The lonely world of Amiga UNIX

[Failure]

If that is actually 2.1 release you have on tape, I believe I have the patch disk necessary to bring it up to 2.1c.  That should make it work with all the patches Matt_H has from the Gateway CDs.

Even if it's not 2.1, you at least have the opportunity to install with a functioning package management system -- something my hack does not allow for.

[Dalamar]

Hey Failure, if you have those files on the AMIX machine, how are they longer than 14 characters?  Is there some hack to display files longer than that limit?

[Failure]

Hmm, are you using the S5 filesystem?  UFS doesn't seem to have a small limit like that, but I remember S5 under 1.1 did.

*edit* Long filename example removed to not screw up forum layout.

I can work with filenames in excess of 160 chrs in length.

No problems here :-)

[Dalamar]

Um, yes.  S5.  Oops.  Didn't know that one.  It's fixed now.  I'm running Berkeley and it works much much better.

[Xand]

The tape and the boot floppies say 2.1 and there is another disk that says 2.1 patches.

The floppy drives appear to be dead. I'll be trying to use the external one from my 1200. I'm also "borrowing" the 800 mb scsi hdd from my 1200 Towerhawk to test this.

The buster is rev 11. The jumpers on the MB are set for an accelerator. Someone put a lot of money into this thing, it's too bad it wound up sitting in a basement.

[Failure]

2.1, that is very cool :-)  Hopefully your tape is still installable.  Due to the way the installer works, you probably won't find out until you are well into the process, when cpio will complain at you and probably bomb the script (or move on to the next archive, don't know for sure).

You might have the install docs, but if not the tape drive needs to be set to ID 4.

Good luck!

[Dalamar]

2.1.  Yey!  I hope it works.  If it does make an image of that tape first thing.

[Xand]

@Failure
Thanks for the info on the id setting.

@Dalamar
I'm going to make a copy before I try to install it. Many years ago, when I first tried to install Amix, my tape drive ate the tape. Hopefully it won't happen again this time.

[Dalamar]

Most likely a wise precaution. :-)  A working 2.1 build would be great.   Maybe Failure could alter his install scripts to grab that source.   :-o

[Sparky]

I'm going to make a copy before I try to install it. Many years ago, when I first tried to install Amix, my tape drive ate the tape. Hopefully it won't happen again this time.

May I suggest you run a cleaning tape through the tape drive first!  Get the crap cleaned out.

[JonoPike]

What's all about this UNIX crap?
Do you have much software/games for this
platform then? I think it's really useless!
AmigaOS rulez!

[LocalH]

"useless"

I suppose you'd rather have seen it lost to time when all the old tapes and tape drives broke down?

[JonoPike]

@LocalH
So, Unix is holding it's s{bleep}t together with tape?
It's not the old "Duck Tape" again, is it?
 :roflmao:  :laughing:  :lol:

[Matt_H]

@ boinghead

There's no need for profane language. If it's copious amounts of software you want, then I suggest looking at a Wintel PC.

@ Failure

I also noticed the lack of working package management with the sysadm utility. Any idea what the problem is? Maybe a master package list is missing? I recall seeing one in one of the mmhart tape images... Will redownload and investigate.



I miss my Amix 3000 :-(

[JonoPike]

Matt_H wrote:

If it's copious amounts of software you want, then I suggest looking at a Wintel PC.

Nah... thanks. I don't like any PC s{bleep}t!
AmigaOS has more than enough for my needs...
 :lol:

[Failure]

bOiNgHeAd wrote:
What's all about this UNIX crap?
Do you have much software/games for this
platform then? I think it's really useless!
AmigaOS rulez!

Hmm.  Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones ;-)  Think about what you are saying here.  I think the main interest in AMIX is preserving it so it doesn't go the way of 286 XENIX for example -- something that exists only as a memory.  In the Amiga world, AMIX is really quite unique and it would be a shame for it to be unusable forever.

And, yes, there is a large amount of high quality, free software available for UNIX.  The problem with AMIX is getting it to compile properly with the old libraries and software.

@Matt_H

It has been a little while since I looked at the install script, but in the default installation via tape you get choices.  The first file on the tape is a header listing all the packages and their order, since I commented all the package stuff out to get my method to work I didn't pay much attention to it but I imagine it just looks for the cpio EOF marker to distinguish them.  If you look in the / directory you will see two files that "don't belong" in a standard UNIX FHS, that's what was in the "header".  I went ahead and left them there.

Since the HD hack more or less just dumps the contents of the tape to disk, which is possible due to the fairly primitive concept of package management present in sysv4, whatever package databases are initialized...aren't.  It should be possible to change the script to use the package management, but it would be marginal benefit, since AMIX packages do not exist in the wild and the only thing you'd get was the opportunity to install stuff you didn't want initially, later.  I may still try it at some point just to see it myself.  My picky side wanted package management, but the impatient side just wanted AMIX installed!

@Dal

Unless the installer changed radically between 2.03 and 2.1, all that would be needed would be to create a cpio archive of the stuff on the 2.1 tape, and the existing script could handle it.  It would still be an HD dump though, so no package management.  It would be interesting to get something that could be dd'd to tape to do the install the proper way though.