Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts

[Failure]

Here's all I will say about this for now, until I know whether I should really be excited or not :-D

Code: [Select]


failure@kos-mos:~/amix_2.1/Tape_Amiga_Unix_2.1$ file 00
00: ASCII cpio archive (SVR4 with no CRC)
failure@kos-mos:~/amix_2.1/Tape_Amiga_Unix_2.1$ cat 00 | cpio -i
5 blocks
failure@kos-mos:~/amix_2.1/Tape_Amiga_Unix_2.1$ ls
00  02  04  06  08  10  12  14  16  18  20  22  24  26  28    Version
01  03  05  07  09  11  13  15  17  19  21  23  25  27  List  seglist
failure@kos-mos:~/amix_2.1/Tape_Amiga_Unix_2.1$ cat Version    
Amiga UNIX Version 2.1
failure@kos-mos:~/amix_2.1/Tape_Amiga_Unix_2.1$ cat List  
pkg=core     size=27124  name="Amiga Unix essential components"
pkg=bsd      size=3406   name="Berkeley compatiblity package"
pkg=Cdev     size=21182  name="C Development system"
pkg=lp       size=4536   name="Lp print spooler"
pkg=man      size=13702  name="On-line manual pages"
pkg=net      size=6138   name="Networking commands and daemons"
pkg=public   size=15498  name="Shareware and public domain utilities"
pkg=sysadm   size=13668  name="System administration utility"    zcat=y
pkg=terminfo size=4780   name="Support for non-Amiga terminals"
pkg=text     size=3278   name="Text processing tools"
pkg=uucp     size=1894   name="Uucp networking software"
pkg=Xcore    size=16562  name="X Window System essential components"
pkg=Xbasic   size=1536   name="X Window System basic components"
pkg=olcore   size=4774   name="Open Look"
pkg=Xtras    size=18816  name="X extras"                         zcat=y opt=y
pkg=Xdev     size=5870   name="X Window System development tools"       opt=y
pkg=oldev    size=4330   name="Open Look development tools"             opt=y
pkg=conf     size=6140   name="Kernel configuration package"            opt=y
pkg=emacs    size=15906  name="GNU Emacs editor"                 zcat=y opt=y
pkg=games    size=4726   name="Games"                                   opt=y
pkg=amigasrc size=2516   name="Amiga source code"                zcat=y opt=y
pkg=emacsrc  size=22956  name="GNU emacs source code"            zcat=y opt=y
pkg=gnusrc   size=44578  name="Other GNU source code, part 1"    zcat=y opt=y
pkg=gnusrc2  size=76224  name="Other GNU source code, part 2"    zcat=y opt=y
pkg=pubsrc   size=37782  name="Shareware and public domain source" zcat=y opt=y
pkg=Xsource  size=102364 name="X window source code - X11R4"     zcat=y opt=y
pkg=X11r5src size=127432 name="X window source code - X11R5"     zcat=y opt=y
failure@kos-mos:~/amix_2.1/Tape_Amiga_Unix_2.1$


Could be an interesting weekend here...

[Failure]

Yes, finally found it.  A nice German visitor to the Wiki asked me some questions, and I found out he had a copy of the 2.1 tape...I helped him out with the 2.1c patch disk, and he helped me out in kind :-)

Right now I am being thwarted however, I have no working SCSI drive to hook to my Linux box to transfer the install image.  So I am going to have to yank one out of one of the 3000s :-/  Hopefully it'll be worth it.

[Failure]

More problems.  Turns out my PCI SCSI controller was bad, so I need to use an Amiga to write the image to disk.  I elected to use the AMIX box, so I started to copy the cpio file I made over only to get this message much later:

[color=0000ff]rcp: ./amix_2.1.cpio: File too large[/color]

Here is what was on the AMIX box:

[color=0000ff]# ls -l amix*
-rw-r--r--   1 failure  other    268435456 Jan 15 00:07 amix_2.1.cpio[/color]

Turns out that is precisely 256 megs.  So rather than start over I did this:

[color=0000ff]failure@kos-mos:~/amix_2.1/Tape_Amiga_Unix_2.1$ dd if=amix_2.1.cpio bs=1024k of=amix_part_2.cpio skip=256[/color]

...and I'm going to dd them onto the drive one after the other.  I hope I don't make a mistake.

[Failure]

And another reply to myself.  Installation was successful (I let it go overnight).  I think that anybody using AMIX will be very pleased with this upgrade.  Having used it a whole 15 minutes now, these are the additions I have noticed so far.

* bash shell (!!! tab completion woohoo!)
* perl4
* netnews
* sources for x11r5
* sources for gcc2.0 (default compiler still 1.4)
* audio driver present in kernel

I have also noticed that the system is more responsive under load than before, particularly during heavy network I/O.  NFS transfers seem to be taking place much faster.  Things that took nearly an hour to copy now take minutes.

I have attempted to install the 2a patch disk (brings AMIX up to the latest so-called "2.1c" revision, if I am reading Usenet correctly).  This depends on package management to be present.  I changed all the checks for packages to true in the patch script, and was able to install the software updates, but kernel compilation failed.  I am right now working on restoring the package management system so I can use the disk properly, but I am able to use the updated software just fine.

After using this for such a short time, I can already agree with the statement that 2.03 is buggy as hell in comparison to 2.1.  2.1 is indeed very pleasant so far.  Glad that a piece of history won't be lost forever.

*edit* network speed test just finished, I am getting 160KB/sec now via nfs, before it was between 50-60KB/sec.

[Failure]

Thanks :-)  I've been inspired to get back to work on the wiki site as well, so I have been cleaning up things and adding new info and files lately.  Since mmhart.com is down I'm the only one left.

I'm mostly happy that AMIX did not suffer the fate of, say, Xenix, and vanish completely.  The only media that seems to be lost is the original 1.0, and 1.1.  And having used 1.1, no big loss there!

[Failure]

@patrik:

No, I do not know.  I looked at netcraft for an outage or if the server info changed, but uptime info wasn't available.  I sent an email to Mark inquiring as to the status of the Amiga UNIX info, but haven't received a response.

@Karlos

Do you fear the UNIX?  ;-)

[Failure]

Matt_H wrote:
Hey, is the 2.1 version of SetClock still Y2K non-compliant?

Does the sun still rise in the east?

But it does do a lot of things better.  Compilation for instance.  I am merrily compiling my way through gcc 2.95.3, getting much farther than in 2.03.  I had to fix a bug in collect2.c myself, but now it is chugging along having compiled that properly.  I doubt it will be the last error and I'm not really hopeful it will go all the way through, but the stage1 compiler has now completed and it is compiling stage2 using the newly built gcc 2.95.3 :-)

If this works, in addition to C, C++ and Objective C, we will have Java(!) on AMIX via gcj.

[Failure]

Sure Dal.  I'll even do one better and give you upload rights to it as well ;-)  I'm kinda sad that site is gone, it has been around a long time.

Were you able to get Apache compiled on your system?  Just wondering how that webserver is coming along.

I just got a cleaning tape for my A3070 drive, and I'm waiting on getting ten of the 6150 tape carts.  I bought them used very cheap, but I won't get them until February.  Once I do I'm going to try and make a working 2.1 tape.

[Failure]

Yeah, I read on Usenet that the blocksize specification screwed up the read.  Let me know how it turns out without it.  If you install with the tape successfully, I believe you should be able to patch your system to 2.1c without the problems HD hack people are having.

My tape drive was absolutely filthy by the way.  Good thing I cleaned it before using it...

*edit* if you continue having problems, try zeroing out the tape before writing the cpio files to it with the script.  Especially with old tapes this seems to help sometimes.

[Failure]

Ok.  Assuming you are using the scripts from the wiki site, they are wrong O_o

Change the dd in dtdist.sh so it says:

[color=0000ff]dd if=$name of=/dev/rmt/4hn bs=32k[/color]

4n is 120MB mode.  That works for every release of AMIX except 2.1, because 2.1 is huge and needs a 150MB tape.

I am seeing conflicting reports on Usenet as to whether the "32k" is good or bad.  Apparently it is the blocksize used on the original 2.1 tape.

Second thing, to zero out anything (tape, disk, or to make a big empty file) use /dev/zero:

[color=0000ff]dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rmt/4hn[/color]

I got my cleaning tape from these guys.  Part number 343032, cheapest I could find it.

Better luck now that you can fix the script :-)

[Failure]

Hmm.  I wonder if you can avoid destroying your installation every time you try this :-/

I will post the 2.1 installation script on the site, the tape extraction part is near the end (search for QUIETCPIO).  If you set the environment variables accordingly you should be able to "fake" the install into a temporary directory without blowing away your working install.

[Failure]

Well, it is certainly possible that they are the wrong order, but I think that they are in the correct order, numbered at least.  You can list the cpio files and see if the names make sense given what they are in the seglist:

[color=0000ff]cat filename | cpio -itc | more[/color]

Not having a tape cart I can only guess, but my guess is that if you use the 150MB tape device and 32k blocksize it should work.  But I have seen a post saying that 32k blocksize breaks the read so...who knows until you try.

If the tape is wrong I doubt you can install the net package from it.  But maybe you could make a new cpio image with just core and net, and use that instead of installing everything in the whole world :-)

[Failure]

There are no stupid questions ;-)  You would be excused for thinking that.  To sum up the current state:

* AMIX 2.01, 2.03, and 2.1 are installable via an HD hack method that bypasses the need for a tape drive and installation tape using modified boot floppies and the tape archives dd'd directly to a hard disk.

* The HD hack has the side effect of never initializing the package management system, and maybe some other things.  This isn't really clear since nobody I/we know has installed using the tape: we have no reference point.

* Package management didn't matter in 2.01 and 2.03.  Everything was already installed, and there never were pre-packaged AMIX binaries, and there were no patch disks issued for 2.01 and 2.03.  2.1 is different, since it has a patch disk.

* 2.1's patch disk brings it to patch level 2a, or so-called "2.1c".  It checks for installed packages to determine what files to install, which fails with the HD hack method.  I forced the checks to "true" and forced all the patches to install, however the kernel failed to compile, which broke some system utilities upgraded by the patch.

Clear as mud?  :-)  So we are trying to recreate the install tape using some scripts I dug up on Usenet.  Hopefully Dal will figure it out before I get my tapes in a couple of weeks.  From that point, we can look at what a properly installed system looks like compared to an HD hack system, and make the necessary changes to the HD hack installation image.  And those of us with A3070 drives can avoid the HD hack altogether!

[Failure]

[Failure]

@Dal

Got it here.  4.20 is the version I was able to compile, but since 2.03's nameservice stuff was wonky I never really got it to work right.  2.1 isn't having those same problems.  And congrats on getting Apache compiled!

@Crusher

Well, you could put the stuff on CD, but since AMIX cannot read CDs it would be a bit futile :-/