From: fortony@sonne.cso.uiuc.edu Subject: mj-release experiences Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1992 04:36:51 GMT
Well, four people asked me to tell them exactly how I managed to get
Martin Junius's release to work. So I'm posting, figuring that
there are a couple extra people who probably didn't e-mail me who
also don't have an idea.
Firstly, you really will need all the mj* files if you want to install
this on your hard disk. You'll also need something like edpart.exe,
although I find now that /bin/efdisk is just as functional. In fact,
definitely use /bin/efdisk. Make sure all of these files have been
correctly rawrite.exe-d onto floppies you can boot from.
Also make sure you have a bootable DOS floppy which contains any
executables you may need (see below). Mine has 'fdisk.exe',
'format.com', 'telix.exe' (a comm program I used to dial up and
query linuxers during installation), and 'rawrite.exe'.
Step zero is to reformat your hard drive.
Step one is to boot the sucker up. This is as easy as it was in the
directions.
Step two is to not log in as 'install'. My apologies, Martin, but I
distinctly remember errors with /bin/cp. If I manage to hose my hard
disk, I'll try again with these files and see if I can replicate it,
but for now I'm just going to recommend doing it by hand (which is
valuable experiencewise anyway). Log in as root. It's fun.
Step three is to use efdisk and make appropriate-sized partitions in
your hard drive for DOS and for Linux. I made a grievous error in
judgement and only allocated 50M of hard drive space to Linux out
of 80 possible. In retrospect, even though I have Microsoft C 7.1,
PageMaker 4.0 and the Windows SDK, I don't really plan on using DOS
ever again. I recommend you use 60-70M of hard drive space in two
distinct partitions, one of which should probably be a small (8-10m)
partition dedicated to serving as swap space.
About that DOS bit: I'm so very serious that I haven't even reinstalled
DOS into its designated partition yet, and it's been about a week.
Step four is to look at fdisk and see what the number of the partition
you've decided will be root is. Mine is /dev/hda3. The /dev/hda bit
means 'the hard drive device', if you're not UNIX-familiar. '3' means
'the third area in the partition table'.
Step five is to use 'mkfs -c /dev/hdaX' where X is the number from
step 4, above. This will set that area up with superblocks and make
it into a linux filesystem.
Step six is to issue the commands, in order:
cd /
mount /dev/hdaX /mnt (again, X is that number from step 4)
cd mnt
cp +recursive +verbose /bin bin
cp +recursive +verbose /etc etc
cp +recursive +verbose /dev dev
cp +recursive +verbose /lib lib
cp +recursive +verbose /usr usr
cp +recursive +verbose /var var
[...]
sync
the directories listed in the 'cp' are merely all the directories you
get when you type 'ls /'. I think the mj-release doesn't include 'var',
but I included it as an example. Just issue the cp command for each
directory in /.
Now you've got a functioning root file system. Praise be unto Allah! Now
all you have to do is make it usable by Linux. At this stage, Linux tends
to ignore it.
Use the program 'setroot.exe' (yes, you need DOS a few times in this
procedure. A shame) to change your boot disk to look for this new root
file system on your hard drive. It requires two numbers, a 'major' and
'minor' device number; the major number is 3, and the minor number is that
pesky numeral from step 4, above.
Then, reboot with your boot floppy, and VOILA! You're in the money. EXCEPT,
you don't have many standard unix system utilities. Like, say, ln, or vi. All
you have is a horrible little emacs clone and a few basic commands.
This is where the other mj-package disks come in. Slip one of the three
non-boot non-root disks into the floppy drive and type
cd /
tar xvf /dev/fd0
A bunch of files will come streaming off the disk and into /usr/bin, /bin,
and a number of other places. Repeat with the other disks until done.
Now you've got a functional file system with a load of goodies. Time to fix
two minor bugs.
type
cd /etc
touch utmp
touch wtmp
This will make a number of commands ..uh, work. :)
At this point, you've got it done. It took me approximately 3 hours to
get everything set up to my liking. I hope it doesn't take the people
who use this document nearly as long, but patience is required.
In the spirit of linux, this advice is free. If you have further questions,
I welcome e-mail -- I've been a total newbie more recently than most of the
posters in this newsgroup, and if I can take some of the load of newbie
questions off them, I consider it doubly rewarding. Heck, one of them might
even use his or her newly freed time to upload a functional /bin/rc.
If you didn't understand elements of this posting which you consider
important, drop me a line at fortony@sonne.cso.uiuc.edu indicating what
you didn't understand (if you can quantify it). Also, if you thought this
posting was a good idea, drop me a line. Similarly, if you thought this
posting was crap and needed changes, drop me a line containing context
diffs.
Felix
-- a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z Felix Sebastian Ortony fortony@murphy.gis.uiuc.edu