minix2 for vmware

README for minixvmwp01 (minix204_32MB_512MB) Introduction This is a Minix 2.0.4 virtual machine for VMWare Player. It was tested on VMWare Player 1.0.1 build 19317 running on Windows XP. VMWare Player can be obtained from http://www.vmware.com/products/player/. This virtual machine is configured with a 512 MB virtual disk and 32 MB RAM. Initially it will require about 64 MB of disk space for the files that implement the virtual memory and disk, but the size of the virtual disk file potentially can expand to 512 MB. Why Minix 2.0.4 on VMWare? Although Minix 3 and the Operating Systems Design and Implementation 3rd edition text are now available, Minix 2 and the second edition of the OSDI book are still in widespread use. Many professors have course materials based on Minix 2 that they wish to use. Especially in countries where the language of universities is not English, Minix 2 may be in use for some time, since it may be several years before translations of the new edition of the text to languages other than English are available. Although Minix 3 incorporates numerous changes that support applications that will not run on Minix 2 and that make Minix 3 more secure and stable than Minix 2, the latter is still a good platform for learning operating systems principles. A Minix 2 installation option that can be useful for teaching purposes is the DOSMinix method, which does not require creating a separate partition for Minix. Unfortunately, this method requires MS-DOS or an MS-DOS-based version of Windows (that is, pre-Windows 2000) as well as a FAT file system. But now the availability of the free VMWare Player provides another easy way to install Minix without repartitioning. As a bonus, the host can be Linux or Unix as well as any version of Windows. Usage Windows system \My Documents\My Virtual Machines\ is an appropriate place to create the minix204_32M_512MB folder. Additional documentation: In addition to this file, README.txt, several additional files are included. The others can be found in the minix204_32M_512MB\docs\ subdirectory. All of these files are also readable from within the running Minix guest OS; copies are in the /usr/local/docs directory. 1. USAGE.TXT is a system administrator's guide to installing and running Minix. The detailed installation information is not relevant to running Minix as a guest OS on VMWare, but there is much information that is worthwhile here, especially if you have no previous experience using a Unix-like OS or as a system administrator. The content of USAGE.txt is identical to the usage(8) manual page which you can read from within a running Minix system. 2. changes.txt lists differences between Minix 2.0.0 and Minix 2.0.4. If you are using the Operating Systems Design and Implemention, 2nd edition text (1997), the changes document will help you to understand differences between Minix as described in that text and Minix 2.0.4. The above files describe the base Minix 2.0.4 system, as released in November 2003. There are also several files that describe changes and additions that became available subsequent to the official Minix 2.0.4 release: 1. 204fixes.txt describes a number of patches and updates released since the original release of Minix 2.0.4 in November 2003. These have all been applied to the included Minix system. 2. vmwchanges.txt summarizes the changes applied to the base Minix 2.0.4 system in this package, including those that are specifically provided to support Minix on VMWare. 3. vmw-p01.txt describes a patch that enables Minix guests on VMware to print the contents of the console screen to the host's clipboard by pressing the F4 key. This is already compiled into the Minix 2.0.4 system on the virtual machine. 4. vmw-01.txt describes a utility program, vmw, that can be used to transfer data between a Minix guest OS and the host system using the clipboard. This is specific to use of Minix on VMWare. The vmw program is installed in /usr/local/bin. 5. amdether.txt describes another applied patch which supports an AMD Lance ethernet card. This makes networking Minix-on-VMWare possible, since VMWare presents an emulated AMD Lance ethernet interface to a guest operating system. (Note, filename was originally 204ether.txt). Starting Minix on VMWare Double-clicking the dos.vmx file will start it. As configured, the virtual machine has access only to a virtual hard disk, but dos.vmx can be edited with a text editor such as Notepad to add access to a physical floppy drive or a virtual CD-ROM (a .iso file). Start Minix by pressing "=" when the boot menu appears. The Minix system in this virtual machine is compiled with support for an AMD Lance ethernet adapter, and the system will try to get an IP address using DHCP. Additional configuration The emulated BIOS clock in the virtual machine is set for the US Eastern time zone, as is the file /etc/rc.timezone. The BIOS setting can be altered by pressing F2 during startup. The /etc/rc.timezone file should also be edited. See the TZ (5) man page. If DHCP service is not available on your network, rename the file /etc/rc.net.xx to /etc/rc.net and edit it to use the ifconfig command to assign IP and gateway addresses appropriate for your network. By default the only network service enabled is telnet. Commands to start other network services are commented out, and can be enabled by editing the line for each service in /usr/etc/rc (if using DHCP) or in /etc/rc.net (if using ifconfig). Manual pages If you are new to Unix-like systems you may not be used to using the "man" command to read manual pages available as on-line documentation. For example, to read the usage(8) man page, at the command prompt type: # man usage Type # man man for an explanation of the man(1) command, including the meaning of the section numbers, and # man whatis for an explanation of the related useful whatis(1) and apropos(1) commands. Extras In addition to the updates described above, a few items that were not not part of the original Minix 2.0.4 distribution are provided. Httpd (8) is the Minix web server; version 0.995 released in May 2006 is installed. Shmem (1) is a utility to display the current memory allocation (stack + data) of a Minix binary. Hexd (1) is a byte-oriented hexadecimal dump program, similar to the Unix standard od (1). All of these extras are in /usr/local/bin with source in /usr/local/src, and all of them have man pages installed in /usr/local/man. - Al Woodhull [email protected] 2006-06-18