WELCOME TO MINIX! ----------------- The complete MINIX sources and binaries are located in the MINIX directory. To install MINIX, please print out the README.TXT and INSTALL.TXT files in the MINIX directory. (If you have a PostScript printer, print INSTALL.PS instead of INSTALL.TXT.) You are VERY VERY strongly urged to read them from beginning to end before even starting the installation. Doing so will save a lot of grief later. Then go back and read them carefully as you do the installation. The source and binary of the fdvol program are also located here. Fdvol (or possibly rawrite3 or wrtdsk90) are needed to transfer files from the CD ROM to floppies and then to the MINIX hard disk. Before starting to install MINIX, you must do two things. First, you must have a supply of (at least 5, preferably 10) formatted floppy disks on hand. It does not matter what is on them, but they must be formatted. To run MINIX from a hard disk, you also need a free partition of at least 25 MB, preferably at least 30 MB. Note that this must be one of the four primary partitions, not an MS-DOS extended partition. You can see how your primary partitions are allocated by running the MS-DOS fdisk program. If you have enough space, but all of it is in a large MS-DOS partition, it is possible to split the MS-DOS partition into a smaller MS-DOS partition and an empty partition for installing MINIX. To do this, first run scandisk to repair any errors on the MS-DOS partition. Then remove your Windows swap file, if any. Next, run defrag to compact the partition. Once these steps have been performed, you can use fips to split the partition. For all the details, go to the DOSUTILS\FIPS directory on this CD ROM and read the following files: README.1st, README.TXT, FIPS.DOC, FIPS.FAQ, and SPECIAL.DOC. These files will explain splitting partitions in great detail. In theory, no files should be lost by spliting but just to be on the safe side, please back up all the files on your MS-DOS partition before splitting. The MINIX distribution consists of a number of .TAZ files. These are compressed MINIX tar files. To install them, you must first transfer them to your hard disk, then decompress and de-archive them. Getting them to the hard disk is done via the blank floppies mentioned above. Since MS-DOS does not provide any way to copy a file to a sequence of floppies, byte for byte, we have provided a program, fdvol.exe, in this directory and in MINIX for that purpose. As an example, if later on you need to put the SYS.TAZ file on a set of 1.44 MB floppies using the A: drive, you would change to the MINIX directory and type: fdvol 1440 A: SYS.TAZ Fdvol will prompt you to insert floppies until it is done. Be sure to label each floppy with the file name and the floppy number. For 360K, 720K, or 1.2 MB floppies, use 360, 720, or 1200 as the first parameter, respectively. You can also use the B: drive if you prefer by replacing the second parameter. In summary: 1. Go get a set of 10 formatted floppies. 2. Partition your hard disk to have a free primary partition > 25 MB. 3. Read README.TXT and INSTALL.TXT in the MINIX directory (in that order). For the current state of the MINIX system, see: The MINIX web page: http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/minix.html The MINIX newsgroup: comp.os.minix OTHER SOFTWARE ON THIS CD ROM ----------------------------- In addition to the basic MINIX system, this CD ROM also contains the following directories: LISTING - The full source code listing in several formats DOSUTILS - Some MS-DOS programs to help you install MINIX COMPILER - Some user-contributed compilers NETUTILS - Some user-contributed networking utilities DEBUGGER - A user-contributed MINIX debugger BOCHS - A 386 interpreter for running MINIX on a UNIX system SMX - A version of MINIX that runs as a user program on a SPARC Each of these directories contains a README.TXT file describing installing and use of the files. Except for the files in the LISTING directory, all the other software and documentation was produced by third parties. We are including it here in the hope it may be of interest to some MINIX users, but we have not tested it and are in no way responsible for it. Comments should be directed to the respective authors. SIMULATING MINIX ---------------- In some situations, you may prefer to run MINIX on non-Intel computers. We have provided two ways to do this. The simulator in BOCHS is a 386 interpreter. It also simulates the most common I/O devices, so you can run MINIX on top of it. Bochs is written in C and runs on any machine that has a C compiler and supports X Windows. The disadvantage of any interpreter, of course, is a performance loss due to the interpretation of every 386 instruction. An alternative simulator is located in the SMX directory. It uses a different principle: MINIX is run as a user program on top of Solaris. This program works only on SPARCs, but it allows MINIX to run at full speed because there is no interpretation. The MINIX binary run this way is not identical to normal MINIX because it does not run on the bare hardware. Nevertheless, it is very close, all things considered. This simulator must be compiled with gcc (not the Sun compiler), so a copy of gcc 2.7.2 is provided on this CD ROM. Each simulator contains its own documentation. Please consult these. Andy Tanenbaum (ast@cs.vu.nl) Al Woodhull (awoodhull@hamp.hampshire.edu) Kees Bot (kjb@cs.vu.nl)