INSTALL.TXT
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-
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- USAGE(8) Maintenance Procedures USAGE(8)
-
-
-
- NAME
- usage - installing and using MINIX
-
- DESCRIPTION
- This manual page describes the installation and use of MINIX
- from a System Administrators point of view. It contains an
- installation guide, instructions on how to do the initial
- configuration and some other info. Please read this docu-
- ment entirely before attempting to install MINIX. The ins-
- tallation steps are in the proper order, but not all the
- information you may need is presented at the right moment.
- Other detailed information that may be useful can be found
- in boot(8) and hier(7).
-
- 1. REQUIREMENTS
- The minimum system MINIX can be installed on comfortably is
- an IBM PC/AT or PS/2 with a 286 processor, 640 KB memory, a
- 720 kb diskette drive, and 25-30 MB free space on an AT,
- ESDI, or SCSI hard disk (the latter controlled by an Adaptec
- 1540.) MINIX for the 386 (MINIX-386 for short) can be
- installed on a machine with at least a 386sx processor, 3 MB
- memory and at least 25-30 MB of disk space.
-
- 2. MINIX INSTALLATION BACKGROUND
- The objective of the installation is to create a partition
- on your disk and to put MINIX into it. MINIX really
- requires two partitions however, so the single "primary"
- partition is split into two subpartitions. The a subparti-
- tion will contain the root file system, and the c subparti-
- tion will contain the /usr file system. What MS-DOS calls
- "drives", i.e C:, D:, E:, MINIX calls "file systems". MINIX
- does not use drive letters, but requires that one file sys-
- tem is made a part of another file system by "mounting" one
- on the other. The "root" file system is always present and
- starts with the directory "/", the root of the directory
- tree. The root file system contains a few programs in /bin,
- device files in /dev, and configuration files in /etc. This
- is just enough to get the system started. MINIX will soon
- extend its directory tree by mounting a file system on the
- /usr directory. What is henceforth known as the /usr file
- system contains all MINIX programs in /usr/bin, file system
- sources in /usr/src, etc, etc. The ROOT image contains the
- complete MINIX root file system, but USR contains just a
- small subset of the /usr file system, with just enough util-
- ities to install MINIX. The complete /usr file system is
- split up into the USR.TAZ, SYS.TAZ and CMD.TAZ archives that
- are installed later to fill /usr.
-
- Let's suppose your first hard disk, which has device name
- /dev/hd0, has MS-DOS already present in the first primary
- partition (/dev/hd1), and some free space left after that.
- After MINIX is installed in that free space the disk will
-
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-
- look like this:
-
- /dev/hd0 Whole hard disk #0
- /dev/hd1 MS-DOS C: drive
- /dev/hd2 MINIX primary partition
- /dev/hd2a MINIX root partition
- /dev/hd2c MINIX /usr partition
-
- /dev/hd0 is the sum of a partition table, /dev/hd1 and
- /dev/hd2. Likewise is /dev/hd2 the sum of a subpartition
- table, /dev/hd2a and /dev/hd2c. Read the "DEVICES" sections
- for more information on MINIX devices.
-
- 3. INSTALLATION
- If you have not already copied MINIX to floppy disks, please
- read the README.TXT file in the MINIX directory now. It
- tells how to do this. You should also print out EXAMPLE.TXT
- and read it in parallel with this document. This one tells
- you what to do; that one shows you what the screen is sup-
- posed to look like at each step, so you can see if every-
- thing is OK.
-
- You can install MINIX automatically or manually as described
- the sections below. The end result is the same, but manual
- installation allows one to deviate from the preconfigured
- choices. You may wish to read the manual pages of the pro-
- grams used below before you start. You may especially want
- to read boot(8) if your machine is different from what the
- majority buys, because you may need to set a few boot param-
- eters to configure drivers. To do this type ESC to get to
- the Boot Monitor prompt, set the appropriate variables, use
- save to store the settings and menu to continue where you
- left off.
-
- To install the system you need two diskettes: a bootable
- root diskette and a diskette full of binaries to use as
- /usr. These diskettes are named ROOT and USR. These two
- diskettes may also be combined on a single high density
- diskette. In that case the USR part is on the c partition.
-
- Insert the ROOT diskette, boot the machine and type '=' to
- the menu. The MINIX kernel is loaded and takes control when
- you see the copyright banner. After loading the root
- diskette into the RAM disk you will be asked to finish the
- name of the device to mount on /usr. Type fd0c for a
- diskette that contains both ROOT and USR, otherwise replace
- ROOT by USR and type fd0. Login as root.
-
- 4. AUTOMATIC INSTALLATION
- Before starting the installation, you must either have a
- free partition available or have at least 25-30 MB not in
- any partition so you can create a MINIX partition.
-
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- Splitting an MS-DOS partition can be done using fips, and is
- discussed in the main README.TXT file.
-
- Type setup to start the installation script. First it
- offers to install a national keyboard map. The names should
- be clear, except for us-swap, which swaps the CTRL and CAPS
- LOCK keys of a standard US style keyboard for people who
- believe that the natural place of CTRL is next to A. The
- default suggested between [ and ] is the US standard key-
- board.
-
- The next thing to do is to make a partition, for this you
- are placed in a partition table editor named part. This
- partition table editor is very easy to use (in the author's
- opinion), but you will probably hate it. You can move all
- over the place with the arrow keys, change values, and make
- a mess of your partition table real quick. So if you get
- into trouble, type 'q' to quit, 'n' to not write the table,
- and RETURN to start over. Use the '?' key to get help.
-
- With the '+' and '-' keys you can select the disk device to
- install on, probably /dev/hd0, the first hard disk. Type
- 'r' to load the partition table of the selected disk.
- Either create one new partition by modifying a partition
- marked "None", or reuse an existing partition by changing
- its type to "MINIX" (hex code 81). The FIPS program can be
- used under MS-DOS to shrink an MS-DOS partition. FIPS
- splits the MS-DOS partition in two, so one of the two can be
- used for MINIX. You have to be absolutely sure which one.
- When in doubt, first use the FDISK program under MS-DOS to
- delete the extra partition, and let MINIX part create a new
- one. DO NOT use part to shrink an existing partition!
- MINIX needs a partition of at least 25-30 MB, but not larger
- than 128 MB (MINIX-86) or 1 GB (MINIX-386). The system
- needs 30 MB in compiled state.
-
- The script then wants to know the name of the partition
- you've created, this name is probably still visible on the
- screen (hd2, hd6, something like that.) The new partition
- table is reloaded into the disk driver, and the new MINIX
- partition is carved up into two subpartitions, a 1440 kb
- root and the rest for /usr.
-
- After making /usr, it is immediately put to use to replace
- the installation /usr file system so that you can remove the
- USR diskette and insert the ROOT diskette (unless they are
- one and the same). The root file system is filled with the
- contents of the ROOT diskette and slightly patched up to
- work on the hard disk (/etc/fstab.)
-
- To compute the size of the so-called "second level block
- cache" you are asked to specify the RAM size of your
-
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- machine. If you have plenty, i.e 4 MB or more then simply
- hit RETURN, otherwise enter the size of your system RAM in
- kilobytes.
-
- You can now skip the next section and move to "TESTING", but
- it may be instructive to read it anyway.
-
- 5. MANUAL INSTALLATION
- The instructions that follow are at a very low level and
- require you to be very careful. The big advantage is that
- you know precisely what tools have been used and how every-
- thing works. The disadvantage is that you may easily make a
- mistake that either forces you to start over if you are
- lucky, or wipes out the contents of your hard disk if you
- are not. Only if you really want to do something different
- should you use a manual installation. Slavishly following
- the steps shown below will only make you end up with the
- same result as an automatic installation.
-
- Run part to make partitions to load the system into. The
- best thing to do is to make one large primary partition of
- type "MINIX" and to carve this partition up into three sub-
- partitions for root and /usr. The assumption is that you
- will use the second partition on the first hard disk,
- /dev/hd2, and that hd2a is the root subpartition and hd2c is
- /usr. If you want to use the first partition on the second
- hard disk for instance, then substitute hd6 and hd6[ac] for
- the above. On a SCSI disk it will be /dev/sd2 for the
- second partition on the disk at target 0. See the section
- on devices below, and the manual pages of part(8), hd(4),
- and sd(4). Start part and select the whole hard disk device
- (the "multiple of 5" device) that you want to install MINIX
- onto. In our example it will be /dev/hd0.
-
- Use part to make a single partition in the primary partition
- table of type "MINIX", then hit '>' on this new partition to
- make a subpartition table.
-
- For the root subpartition you are advised to use 1440 kb
- exactly. You can make it larger if you want to, but it is
- advisable never to let the contents outgrow a floppy. (The
- ROOT diskette is a copy of a root file system, and will be
- used to fill your root subpartition.)
-
- The second subpartition is either empty or a "scratch" par-
- tition. MINIX no longer uses the b subpartition for any-
- thing useful anymore, but it has become customary to have
- root on a and /usr on c. (You are free to ignore this con-
- vention, of course.)
-
- Use the rest of the partition for the /usr c subpartition.
-
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- When you are done check that /dev/hd2a is active (the *
- after the partition number) so you can boot from it later.
-
- If your disk has bad blocks then don't put the root or
- scratch subpartition on top of them. Make sure the inode
- tables in the other partitions don't have bad blocks either.
- You can put the subpartitions out of order on the disk if
- that helps. Subpartition tables, other than the main parti-
- tion table, are not sorted by the driver.
-
- After making the partitions you do not have to reboot. The
- disk driver reloads the partition tables on the next access
- if the disk is not in use. (Open or mounted.)
-
- To be able to boot from /dev/hd2a you must place a master
- bootstrap in /dev/hd2. It has been placed there by part if
- it told you that it was creating a new partition table, but
-
- installboot -m /dev/hd2 /usr/mdec/masterboot
-
- will put it there for sure.
-
- You will start by making a file system for /usr and filling
- it partially. This may seem to be out of order, but you
- can't insert the ROOT floppy right now.
-
- mkfs /dev/hd2c
- readall -b /dev/hd2c | sh
- mount /dev/hd2c /mnt
- cpdir -v /usr /mnt
-
- This will create a file system on /dev/hd2c, mount it on
- /mnt, and copy the contents of the USR floppy onto it. The
- call to readall marks bad blocks on the file system as unus-
- able, you can omit this on a drive known to be spotless (IDE
- or SCSI.)
-
- You can now use the new /usr in place of the USR floppy:
-
- umount /dev/hd2c
- umount /dev/fd0 # fd0c if combined
- mount /dev/hd2c /usr
-
- This little dance has freed up your floppy drive, so please
- remove the USR diskette and replace it by the ROOT diskette.
- Make a file system for the root with at least 512 inodes
- (files), and fill it from the floppy:
-
- mkfs -i 512 /dev/hd2a
- mount /dev/fd0 /fd0
- mount /dev/hd2a /mnt
- cpdir -v /fd0 /mnt
-
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- umount /dev/fd0
-
- Remove /mnt/etc/issue to get rid of the "use setup" message
- that greets you when you boot, and edit the file
- /mnt/etc/fstab to name the devices MINIX has been installed
- on. In our example it should look like this:
-
- root=/dev/hd2a
- usr=/dev/hd2c
-
- Unmount the new root:
-
- umount /dev/hd2a
-
- Make it bootable:
-
- installboot -d /dev/hd2a /usr/mdec/bootblock boot
-
- The automatic script would now set the rootdev and ram-
- imagedev boot variables. You can do this now using the
- edparams command, but it is easier to postpone it until the
- testing phase. The settings should be:
-
- rootdev=hd2a
- ramimagedev=hd2a
-
- 6. TESTING
- By now a new MINIX system is present on your hard disk.
- Time to see if it works. Leave the ROOT diskette in the
- drive and type halt. You are now going to use the power of
- the Boot Monitor on the diskette to boot the MINIX partition
- on the hard disk. Use the monitor command boot hd2 to boot
- the primary partition MINIX has been installed in. (It is
- "hd2" in our example.) For a SCSI disk you will have to use
- a 'hd' name too. The monitor uses the BIOS, so you will
- have to treat it as a "normal" disk at this point.
-
- The hard disk bootstrap is now showing the menu again. You
- can type '=' to start MINIX, but you probably want to change
- the boot parameters. Hit ESC once more to get to the com-
- mand prompt. The command set shows what the current parame-
- ters are. Here is an example that shows how to make a menu
- to either start MINIX or boot MS-DOS:
-
- minix(=,MINIX) {boot}
- dos(d,MS-DOS) {boot hd1}
- save
-
- MS-DOS is assumed to be in the first partition in the exam-
- ple above (hd1). When finished type menu to see if the menu
- looks right. If so hit '=' to start MINIX. Log in as root.
-
-
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- 7. ADDING PROGRAMS AND SOURCES TO /usr
- The setup command can also be used to add files from floppy
- sets to the system. The USR.TAZ (programs and stuff),
- SYS.TAZ (system sources), and CMD.TAZ (commands sources) are
- all installed relative to the /usr directory, so the command
- to use three times is
-
- setup /usr
-
- Setup will ask for the size of data on the floppies, which
- is by default simply the entire floppy. You will see some
- "Cannot make directory" errors while extracting, as some
- directories already exist. Ignore these messages. You need
- the USR.TAZ set if you want a working MINIX system, SYS.TAZ
- if you want recompile the system or study it, and CMD.TAZ if
- you also want the sources of the commands. On a disk space
- starved machine you could opt to do without the commands
- sources, as they are not absolutely necessary to understand
- MINIX.
-
- If your machine does not have enough memory to run
- setup /usr then type these commands manually:
-
- cd /usr
- vol /dev/fd0 | uncompress | tar xvfp -
-
- 8. NAMES
- A standalone machine will have to be given a name. As root
- type
-
- echo name >/etc/hostname.file
-
- to change the host name of your machine to name.
-
- 9. ACTIVE ON BOOT
- You may want to make the MINIX partition active so that it
- is automatically booted. With MS-DOS fdisk or MINIX part,
- mark the primary partition that contains MINIX active.
- Using the menu you made earlier you can boot either MINIX or
- MS-DOS at a keypress. You can even set timeouts. To boot
- MINIX automatically after 5 seconds:
-
- main() {trap 5000 minix; menu}
-
- See monitor(8) for all the details on the monitor.
-
- If you don't trust this then you can rig up a diskette that
- boots the MINIX partition when left in the drive:
-
- installboot -m 2 /dev/fd0 /usr/mdec/masterboot
-
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- The number 2 indicates the hard disk partition that must be
- booted, you can use the numbers 1 to 9 for hd1 to hd9.
-
- 10. DEVICES
- A crash course on the MINIX devices in /dev: The two hard
- disks are named hd0 and hd5. These "multiple of five" dev-
- ices address the entire hard disk, from the first to the
- last byte. Each disk has four partitions, for disk 0 they
- are hd1, hd2, hd3, and hd4. And for disk 1 they are named
- hd6, hd7, hd8, and hd9. These partitions may contain file
- systems, hd1 often contains the MS-DOS "C:" file system.
- MINIX can use these partitions for file systems too, but you
- can also partition one of these "primary partitions" into
- four so-called "subpartitions". The subpartitions of hd1
- are named hd1a, hd1b, hd1c, and hd1d. The other partitions
- may have four subpartitions that are named in the same way
- by adding a letter from a to d. So one disk may have four
- partitions, and 16 subpartititions total. SCSI disks are
- named in the same way, from sd0 to sd39d for all possible
- devices for all eight SCSI targets. The two floppy disks
- are fd0 and fd1. Each may have four partitions named fd0a,
- fd0b, ... fd1d. The command MAKEDEV knows how to make dev-
- ices, and DESCRIBE can tell you what an unknown device may
- be, or even what all devices in /dev may be if called
- without arguments. Devices are described fully in dev(4),
- and in the device specific manual pages like fd(4) and
- hd(4).
-
- 11. EDITORS
- The editors available are elvis (a vi clone), elle (a simple
- emacs clone), and the old MINIX mined editor. Of these edi-
- tors only elvis can recover your file after a system crash.
- Only mined is available at installation time. (All you need
- to know about mined right now is that CTRL-X gets you out of
- it.)
-
- 12. INSTALLING ON A SCSI DISK
- Using a disk other than an (IDE) hd disk complicates things
- a bit. The Boot Monitor uses the BIOS, so it names all
- disks with hd names. So it is boot hd1 to boot partition 1,
- and ramimagedev=sd2a to tell MINIX its root partition. If
- you have both a normal and a SCSI disk then the disks may be
- hd0 and hd5 to the Monitor, and hd0 and sd0 to MINIX.
-
- 13. NATIONAL KEYBOARDS
- The directory /usr/lib/keymaps contains keymap tables for
- several national keyboards. If you have a German keyboard
- for instance, then
-
- loadkeys /usr/lib/keymaps/german.map
-
-
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- USAGE(8) Maintenance Procedures USAGE(8)
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- will load the German key translation table into the keyboard
- driver. Copy the map to /etc/keymap once MINIX is installed
- on the hard disk, because having to type a key sequence like
- one of these:
-
- loadkezs -usr-lib-kezmaps-german.map
- loqdkeys =usr=lib=key,qps=french.,qp
-
- on a reboot gets a bit annoying after a while. Send correc-
- tions and new keymaps to the person named below. (Do not
- send a Dutch keymap, buy yourself a real keyboard instead.)
-
- SUGGESTIONS
- Below are a few useful suggestions. Some of the information
- can be of use in other situations than described here.
-
- 14. VIRTUAL CONSOLES
- Hold down the ALT key and press the left or right arrow key,
- F1, or F2. This switches the console between two login ses-
- sions. (Unless you have an old mono adapter, because vir-
- tual consoles sit in video memory, and a mono adapter only
- has memory for one.)
-
- Note that kernel messages, including function key output,
- only appear on the first console. This may be confusing,
- but it keeps the other consoles clean.
-
- 15. LOW ON MEMORY
- The normal installation requires that you have enough memory
- for a large RAM disk. You can still install MINIX normally
- if you either have a high density diskette drive for a com-
- bined root+usr floppy, or you have two floppy drives of at
- least 720 kb. Before booting you have to set the variable
- rootdev to the same value as ramimagedev. This is slower
- then a RAM disk, but saves a lot of memory.
-
- The automatic installation script knows how to handle this
- new situation. If you install manually then you have to use
-
- cpdir -vx / /mnt
-
- to copy the root device to disk. When it is time to fill
- /usr and you only have one floppy drive then hit DEL to get
- out of the installation script and reboot as described in
- "TESTING". You can then finish the installation manually.
- See the XT640K.TXT file for more advice on small machines.
-
- 16. LOW ON MEMORY AND ONLY ONE 720 KB FLOPPY DRIVE
- If you only have one 720 kb floppy drive and your system is
- low on memory then you can use the TINYROOT boot image.
- This image contains a small kernel with only the BIOS disk
- driver, and a small root file system. You can use this disk
-
-
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- USAGE(8) Maintenance Procedures USAGE(8)
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- to boot your machine. Use the normal ROOT to install the
- root file system. Keep booting your machine with TINYROOT
- until you have compiled a small kernel for your system. Use
- the rootdev boot variable to select the hard disk root file
- system. Do not use TINYROOT for anything other than boot-
- ing, always use ROOT when mentioned.
-
- 17. FLOPPY DRIVE 1 IS A HIGH DENSITY DRIVE
- If you would like to install from floppy drive 1 then you
- need to copy at least one sector from the USR image onto a
- diskette for drive 0. The USR bootstrap has been rigged to
- boot the other drive.
-
- 18. INSTALLING ON A SECOND HARD DISK
- MINIX doesn't care if it is installed on the second disk of
- a system with two disks. The only problem is to get it
- booted. You can either rig up a diskette to boot MINIX as
- shown earlier, or you can use the same trick on the first
- disk. The command
-
- installboot -m 5 /dev/hd0 /usr/mdec/masterboot
-
- will lock the first disk into booting the second disk. Note
- that this command modifies the disk outside a MINIX parti-
- tion, overwriting a bit of code that has likely been put
- there by MS-DOS fdisk. First verify that the Boot Monitor
- can boot an MS-DOS partition, because then the MINIX master
- bootstrap can do it too.
-
- 19. LOTS OF MEMORY ON A 286
- You will have a hard time making MINIX use up 3 MB memory.
- Memory you can spare can be used for a "second level block
- cache" on the RAM disk. The File System uses the second
- level cache to store copies of disk blocks that are pushed
- out of the normal (primary) block cache. The size of the
- primary cache is compiled into the FS server, but the size
- of the second level cache can be set with the ramsize boot
- variable. Set it to a number between 0 and 512. 512 kilo-
- bytes is enough to keep most of the compiler cached. You
- must have extended memory; expanded memory is not supported.
-
- 20. LOTS OF MEMORY ON A 386+
- Processes can be as big as you would like on a 386, but in
- practice 4 MB is plenty for all your processes. The instal-
- lation script sets up a second level cache for MINIX-386 of
- up to 1024 kilobytes. This is because the default file sys-
- tem cache is only 80 kb. Your first point of call is to get
- rid of the poorly performing second level cache by setting
- ENABLE_CACHE2 to 0 and to assign the memory used by it to
- the normal block cache by enlarging the appropriate NR_BUFS
- and NR_BUF_HASH constants in <minix/config.h> with as much
- as you can spare. (1024 for NR_BUFS is the minimum to keep
-
-
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-
- cc -c cached. 2048 is then a nice value for NR_BUF_HASH.)
- Disable the second level cache, compile a new kernel, reboot
- and set ramsize to 0.
-
- 21. LOTS OF DISK SPACE
- The maximum file system size is 1 GB for MINIX-386 and 128
- MB for MINIX-86. (MINIX-86 can handle larger file systems,
- but fsck can't check them.) Note that a MINIX file system
- can only contain 65535 inodes (files), so the average file
- should be 16 kb to completely fill it. It may be better to
- make two smaller file systems. Besides, fsck takes forever
- on a large file system.
-
- SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION
- The system has been set up with the idea that working as
- root is a bad thing to do. As root you are in no way pro-
- tected from doing stupid things. So don't do development as
- root, but work as bin! Only in exceptional cases do you
- want to become root. Being root is fun for wannabe hackers;
- administrators know better.
-
- To make life easier for bin, some programs like su(1),
- install(1) and shutdown(8) treat bin and other members of
- the operator group as special and allow them the privileges
- of root. (One is an operator if one's group id is zero.)
- Operators should share the shadow password of root by having
- ##root in their password field. This way they all have one
- face (password) to the outside world, forming no greater
- security risk than root alone.
-
- The home directory of bin contains one important Makefile.
- You can use it to recompile all the commands and libraries
- of the system. Type make to see the usage message. If you
- want to compile just one command then you can simply type
- make to do so. To put it in its proper place you have to
- type make install. Read the Makefiles in the commands and
- lib subdirectories to understand how everything is put
- together. If you are tight on memory then make may fail to
- traverse down the source tree and also compile things. You
- will have to type make in each subdirectory. You can run
- make in /usr/src at the end to see if you've missed some-
- thing or not.
-
- The login shell of bin is ash, the BSD shell. It has been
- modified to offer simple line editing using the editline(3)
- library. Ash is rather big, so you may have to change bin's
- shell back to /bin/sh with chsh(1) if you are low on memory.
- Do not change root's shell to ash, and do not replace
- /bin/sh by ash. It may run out of memory at the wrong
- moment.
-
-
-
-
-
- 11
-
-
- USAGE(8) Maintenance Procedures USAGE(8)
-
-
-
- The kernel is not compiled from the master Makefile. To
- make a new kernel you have to step into the tools directory.
- There you can run four different make commands:
-
- make This makes all the different kernel parts and combines
- them in the file named image.
-
- make fdboot
- As above and then makes a boot floppy that you can use
- to restart your system with. You are prompted for the
- floppy device name.
-
- make hdboot
- First makes the image file and then copies it into the
- directory /minix. If there are already two images in
- that directory then the newest image will be removed to
- make space for this newer image. It is assumed that
- the oldest image is the most stable system image, one
- that always works, and that the newest image is experi-
- mental. Check beforehand what /minix contains before
- you run make hdboot. Remove the oldest image if you
- want another image to become the stable image. The
- Boot Monitor chooses the newest image in /minix to
- boot. You can use the monitor command ls minix to view
- the images present, and set the image variable to the
- full name of the image you want to use instead if the
- newest doesn't work. The images in /minix are named
- using the MINIX release and version numbers with an
- extra revision number added to distinguish the images.
-
- The first new kernel you would like to make is one config-
- ured for your system. The kernel you are running now con-
- tains several hard disk drivers you don't need, and it does
- not have a TCP/IP server that you may want to have. In
- <minix/config.h> you can find a number of ENABLE_XXX vari-
- ables that can be set to 0 to exclude, or 1 to include a
- particular driver. Another driver related variable is
- DMA_SECTORS. This variable sets the size of a buffer used
- by DMA based disk drivers (all but the floppy, AT/IDE, and
- Adaptec drivers). Raise its value to greatly improve
- throughput, especially writing. A value of 16 shows good
- results. (The BIOS driver benefits most, because it is a
- long way to the BIOS from protected mode, especially from
- 286 protected mode.) You can increase NR_CONS if you want
- to have more virtual consoles. Having more consoles costs
- little memory, because all the consoles are kept in video
- memory. Scrolling speed of the console will go down if more
- virtual consoles share the available memory. CGA cards have
- space for 4 consoles, EGA and VGA can have 8 consoles. The
- NR_PTYS variable sets the number of pseudo-ttys. You need
- pseudo-ttys to be able to login remotely over a network with
- the rlogin command. Each remote login session needs one
-
-
-
- 12
-
-
- USAGE(8) Maintenance Procedures USAGE(8)
-
-
-
- pseudo-tty. If you fear that the system will now run out of
- processes then increase NR_PROCS. Configuring a new kernel
- is sometimes not enough to enable new devices, you sometimes
- need to use the MAKEDEV command to make new device files in
- /dev. For pseudo-ttys you also have to check if /etc/ttytab
- mentiones the new devices.
-
- New additions to the system can be made in the /usr/local
- tree. An empty directory tree has been set up for you and
- binaries and manual pages are already in the search paths.
- You can make a new user entry with the adduser command.
-
- The TZ variable in /etc/profile tells the time zone offset
- from the wall clock time to GMT. You have to change it for
- your time zone. (See TZ(5).)
-
- The function keys produce debug dumps, showing various
- interesting data about the system. F1 lists processes and
- F5 shows ethernet stats, which may be of use now. Read con-
- sole(4) to know all the details of the screen and keyboard.
-
- 22. SYSTEM SHUTDOWN
- You can't just turn a MINIX system off. MINIX must be told
- to flush the modified data in the file system cache first.
- The following commands/keystrokes can be used to exit MINIX
- properly:
-
- shutdown
- First alert all users and then all processes of the
- impending shutdown then halt or reboot the system in
- one of various ways. See shutdown(8).
-
- reboot / halt
- Alert all processes of the system shutdown then reboot
- or halt.
-
- CTRL-ALT-DEL
- Halt the system by running shutdown -h now.
-
- MINIX halts by returning to the Boot Monitor, MINIX reboots
- by instructing the monitor to reboot MINIX. (MINIX is just
- a subprocess to the monitor.) Either halt MINIX and use
- monitor commands to escape MINIX, or use shutdown -R to
- reset the system.
-
- FILES
- /usr/ast Honorary home directory of Andew S. Tanenbaum.
- Doubles as the place where the default setup for
- a new user is found.
-
- SEE ALSO
- monitor(8), boot(8), part(8), mkfs(1), mount(8), M(8),
-
-
-
- 13
-
-
- USAGE(8) Maintenance Procedures USAGE(8)
-
-
-
- fstab(5), hier(7), console(4), dev(4), adduser(8), TZ(5),
- mkdist(8), shutdown(8).
- "Operating Systems - Design and Implementation 2/e" by
- Andrew S. Tanenbaum and Albert S. Woodhull.
-
- NOTES
- The notation <file.h> refers to a C language include file in
- /usr/include.
-
- Root and bin do not have the current directory in their pro-
- gram search path to avoid executing programs left around by
- malicious people. This means that to run foo from the
- current directory, ./foo must be typed.
-
- Some of the commands have changed since earlier MINIX ver-
- sions. For instance mkfs doesn't need a size argument
- anymore, and vol automagically determines if it needs to
- read or write. Keep this in mind if you use an older MINIX
- version to examine the newer system.
-
- BUGS
- There are many PS/2 models, all different. Some will run
- MINIX, some won't, some crippled if you lie to MINIX by set-
- ting processor to 86. Almost no PS/2 has a standard disk,
- so setting hd to esdi or bios will be necessary.
-
- While testing a full library rebuild of this distribution it
- sometimes happened that some things were not put back into
- the library. This seems to be fixed, but we do not under-
- stand why the fix fixed the problem. So if you see strange
- "undefined" errors when compiling a program after a library
- rebuild then run make install again in /usr/src/lib/ to try
- and add the missing pieces.
-
- Except for the floppy driver, none of the DMA based drivers
- know about DMA being limited to a 24 bits address, i.e. the
- first 16 MB. So under MINIX-386 you run a slight risk that
- a tar or dd command may use a buffer above 16 MB for reading
- or writing to a character device. This only happens if the
- low 16 MB is taken by some huge processes, and you have more
- than 16 MB, of course.
-
- AUTHOR
- Kees J. Bot (kjb@cs.vu.nl)
-
- 14
-
-