HOW TO GET AND INSTALL MINIX 1.7.4

This directory and subdirectories contains Minix version 1.7.4, a small
educational UNIX-like system for IBM PC's and compatibles. 

Before installing Minix, do the unthinkable and read the installation
manual in the file usage.8. On a UNIX machine you can unpack 
man.tar.Z and use a reasonably smart pager (one that understands
backspace overstrikes) to read the man pages. The same manual
pages can be found in man.zip as flat text for use under MS-DOS.
Note that the ZIP file contains subdirectories that you may or may not
want to keep intact. These manual pages are preformatted to 66 lines
per page and should be send to the printer uninterpreted. 

  man.tar.Z             - Installation manual pages (UNIX)
  man.zip               - Installation manual pages (MS-DOS)

Alternatively, by WWW you can view the whole manual page set. The
page to start with is usage(8). 

Before fetching Minix, you should get the checksum list (to verify
correct transmission and unpacking). If you do not already have it,
you will need the program to compute the checksums on your
machine, crc.c: 

  crclist               - CRC's of all the files here
  crc.c                 - Command to make CRC checksums

Eventually, you may also want these files: 

  changes-1.7.4         - List of changes between 1.7.2 and 1.7.4
  upgrade-1.7.4         - How to upgrade from 1.7.x to 1.7.4
  bugs                  - List of bugs in 1.7.4
  fixes/                - Fixes to bugs in 1.7.4


Minix for the Intel architecture comes in three flavors: 

   - Regular (for 386, 486, and Pentium machines)
   - Small (for 8086 and 286 machines)
   - Tiny (for 8086 and 286 machines with small memories and/or 360K
     diskette drives)

For the regular distribution, use the i386 directory. For the small
distribution, use the i86 directory. For the tiny distribution, use the
both the i86 and xt directories. All these directories contain the
executable programs of Minix. In addition, the src directory contains
the full Minix source code, which is identical for all three flavors (the
code contains #ifdef's where the difference matters). 

Two versions of the distribution have been prepared. If you are
reasonably experienced in dealing with UNIX or Minix and are
downloading to a UNIX or Minix system with 10MB of free disk space,
and a connection that can transfer megabyte files without loss (even
if this is not the target system), just fetch whichever of the following
you need: 

  i386.tar      - 386 binaries
  i86.tar       - 8086/286 binaries
  xt.tar        - Replacement files for tiny systems
  src.tar       - Full sources and manual pages for all versions

Under all other circumstances, use the second distribution, which
consists of many 720K floppy disk images (you can also use bigger
diskettes, but remember that the size of the images is still 720K). 

  i386:         ROOT USR USR.01 USR.02 ... USR.06
  i86:          ROOT USR USR.01 USR.02 ... USR.06
  xt:           README TINYROOT TINYUSR1 TINYUSR2 (360K images)
  src:          SYS.01 ... CMD.01 ...

The USR.nn, SYS.nn, and CMD.nn series of diskette images were
created by commands like this one, so they are just a compressed tar
file cut to pieces: 

        tar cf - * | compress | vol 720 /dev/fd0

(The usage(8) manual uses the names USR.TAZ, SYS.TAZ and 
CMD.TAZ to refer to these floppy sets, because those will be their
names on the upcoming Minix CD-ROM.) 

The two installation floppies can be combined on a 1.2 Mb or 1.44 Mb
diskette, the other images can be combined on 1.44 Mb floppies,
turning them into 1440K images: 

        cat ROOT USR >/dev/fd0
        cat USR.01 USR.02 >/dev/fd0              (odd/even pairs)
        cat USR.03 USR.04 >/dev/fd0
        ...
        cat SYS.01 SYS.02 >/dev/fd0
        ...
        cat CMD.01 CMD.02 >/dev/fd0
        ...

/dev/fd0 is a random floppy device name. You have to find out what
your Operating System names it today. Under MS-DOS you can use
the WrtDsk command in the ../dosutil directory to write the floppy
images. 

Be careful when you install Minix, many of the commands are
potentionally dangerous in a way that a simple typing mistake may
destroy all other data on your system. So make backups first! 

                                                Kees J. Bot (kjb@cs.vu.nl)
