Re: Where is mpx386.s and start.c in Minix 3.2?

[Antoine Leca]

"Internet Grind" wrote:
> these 2 files (mpx386.s, start.c) that are supposedly in a directory
> called kernel,

Minor precision: while start.c is indeed in the source directory
kernel/, since version 3.1.6 mpx386.s has been renamed and moved, and is
now file mpx.S in directory kernel/arch/i386/; also it now uses the AT&T
assembler syntax (like Linux and BSD, unlike Intel/AMD manuals.)

> but I can't seem to find them.

I am not sure it applies, but you should have installed MINIX to a hard
disk to be able to fully explore it; at the very least, you should have
booted MINIX from the CD-ROM. Then, you will be able to find the source
files under the /usr/src hierarchy.


> I would like to follow along with the book to what's on my screen,
> instead of constantly flipping back and forth. I realize alot of files
> are completely different from this book published in 2006 and I accept
> that, but this seems to be a critical juncture of the book and the
> operating system as a whole.

You may consider trying version 3.1.2a instead of 3.2.0, it is much more
close to what is described in the book, and is also a very stable
system. On the other hand, 3.1.[012] is quite not as "modern", the file
system server only handles one kind of file system (the MINIX specific
one) and only handles one request at the time, and there are no kind of
virtual memory, so if a program runs out of stack space it crashes (and
you may need to use chmem(1) to enlarge the stack space.)


Antoine