OSNews

Installation

In order to have a useable Minix system, an actual installation must be performed. First, though some preparation:

USR.TAZ and SYS.TAZ

Both of these files are too large to fit on a floppy and for the time being, the floppy is the only mechanism available to get files from Windows XP into Minix. The solution is to slice each file into floppy-sized chunks and read them in piecemeal.

In Windows, this is not as straightforward as I would like. Thankfully, Cygwin provides Windows users with a Unix like environment with which to work in. Feel free to find your own method for doing this and please share.

Hints

1. If you are new to Cygwin, drives are referred to as /cygdrive/[drive letter], as in /cygdrive/d instead of d:
2. If you are in a Cygwin Prompt or a Command Prompt window, and you want to start Explorer in that directory (maybe you want to rename and copy a set of files...), type:

    explorer /e,.

(explore space slash e comma dot)
3. dd is a unix utility that dumps data from one file to another. In unix a device can be a file, this allows the dumping of a floppy to a file and visa versa

Slice Archives

Use the dd utility to do the slicing of USR.TAZ:

    $ dd if=USR.TAZ of=USR-01.img bs=1440k count=1 skip=0
    1+0 records in
    1+0 records out

    $ dd if=USR.TAZ of=USR-02.img bs=1440k count=1 skip=1
    1+0 records in
    1+0 records out

    $ dd if=USR.TAZ of=USR-03.img bs=1440k count=1 skip=2
    0+1 records in
    0+1 records out

    $

You will need three slices with the current version of Minix, later you might need more. You have enough slices when dd reports 0+1 records in or 0+0 records in (in the case of a perfect fit of the last slice).

Use the dd utility to do the slicing of SYS.TAZ:

    $ dd if=SYS.TAZ of=SYS-01.img bs=1440k count=1 skip=0
    1+0 records in
    1+0 records out

    $ dd if=SYS.TAZ of=SYS-02.img bs=1440k count=1 skip=1
    1+0 records in
    1+0 records out

    $

You will need two slices with the current version of Minix, later you might need more. You have enough slices when dd reports 0+1 records in or 0+0 records in (in the case of a perfect fit of the last slice).

Start the Installation

1. Double Click on the Minix-2.0.4-rootonlyHD.bxrc file to fire up Bochs and Minixc
2. Login as root

     noname login: root

3. Press F3 to enable Software scrolling (if the screen blanks)
4. Type 'setup /usr' to start the USR setup process

    # setup /usr

5. Press enter to accept the default image size of all
6. Press enter to accept the default floppy drive of 0
7. Click the A floppy button in the Bochs toolbar
8. Click the Browse button and browse to the USR-01.img file to select it as the floppy image. Make sure inserted is checked
9. Click OK to continue
10. Press enter at the Please insert input volume 1 and hit return prompt (this will extract a bunch of files - ignore the Can't make directory because it already exists messages - they are expected.
11. Click the A floppy button in the Bochs toolbar when prompted for the next volume
12. Click the Browse button and browse to the USR-02.img file to select it as the floppy image. Make sure inserted is checked.
13. Click OK to continue
14. Press enter at the Please insert input volume 2 and hit return prompt (this will extract a bunch more files)
15. and so on until you have extracted the contents of all of the volumes.
You know that you are done, when Minix says:

   Done.

Install the System Sources

The system is useable at this point, however, the man pages are not present and for me this is problematic - I cannot remember half the syntax for the commands. In order to get the man pages working, the SYS images must be imported and extracted. SYS also includes the kernel source code needed for recompiling the kernel, not covered here. Here are the steps for installing SYS:

1. Create a working directory in /usr, say /usr/work. The reason for this is the fact that the root / file system only has about a Megabyte of space.

    mkdir /usr/work
    cd /usr/work

2. Click the A floppy button in the Bochs toolbar.
3. Click the Browse button and browse to the SYS-01.img file to select it as the floppy image. Make sure inserted is checked.
4. Click OK to continue.
5. Read the contents to a file on the disk image:

    dd if=/dev/fd0 of=SYS-01.img

You should get a message similar to:

    2880+0 records in
    2880+0 records out

6. Click the A floppy button in the Bochs toolbar.
7. Click the Browse button and browse to the SYS-02.img file to select it as the floppy image. Make sure inserted is checked.
8. Click OK to continue.
9. Read the contents to a file on the disk image:

    dd if=/dev/fd0 of=SYS-01.img

You should get a message similar to:

    2880+0 records in
    2880+0 records out

10. Repeat this as necessary, until all of the SYS-0x.img files are read into the Minix hard disk image.
11. Concatenate the two images into one SYS.tar.Z file:

    cat SYS-01.img SYS-02.img > SYS.tar.Z

12. Uncompress the SYS.tar.Z file:

    uncompress SYS.tar.Z

13. Untar SYS.tar from /usr:

    cd /usr
    tar xvf /usr/work/SYS.tar

14. Test it out, type:

    man man

15. If all is well, a man page describing how to use man should be on screen.
16. Shutdown the instance by typing the following at the # prompt:

   shutdown -h now

17. Shutdown the Bochs instance by pressing the Power button on the toolbar.

Backup the image

You now have a bare instance of the Minix OS installed on the hard drive instance. This is an excellent time to archive the instance for posterity (and in case you mess up something and want to start over without all the pain of going through this how to again - aka backup).

Copy bochsrc and image

Copy the bochsrc and image files to new files:

    cp Minix-2.0.4-rootonlyHD.bxrc Minix-2.0.4-HD.bxrc
    cp Minix-2.0.4-rootonlyHD.img Minix-2.0.4-HD.img

Edit bochsrc

Edit the new bochsrc file, Minix-2.0.4-HD.bxrc:

    megs: 8
    romimage: file=$BXSHARE/BIOS-Bochs-latest, address=0xf0000
    vgaromimage: $BXSHARE/VGABIOS-elpin-2.40
    ata0: enabled=1, ioaddr1=0x1f0, ioaddr2=0x3f0, irq=14
    ata0-master: type=disk, path="Minix-2.0.4-HD.img", \
mode=flat, cylinders=81, heads=16, spt=63
    floppya: 1_44=floppya.img
    floppyb: 1_44=floppyb.img
    boot: disk
    log: Minix-2.0.4-HD.log
    mouse: enabled=0

Create a tarball

Create a tarball of the new bochsrc and image file:

    tar cvzf minixfresh.tar.gz minix-2.0.4-HD.bxrc minix-2.0.4-HD.img
    cp minixfresh.tar.gz somewheresafe

Untarring (no need to do it now) the archive is as simple as:

    tar xvzf minixfresh.tar.gz

Should zip up to around 10 Megabytes (amazing, huh?).

1. "Minix, Page 1/4"
2. "Minix, Page 2/4"
3. "Minix, Page 3/4"
4. "Minix, Page 4/4"