minix/man/man8/dosminix.8

.TH DOSMINIX 8
.SH NAME
dosminix, mkfile \- Running MINIX 3 under DOS
.SH SYNOPSIS
.RB "C:\eMINIX> " "boot disk0.mnx" "\0\0\0\0\0(Typical example)"
.br
.RB "C:\eMINIX> " "mkfile \fIsize disk"
.SH DESCRIPTION
.de SP
.if t .sp 0.4
.if n .sp
..
This text describes running MINIX 3
.\" or Minix-vmd
under DOS.  The DOS version
of the Boot Monitor, described in
.BR monitor (8),
grabs as much memory as DOS is willing to give, loads MINIX 3 into that memory
from the active partition of a "file as disk", and jumps to the MINIX 3 kernel
to let MINIX 3 take control.  As far as DOS is concerned MINIX 3 is just a part
of the
.B boot.com
program.
.PP
In the example above
.B disk0.mnx
is the "file as disk".  It is a file of many megabytes that is used by MINIX 3
as a disk of four partitions.  These partitions will normally be
.B /dev/dosd1
through
.BR /dev/dosd4 ,
with
.BR /dev/dosd0
for the whole "disk".  The Boot Monitor will set the
.B dosd0
boot variable to the name of the disk (its first argument), the root file
system will be the active partition, usually
.BR dosd1 .
It is better to use the special name
.B bootdev
to indicate this device, usually in the setting
.BR rootdev = bootdev .
.PP
Once MINIX 3 is running it will operate the same as if started from a regular
disk partition until it is shut down.  On shutdown from protected mode it
will return to the Boot Monitor prompt, and with the
.B exit
command you leave the Boot Monitor and return to DOS.  Shutting down from
real mode will reboot the machine, just like when run from a disk partition.
(This more or less crashes DOS, but DOS is used to such abuse.)
.SS EMM386
MINIX 3 can't run in protected mode (286 or 386 mode) if DOS is using a memory
manager like
.BR EMM386 .
You can either temporarily comment out EMM386 from
.BR CONFIG.SYS ,
or you can press
.B F8
on startup to bypass CONFIG.SYS.  This is only possible with the later DOS
versions.
.SS "Windows 95"
Press F8 at startup to make the boot menu visible.  Choose
"\fBCommand prompt\fP", or "\fBSafe mode command prompt\fP" to run DOS.
Use the "safe mode" if EMM386 is started in CONFIG.SYS.
.PP
Typing F8 at the right moment isn't easy, so you may want to change the way
Windows boots by editing the
.B MSDOS.SYS
file found in the root directory of your Windows system.  This is alas not
trivial.
Open a window on your main drive, click on "\fBView\fP" and choose
"\fBOptions\fP."  In the Options window choose "\fBView\fP" and enable
"\fBShow all files\fP".  The MSDOS.SYS file should now be visible, among
several other hidden files.  Right-click on the MSDOS.SYS icon, choose
"\fBProperties\fP" and disable "\fBRead-only\fP".  Bring MSDOS.SYS into a
simple text editor such as Notepad.  In the
.B "[Options]"
segment add the following lines (or change existing lines into):
.PP
.RS
.nf
BootMenu=2
BootMenuDelay=5
.fi
.RE
.PP
The first setting makes the Windows boot menu always visible, and the second
line changes the delay before booting to 5 seconds.  Take care not to change
anything else, or things will go horribly wrong.  Save MSDOS.SYS and exit.
Don't forget to make MSDOS.SYS read-only again, and also hide all the hidden
files again, unless you like it this way.
.SS "DOS compatibility box"
The 16-bit version of standard MINIX 3 can be run in real mode in a DOS box.
This is somewhat surprising, because it means Windows 95 simulates devices
like the keyboard, timer, and interrupt controller well enough to fool MINIX 3
into thinking that all is well.  Alas it doesn't work as well under Windows
NT.  Keypresses get lost if you type to fast, and using the floppy
occasionally locks MINIX 3 up.  This is a bit disappointing, because it is the
only way to run MINIX 3 under NT.  Under Windows 95 one is better off
putting the system in DOS at boot and then to run MINIX 3 in protected mode.
.PP
One thing that is better under NT is that the Boot Monitor is able to get a
so-called "Upper Memory Block", thereby raising useful memory to about 750K.
Windows 95 however hogs leftover UMB memory in a process named
.BR vmm32 ,
whatever that may be.  To get
some of this memory you can put
.B "BOOT /U"
at the start of
.BR autoexec.bat .
The monitor will grab a 64K UMB if it can get it, and keep that memory safe
for use by MINIX 3 when it is later started from Windows.
.PP
The easiest way to start MINIX 3 is to give all MINIX 3 disk files the suffix
.BR MNX .
Doubleclick on the disk you want to run to make the "\fBOpen With\fP" window
appear.  Click on "\fBOther\fP" and browse to the
.B BOOT.COM
program.  Set the name of the .mnx files to "\fBMINIX 3 "disk" file\fP" in the
description box if you want everything right.  In the future you can
just click on a MINIX 3 disk file to run it, you don't have to start a DOS
box first.  (To make it perfect use "View", "Options", "File Types", choose
"MINIX 3 "disk" file", "Edit", "Change Icon", "Browse", select MINIX.ICO.)
.PP
When MINIX 3 shuts down it will try to reboot what it thinks is a PC.  Windows
seems to assume that the DOS session has exited.  Right-click on the
BOOT.COM program, "Properties", "Program", and enable "Close on exit" to make
the DOS box disappear automatically when MINIX 3 thinks it reboots.  You may
also want to lock the font to
.BR 7x12 ,
or any other font that isn't ugly.
.PP
MINIX 3 disk files are opened in a write-exclusive mode.  A second MINIX 3
session can only open it read-only, which may lead to a "can't open
root device" error.
.SS "Mkfile"
MINIX 3 disk files can be created or resized with the
.B mkfile
utility.  Its two arguments are the size and name of the disk file.  The
size is a number optionally followed by the letter
.BR k ,
.BR m
or
.BR g
to specify kilobytes, megabytes, or even gigabytes.  So the call
.PP
.RS
.B "mkfile 50m disk5.mnx"
.RE
.PP
will create a 50 megabyte file named
.BR disk5.mnx .
If the file already exist then it is shrunk or grown to 50 megabytes.  No
data is lost if the file is grown.  If the file is shrunk then only the data
that is cut off is lost.  These features allow one to inrease the size of a
MINIX 3 /usr partition with the following recipe:
.PP
.RS
.ta +24n+2m
.nf
copy disk0.mnx disk0.new	Copy the disk to disk0.new
mkfile 100M disk0.new	Enlarge to 100 megabytes
boot disk0.mnx	Boot the old "disk"
[ESC]	Get the attention of the monitor
dosd5=disk0.new	/dev/dosd5 becomes disk0.new
boot
\&...
login: root
.fi
.in +(24n+2m)
.ti -(24n+2m)
part	Choose dosd5, move to the Size field of dosd7
partition, hit 'm' to fill it out to the end of the "disk".  Write and quit.
.in -(24n+2m)
.nf
mkfs /dev/dosd7	Recreate the file system, but larger
mount /dev/dosd7 /mnt
cpdir -v /usr /mnt	Copy /usr to the new disk's /usr to be
shutdown	Back to the monitor
exit	Back to DOS
ren disk0.mnx disk0.old
ren disk0.new disk0.mnx	Replace old by new
boot disk0.mnx	Run the larger system
.fi
.RE
.PP
Now MINIX 3 runs from a larger "disk".  Don't worry if it claims to have
crashed, there wasn't a "shutdown" entry in /usr/adm/wtmp at the time it was
copied.
.PP
The above recipe is for a ordinary standard MINIX 3 installation with /usr on
the second and last partition.
.\" Minix-vmd usually has /usr on the third and
.\" last partition (dosd3 / dosd8), its
.\" .B mkfs
.\" command requires a
.\" .B "-t\ 2f"
.\" option to specify the file system type as "V2 flex", and it knows if
.\" it has crashed or not.
.SS Backups
In the recipe above you saw how simple it is to create a new system, just
copy a disk file.  It is equally simple to make a backup, you just copy the
disk file.  To make a test system: copy the disk file.  To make another test
system: copy the disk file.  Let friends have their own MINIX 3: copy the disk
file again.  (Exciting, eh?)
.PP
You may want to save a MINIX 3 disk file in a ZIP file to save space.  It may
look as a good idea to first run
.B "make clean"
in
.B /usr/src
to remove all the binary junk, but alas that has no effect at all.
The disk file is compressed under DOS, and there it is unknown which blocks
are in use and which are free.  With the following trick you can make those
deleted blocks compress really well:
.PP
.RS
.nf
cd /usr/tmp
echo >junk
while cat junk >>junk; do :; done
sync
rm junk
.fi
.RE
.PP
After these commands all free blocks contain newlines.  Long runs of the
same byte happen to compress by a factor 1000, so the unused disk blocks
will almost disappear in the ZIP file.
.\" Under Minix-vmd you can use
.\" .PP
.\" .RS
.\" cp /dev/zero junk
.\" .RE
.\" .PP
.\" instead of the echo/while pair of lines above.  Standard MINIX 3 doesn't have
.\" /dev/zero.
.SS "FAT driver"
The dos disk driver, described in
.BR dosd (4),
has two identities.  By default you get the "\fBfile\fP" driver, that uses
DOS file I/O calls to access a large DOS file as a disk.  The other
alternative is the "\fBFAT\fP" driver.  The FAT driver sits on top of an
ordinary MINIX 3 disk driver, and interprets a partition as a FAT (File Access
Table) file system to find a file to use as a MINIX 3 disk.  The result
has the same effect as the file driver, except that no costly calls to DOS
are made.  To enable this feature you have to use the following Boot
environment settings:
.PP
.RS
.nf
dosd = fat
dosd0 = hd1:\eminix\edisk0.mnx
.fi
.RE
.PP
The
.B dosd
setting tells MINIX 3 to use the FAT driver, and the
.B dosd0
setting tells the MINIX 3 device and DOS file name to use.  Disk I/O should
be sped up nicely by this change, although typical use of MINIX 3 doesn't
require fast disk I/O, so the difference won't be too noticable.
.PP
Support for FAT-32 (big file system support added in the later Windows 95
releases) has not been tested very well.  The FAT-12 and FAT-16 code has
been used a lot, and seems safe.  Note the risks inherent in these
drivers:  The file driver uses simple DOS file I/O calls, leaving it to
DOS to know its own file system.  The FAT driver interprets FAT file system
structures by itself.  MINIX 3 booted from a real hard disk partition can
only use DOS disk files through the FAT driver.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR dosd (4),
.BR monitor (8),
.BR usage (8).
.SH NOTES
Use at your own risk.
.SH BUGS
Hasn't been tried under Windows 98 yet.
.PP
Pray the deity of your choice will forgive you for running a UNIX-like
system as an ordinary DOS program.  The author of this code is already
doomed.  When his time comes the daemons wi*(&%*$%*&
.br
Memory fault \- core dumped
.SH AUTHOR
Kees J. Bot (kjb@cs.vu.nl)