*Chime*
Here follows my massive AMIX install report.
Main Hardware:
Amiga 3000, 030/16MHz+881
1.4 BootROMs, Kickstart 2.04 on hard drive
2MB Chip, 12MB Fast
~1GB Fujitsu hard drive
a whole mess of external SCSI devices
Support Hardware:
Amiga 1200 060/50 w/ SCSI Kit
3.1 ROMs
2MB Chip, 96MB Fast
Q-Drive CD-ROM Drive
Software:
Clean install of Workbench2.1 + DOpus 4.11
Replaced 2.1 HDToolbox with one from 3.1
Following Failure's report of a working AMIX box, I was inspired to bring the spare A3000 that had been sitting in my basement into service again. My initial search for information came from the mmhart site. I downloaded various sets of boot disks, tape images, and the AMIX manuals.
Reading further, I discovered that this would be a lot harder than I thought. I decided to put the software aside for a while, and familiarize myself with UNIX a bit more. I started reading the manuals. Thankfully, they contained information about a possible default partition table.
AMIX's rdb program for repartitioning the drive looked very intimidating to a non-UNIX user like myself, so I decided to take care of partitioning under AmigaOS. The HDToolbox that shipped with 3.1 thankfully has a preset filesystem option for UNIX (UNI\01). From the start of the drive, I created a 449MB Unix_Root partition, an 18MB Unix_Swap partition, and a 10MB Unix_Boot partition. I then added a 40MB WB_2.x partition, and a 512MB Work partition.
I decided to boot up the floppy images from the mmhart site. They worked, but of course would not do anything without a tape drive. I read more and more information from Usenet, and the possibilities of getting AMIX installed with my hardware seemed to dim.
I tried writing a kernal image to Unix_Boot with dd, but ended up destroying the RDB. Thankfully, putting the exact same settings back into HDToolbox restored my data. Having to reinstall AmigaOS wouldn't have been terrible, but it would have been annoying.
Then Failure reappeared on the scene with the shiny, new, single-file install image. Hooray! I broke out a spare SCSI hard drive, and wrote the image to it. Or rather, I tried. Something about this drive caused the 1200 to hang, so I don't even know if the image was successfully written. No problem, I said; I'll just use a cartridge drive.
Unfortunately, the install image was juuuuuust slightly too big for my SyQuest 135 drive. I found a Nomai 750 drive to use, but due to some SCSI cabling issues, I had to daisy-chain it off the SyQuest.
I connected the SCSI chain to the 1200. While browsing around the Gateway! CDs earlier, I came across a raw-write program called dcp, with the same functionality of dd, plus a few more perks, and a lot more user-friendliness. I had it write the image to 1230scsi.device, unit 1. It didn't work, saying I didn't specify a unit number. Ah, clearly I did, so there must have been a bug in the program. Thankfully, it's also bundled in bffs.lha (a filesystem to read UNIX drives on an Amiga) on Aminet, and at a higher version. New version worked perfectly. I connected the SCSI chain to the 3000, and booted from the install disks.
And the installer hung when it tried to read what devices were on the SCSI bus. Several hours later, after declaring that the problem could not possibly be a termination issue, I threw a switch on the drive to disable synchronous transfers, and I finally was back in business. Note that before throwing the switch, ENABLING synchronous transfers using SCSI Prefs under AmigaOS, did not help.
Finally I was ready to boot. I selected my install media drive, and the drive to install to. The installer found my partition table, pronounced it usable, and started chugging away. And failed. I tried again. And failed. I rewrote the image to the Nomai, and THEN it worked. Apparently I had accidentally clobbered it while fiddling with HDToolbox.
It finished installing sometime later and told me to reboot. So I did - to a purple "Insert Workbench Disk" screen. Throwing in a SuperKickstart disk allowed me to reach 2.04's Early Boot Menu. My hard drive had vanished. I powered down, disconnected the external SCSI chain, and tried again. Back in business.
The AMIX post-install completed nicely, but the install script's clock-setter choked on a >2000 year, and set the date to 1970. Thankfully the normal clock command is Y2K compliant. The script also asked me about network settings and node names. I don't have a network card for the 3000, so figured it didn't matter too much what I filled in for these values. It also offered to create user and guest accounts for me, a welcome addition, since the AMIX manuals only mention how to add users manually, and as a UNIX beginner, I wasn't looking forward to that. These same scripts can also be run again later to easily change settings.
So the system is up, though I get a strange "date: bad conversion" reminder whenever the system boots. Very odd, though it doesn't seem to have any ill effects that I can notice.
I also got BFFS going today, which allows the Amiga side to play with UNIX partitions. If you've installed AMIX or dealt with UNIX before, you'll definitely be able to configure BFFS. Don't change the filesystem identifier, though. It doesn't work. For the record, I installed AMIX with ufs, I don't know how well BFFS works with the s5 filesystem. The readme says it should, but it's not really tested.
As a final note, no, I did not get AMIX installed using only one system, though I did get it going with only one platform :-). With a slightly more up to spec 3000 (3.1 ROMs, 030/25+882, 16MB Fast, internet access), this could easily be done on one machine.
Thanks to Failure's updated (v2) Install floppies, at this point I could now dump the AMIX image to a spare partition on the 3000's drive (thinking of reducing Work:, as I already have primary and secondary Amigas and probably won't need the space here). That'll make reinstalling VERY easy if the need arises. I've broken several Linux installs to a level beyond my expertise to fix in the past, so it's only a matter of time before I mess up AMIX. ;-)
