Minix 1.7.4

## 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)