[NEWBIE / hobbyist] Installing MINIX3 on a "modern" PC, USB + network?

[Wilfred van Rooijen]

Hi, I read Prof. Tanenbaum's text book about 15 years ago and found it very educational. A few weeks ago I stumbled across MINIX3 more or less by accident and I would like to try it, just for fun.

However...... reading on the website I learned that USB does not work and network is also not available. Thus there is a risk to install MINIX3 and then end up with a computer which is autistic for the most part - that is not interesting. Thus, before I undertake this adventure, please allow me to ask some newbie questions.

My computer has:

rooijen@pleiades ~ $ sudo lspci
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation HD Graphics 530 (rev 06)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H USB 3.0 xHCI Controller (rev 31)
00:17.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H SATA controller [AHCI mode] (rev 31)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H PCI Express Root Port #5 (rev f1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H LPC Controller (rev 31)
00:1f.2 Memory controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H PMC (rev 31)
00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H HD Audio (rev 31)
00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H SMBus (rev 31)
01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 15)

MINIX3 is supposed to support Realtek 8169, will the Realtek 8168 work as well?

I set up my machine with Funtoo, using GPT (not MBR). In Funtoo I was able to use GRUB2 to set up the boot image in the correct location. The MINIX3 pages consistently mention MBR, so am I correct in understanding that MINIX will not boot from GPT? Or is it really only a matter of setting up the GPT with GRUB2 (from Funtoo ?) My machine also does not have CD/DVD, so I am considering the USB installation, using SystemRescueCD. Does anybody here have any experience?

How far is MINIX3 from, say, Gentoo or Funtoo with respect to desktop environment? I would like to play around with MINIX3 but if the overall desktop experience is 2004 then I'd rather not waste my time. For me, the machine should run a reasonable graphical environment (Gnome3), with support for sound, video and network, some text editing software (gedit is more than enough), the current verions of the gcc and gfortran compilers. I don't mind fiddling around or compiling software from the sources, I enjoy such things, but if there is no outlook for a reasonable result then there's no point.

[Greg Reagle]

On Wed, Aug 16, 2017, at 09:17, Wilfred van Rooijen wrote:
> Hi, I read Prof. Tanenbaum's text book about 15 years ago and found it very educational.
> A few weeks ago I stumbled across MINIX3 more or less by accident and I would like to try
> it, just for fun.
>
> However...... reading on the website I learned that USB does not work and network is also
> not available. Thus there is a risk to install MINIX3 and then end up with a computer which
> is autistic for the most part - that is not interesting. Thus, before I undertake this
> adventure, please allow me to ask some newbie questions.

My advice is first try Minix with an emulator.

[Wilfred van Rooijen]

OK I will try with an "emulator". What would be the best option? Install some kind of emulation software in my linux-partition, or should I boot with a some live-USB (e.g. SystemRescueCD) and somehow set up the emulation?


2017年8月17日木曜日 0時31分57秒 UTC+9 Greg Reagle:

[Ernesto Celis]

On Wed, Aug 16, 2017 at 10:36 PM, Wilfred van Rooijen
<w.f.g.va...@gmail.com> wrote:
> OK I will try with an "emulator". What would be the best option? Install
> some kind of emulation software in my linux-partition, or should I boot with
> a some live-USB (e.g. SystemRescueCD) and somehow set up the emulation?

You don't need to do anything special beyond installing some
virtualization software in your current operating system. Check out
Minix3 wiki http://wiki.minix3.org/doku.php?id=www:getting-started:virtualmachines
and choose whichever fits best your system.

>
>
> 2017年8月17日木曜日 0時31分57秒 UTC+9 Greg Reagle:
>>
>> On Wed, Aug 16, 2017, at 09:17, Wilfred van Rooijen wrote:
>> > Hi, I read Prof. Tanenbaum's text book about 15 years ago and found it
>> > very educational.
>> > A few weeks ago I stumbled across MINIX3 more or less by accident and I
>> > would like to try
>> > it, just for fun.
>> >
>> > However...... reading on the website I learned that USB does not work
>> > and network is also
>> > not available. Thus there is a risk to install MINIX3 and then end up
>> > with a computer which
>> > is autistic for the most part - that is not interesting. Thus, before I
>> > undertake this
>> > adventure, please allow me to ask some newbie questions.
>>
>> My advice is first try Minix with an emulator.
>

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--
Saludos

Ernesto Celis de la Fuente
https://celisdelafuente.net

[Martin Vahi]

Actually, I've experimented with the MINIX3 within the last week
and the network side does work in a VirtualBox appliance. However,
if You want to avoid

    https://github.com/Stichting-MINIX-Research-Foundation/minix/issues/231

then You have to use the newest snapshot from

    http://download.minix3.org/iso/snapshot/

With the version 3.4.0.rc6 the way to get things going are:

1. Install it to a VirtualBox appliance. ~700MiB of RAM for the appliance will do, but it also works with much less, ~300MiB or so.
2. After the install, please do not forget to remove the installation CD from the virtual optical disk drive of the appliance. (I made that mistake myself.)
   
3. CLONE the newly created appliance and work on the clone to give You a chance to start over without needing to do a reinstall. Check that the optical disk drive of the clone is empty. (Again, I made that mistake myself and wasted considerable amount of my time.)
   
4. Then, after rebooting the CLONE, just type root and hit the ENTER key.
   
5. Then, step by step, please experiment with the following, in the following order:

On console:

pkgin update            # The same as "apt-get update" on Debian.
pkgin install git-base  # Installs a package.

pkgin install binutils clang bmake digest  # Installs multiple packages

pkgin_sets  # That one installs some pre-chosen sets of packages

Software packages in BSD_world/NetBSD/MINIX3 are called "ports".
Not all ports are available from a collection of binaries. To compile ports/packages, please do the following:

cd /usr
make pkgsrc

And now, You're in the wild. Not everything compiles.

# cd /usr
# make pkgsrc
make pkgsrc-update

bash

# The following 2 lines
export LDFLAGS=" -L/usr/lib -L/usr/pkg/lib "
export CFLAGS=" -I/usr/include -L/usr/pkg/include "
# are a workaround to a bug:
# https://github.com/Stichting-MINIX-Research-Foundation/minix/issues/233

cd /src/pkgsrc/archivers/arj
bmake install # no package/port name needed here, it uses Makefile and
# The "b" in frot of the "make", "b"+"make"="bmake" is not a typo.
# I don't remember, whether the arj port compilation succeeded or not, but
# I suggest that You expect the compilation of most packages/ports to fail,
# because the "port's tree"(read: folder of compilation scripts combined
# with source packages on the wild-wild-web.) is in heavy need for maintenance.

[Martin Vahi]

I forgot. You might also need to do

pkgin install bash # somewhere after the "pkgin update"

before trying to run the bash shell.

[Wilfred van Rooijen]

I think I managed to install minix3 with qemu in my Funtoo machine. The network seems to work. At the moment I have booted the virtual machine, I typed "root" and "pkgin update". This seems to work fine. I will follow the installation manual from here.

Thanks for your help



2017年8月17日木曜日 13時56分06秒 UTC+9 Martin Vahi:

[Greg Reagle]

On Wed, Aug 16, 2017, at 23:53, Ernesto Celis wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 16, 2017 at 10:36 PM, Wilfred van Rooijen
> <w.f.g.va...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > OK I will try with an "emulator". What would be the best option? Install
> > some kind of emulation software in my linux-partition, or should I boot with
> > a some live-USB (e.g. SystemRescueCD) and somehow set up the emulation?
>
> You don't need to do anything special beyond installing some
> virtualization software in your current operating system. Check out
> Minix3 wiki
> http://wiki.minix3.org/doku.php?id=www:getting-started:virtualmachines
> and choose whichever fits best your system.

By the way, using KVM (or QEMU with KVM) is a *lot* faster than QEMU
without KVM.