Minix: get it!
The easiest way to get a copie of the Minix system is by downloading an ISO image from their website and then burning the image to a CD-ROM. I got my copy at http://www.minix3.org/download/. Choose your installation medium (CD-ROM, USB CD-ROM, USB stick) and pick the unzip program you prefer. The differences between the Bzip2 image and the normally zipped file are minimal. Then burn it to a disk with a command like:
cdrecord speed=40 -v dev=ATAPI:0,1,0 fs=32M IDE-3.1.2a.iso
eject /cdrom
Of course your speed and dev settings may vary. If you still are among the few of us believing in the products
of Microsoft, you are on your own. The above commands, like the following ones, are for Unix systems only. In
fact, I assume you want to install the Minix 3 system to a computer that already has a stable Linux version
running. And want to boot into Minix via the lilo bootmanager.
Minix: installation
Installing Minix to a system is much like you would install Slackware Linux. The installer is a script file,
asking questions. Installation is simple. You only need to know where to put the system.
In my case, I installed Minix 3 onto a free partition of Lithium. Lithium has two IDE disks. The first attempt
was installing it to /dev/hdb (in Linux speak) and that worked, although I made an error in that I made the
/home tree too big and the /usr tree too small.
As with other Unixes, the users have their diskspace in the /home filesystem. But unlike other Unixes, all the
important files are in the /usr filesystem. So everything you need to install goes into /usr and it's
subdirectories. In case of a full install, which I recommend, you need your /usr to be at least 500 MB in
size. In the first attempt, I started with a 900 MB partition of which I assigned 650 MB to /home. Leaving 300
MB for /usr. And then it doesn't fit anymore!
The second time I chose to sacrifice the Knoppix 3.6 partition. With 'cfdisk' I removed it and artificially made an 8 GB area of 'Free space' followed by a 12 GB Logical Partition. After writing the MBR back to disk, I rebooted with the Minix 3 disk in the drive.
During the installation, most things will go automatically. One thing however must be entered manually: the kind of Ethernet hardware you have in your system. The easiest thing to do is as follows:
jan@lithium:~$ dmesg | less
In the 'less' viewer, type '/eth0' (no quotes!) and press NewLine (or Enter). Look around the first occurrence
of the word 'eth0'. In my case, there was something like this:
eth0: RealTek RTL8139 at 0xe400, 00:08:54:37:22:81, IRQ 193 eth0: Identified 8139 chip type 'RTL-8100B/8139D'As you can see, I have an RTL8139 based ethernet controller in this system. Another option is to use the 'lspci' command. This is what I got:
jan@lithium:~$ lspci | grep thern
0000:02:0e.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
jan@lithium:~$
I searched for just 'thern' since 'grep' has a case sensitive search. Still, this as well tells me I have an
RTL8139 ethernet chip onboard. Which is a good sign, since The RTL 8139 is supported by Minix natively.
Insert the bootable CD, reboot the system and start Minix. Since you are running this on a proven Linux
machine, just choose the settings that consume the most of the resources. If it can run Linux, it can run
Minix as well.
When Minix is up, just follow the instructions on the screen. The first thing to do is running 'setup'. You
will be asked many simple questions and you must choose with numbered entries or by single letter choices.
After some time, Minix' setup program will just know enough of your system and it will start to install the
software. I recommend going for a full install, including the sources. All in all, you will end up with a 4 GB
system which is mainly empty... Minix is still small.
After 'setup' you are invited to reboot and next start the package manager 'packman'. Rebooting is different
from what you know about rebooting. After 'shutdown' you enter a kind of boot commander. If you enter 'off'
here, the system is powered down. But since you need to reboot, enter a command like 'boot c0d0p2' and the
system will reload the Minix system.
During booting the (for Linux users) familiar messages will appear. If your system isn't too fast you will also see that the DHCP client is run and after a few seconds you will end up with your own IP address. IF you are running a decent network system, of course:
At the boot prompt will be something like this:
Minix release 3 Version 1.2a (ttyc0) 192.168.56.119 login:Your IP address is displayed on the login screen. Remind it. This is a dynamically generated IP address. Now, I happen to have an SMC router which is kind of lazy. It will hand out the same IP address to one MAC address issuing a DHCP request, as much as possible. So in most cases, I will end up with 119.
Logging in
Inititally there is just 'root'. Log in with that name and you do not even need a password. Handy and
dangerous. Play around a bit and see what you got. Try to install the jwm window manager for starters. Just
run the 'packman' command and ask for a list with files. Browse the list, remember the ordinal number of the
jwm package and then enter that in the right time.
Seconds later, the lights on the Ethernet switches start to flicker. Minix is fetching the sources and
executables of jwm for you and these will be installed in the correct locations. It all looks a lot like the
Debian 'apt-get' and 'synaptic' package control systems. Only then a lot smaller.
After you leave 'packman' try some typical Linux commands and see if they are available, or perhaps need other command tails. I can recommend the following commands for trial and testing:
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