Getting Minix with virtual memory

[J.F. de Smit]

I know a lot of people have been asking about virtual memory recently. It
has been added to the main Subversion trunk a couple of weeks ago and
yesterday I decided to try it out. With some fiddling and some help, it
eventually worked. It's actually deceptively easy, but you have to take
the right steps or you break your system.

Disclaimer:
This guide described what I did, it is not necessarily the best solution
or anything. This version is also obviously not release-ready, I've noted
a slew of bugs (such as top and ps not working, the tty driver not liking
escaped keys and oprobably a bunch more).

The base is a clean install of Minix 3.1.3a, which can be downloaded in
bootable disk image form from minix3.org. You need to have networking
enabled or come up with a creative way to get the svn sources.

Do all this as root:
- install subversion through packman
- mv /usr/src /usr/src-old
- cd /usr
- svn --username anonymous co https://gforge.cs.vu.nl/svn/minix/trunk/src
(enter an empty password and accept the bogus certificate)
- cp /usr/src/etc/drivers.conf /etc
(this step is essential! You'll end up with a broken system if you don't
do this)
- cd /usr/src/tools
- make depend includes libraries install
- cp /boot/image/3.1.3 /boot/image_big
- shutdown -r

and you should have it. It is very important that you do not reboot in
between copying the drivers.conf file and completing your recompile and
installation of the new boot image. The old and new versions of
drivers.conf, the servers and the kernel are incompatible.

I'll soon have a different guide detailing how to get Minix 3.1.3a running
in QEMU so you can get to here from scratch completely.

Regards,

Jens

--
Jens de Smit
Master Computer Science | Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
jfd...@few.vu.nl | http://www.few.vu.nl/~jfdsmit
"[In the end, people] get furious at IT that the goddamn magic isn't working"
-- Stewart Dean

[lkle...@gmail.com]

Hi,
On 13. Jan, 10:50 h., "J.F. de Smit" <jst...@keg.few.vu.nl> wrote:
> ...

> This version is also obviously not release-ready, I've noted
> a slew of bugs (such as top and ps not working, the tty driver not liking
> escaped keys and oprobably a bunch more).

> ...
sorry for poisonous question but when will be the new stable release
of
minix available?

Regards,
Ladislav.

[J.F. de Smit]

lkle...@gmail.com <lkle...@gmail.com> wrote:
> sorry for poisonous question but when will be the new stable release
> of
> minix available?

Hi,

I think it's a very valid question :) However, I am no authority on this
subject whatsoever, simply an enthusiast who happens to be acquainted with
a developer because I studied at the VU and did some things on Minix for
my BSc.

I think the correct answer to your question is "when it's stable", but I
would also reckon that something is about to happen. The SVN trunk of
Minix is remarkably active as of late (kind of like predicting a volcano),
so I think something is about to hapen in the not-too-distant future.
Apart from the inclusion of virtual memory in the trunk, include/config.h
has new been changed to call this version of the source "3.1.4". 3.1.2 was
a stable release, 3.1.3 an intermediate, and my gut feeling is that people
are working really hard to come up with a new, releasable version pretty
soon.

Things I noticed changing since 3.1.2:
- less support for ancient hardware (the "small" image has been abandoned
if I'm not mistaken)
- FS split into VFS and MFS
- new, better configurable driver framework
- virtual memory
- integration of system profiling
- core dumps repaired
- and probably lots of stuff I missed....

All in all, I think enough has changed to warrant a new release. Still,
"when" is a very tricky question (oh, and this is of course all
speculation by me).