Using Minix for OS course

[efutch]

Hi, I am preparing next semester's OS course, and I'm planning on using
Minix, partly because I found the paper titled "Minix revisited" by
James Howatt. I tried to work through the projects he proposes, such
as changing the login banner, doing a specific action when pressing F6,
etc. but it seems to be a completely different source tree
organization.

I have some questions:

1) The VMWare image that's available for download, does it contain the
full source? I cannot seem to find any source for getty for example.
Do you think it's better to build one using QEMU with the CD ISO?

2) The organization from Minix V2 to V3 has been changed a lot. Is
there any other documentation other than AST's latest book edition?
I'd rather not use version 2, but stil I ordered a 2nd ed. book used
copy from Amazon since the new edition is way too expensive to use here
in Honduras.

Thanks in advance,

Egdares Futch
CS Professor
Universidad Tecnológica Centroamericana
Tegucigalpa, Honduras
http://maestros.unitec.edu/~efutch

[Alex]

Hi,

I'm playing with Minix3 for several weeks using the latest - 2.2.6 -
version of Bochs (bochs.sourceforge.net) under Windows. I was able to
recompile Minix3.1.1 and had network up. The CD ISO image contains
sources to recompile the OS, so I didn't need to look for separate
sources.

The kernel in Minix3 is 4,000-5,000 lines of code, so I could hope to
understand it by brute force reading. A lot of comments, you know.
Still I've bought the last version of the book which I'm reading now.

Alex

[intelec]

Egdares:

I use this hack: http://linux.wolphination.com/?p=18 to create and run
a virtual machine with the VMware player, in that manner I can build it
from the standard ISOs, that already contains the complete sources. I
do it on Winblows and Linux.

In other way, you can also download the VMware Server from
http://www.vmware.com/download/server/, that today it´s free and you
can build a server with many virtual Minix3, one for each of your
students.

Ivan Morales
Guatemala

[leviathan]

El codigo fuente viene completo. Te recomiendo el documento que se
encuentra en el sitio de minix3. Ese documento es una tesis de maestria
y describe la mayoria de los cambios que se le hicieron a la version 3.
El documento es muy interesante.

http://www.minix3.org/doc/herder.html

Espero te sirva la información.

Saludos desde Mexico.
Espero los demas no se molesten, pero ando medio mal en ingles!!!

Ing. Juan Carlos Guzman C.
ITSUR
Mexico

[Ernesto Celis]

For you who don't speak spanish I will translate this post from
leviathan. And leviathan please if you post to a mainly english
speakers newsgroup in reply to a spanish speaker, try to do it on both
languages. I don't know about this one, but there are other newsgroups
where you can be flamed if write in other language than english. I used
to have a spanish language website with info on Minix, but I have some
troubles right now and it is off-line for a little while ( almost all
this year :( ).

------ leviathan post translation.

The full source code is included. I suggest the document on the minix3
site. This document is a thesis and describes most changes on version
3.
The document is very interesting.

leviathan wrote:
> El codigo fuente viene completo. Te recomiendo el documento que se
> encuentra en el sitio de minix3. Ese documento es una tesis de maestria
> y describe la mayoria de los cambios que se le hicieron a la version 3.
> El documento es muy interesante.
>
> http://www.minix3.org/doc/herder.html

I hope this information is useful for you.

> Espero te sirva la información.
>
> Saludos desde Mexico.

I hope nobody is bothered, but i am not very good with english.