Montgomery  "Shredder-of-hapless-smurfs"
Charter Member, Heathen and Atheist SCUM Alliance, "Heathen" division

kjm@hermes.chpc.utexas.edu              University of Texas System
kjm@cerberus.chpc.utexas.edu            Center for High Performance Computing