Minix1.woodhull.com (formerly Minix1.hampshire.edu and Minix1.bio.umass.edu) Latest News and History modified: 7 Sept 2006

For MINIX 3 go to http://www.minix3.org. (Minix 3 released Oct 2005)

Read first! This page has evolved into something of a historical document, as I rarely remove anything from it. As changes have been made to servers and directories I have not tried to update older items. So, be aware that older items here may have been moved. Also, any references to the servers thompson.oit.umass.edu or turing.oit.umass.edu are out-of-date. Any URL that previously pointed to one of these machines may now be found on minix1.hampshire.edu or minix1.bio.umass.edu.

For news about Minix 3: Please check the Minix 3 Website News page. It is maintained by the folks at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, where Minix 3 development is going on and coordinated. ASW's Minix1 site will post occasional items related to Minix 3, but the VU is where the action is these days.

• 7 Sept 2006: Andrew Swartzbaugh's useful Minix Boot Code Documentation page has moved. It is now at http://www.os-forum.com/minix/boot/.
• 18 June 2006: A Minix 2.0.4 Virtual Machine for the free VMWare Player is available now.
• 18 June 2006: Ftp 1.01 and httpd 0.995 are now available in the downloads directory, /pub/contrib. See the ftp101.txt and httpd0995.txt files.
• 17 June 2006: New and revised man pages have been posted to the Minix 2.0.4 fixes directory. See the 204fixes.txt file for a summary of all fixes available.
• 1 May 2006: A new section on Academic Projects using Minix 3 has been added to the Teaching with Minix page.
• 12 April 2006: a problem with the ftp daemon was discovered and fixed more than a year ago. However, it was realized recently that the old in.ftpd was still installed by default in Minix 3.1.2-B3, a beta release, and source for the old version may be mistakenly compiled on previous Minix 3 releases, replacing the current binary, if care is not taken. The Minix FTP Daemon Security Advisory has been updated with a warning for Minix 3 users.
• 6 April 2006: Minix 2.1.2 Beta 3 is available at the Minix 3 site.
• 28 March 2006: The first public beta of Minix 3.1.2 is available at the Minix 3 site. This includes the X-Window system, but to use X you need much more memory than you ever thought you would need for Minix.
• 24 October 2005:

  MINIX 3 is now available! More info is available here. The official Minix 3 website is http://www.minix3.org. Please go there to download Minix 3.

• 19 May 2005: Unix historian Peter Salus is publishing his new book, The Daemon, the Gnu, and the Penguin, a chapter at a time on Groklaw. Today Chapter 9, MINIX was posted.
• 19 April 2005: With support for networking for Minix on VMWare and the VMWare Command Line Tools for Minix it is much more usable. I've posted more information about using Minix on VMWare in the emulated and virtual platforms section of the Minix Hints/FAQ page. I've also posted there a copy of a review of Virtual PC I posted on Amazon.com.
• 29 March 2005: Michael Temari's httpd (web server) version 0.994 has been posted as /pub/contrib/httpd0994.taz. As usual, a description is also available as /pub/contrib/httpd0994.txt.
• 29 March 2005: Kenichi Takahagi has provided drivers for AMD Lance and Intel EEPRO ethernet cards. A descriptive file is also available. The Lance driver should be useful for users of Minix on VMWare.
• 27 March 2005: In the past year Claudio Tantignone has uploaded a number of contributions which were in the /pub/ct_net/ directory, but which did not appear in the main contributed software directory. I have linked most of these to the main directory for increased visibility. Included are ports of OpenSSL, the BSD socket emulation library, stunnel, secure telnet, and the Zlib compression library . (This is not a complete list).
• 20 March 2005: Michael Temari's FTP daemon version 2.00 has been posted. I have linked the copy of ftpd200.tar.Z in the contributed software public download directory to the Minix fixes directories for 2.0.0, 2.0.2, 2.0.3, and 2.0.4 and have put an FTPWARNING.txt file in these directories because the version distributed originally with all releases of Minix to date is insecure. See the security advisory.
• 17 March 2005: Kenichi Takahagi has provided new support for users of Minix on VMWare: a patch to copy the Minix console to the host clipboard and a port of VMware Command Line Tools.
• 17 March 2005: Claudio Tantignone has announced availability now of secure FTP (FTPS) support for Minix at his site http://www.geocities.com/ctantignone/down.htm and soon to be posted here.
• 14 Feb 2005: Anonymous ftp access has been discontinued because of security concerns. All ftp:// URLs here should be accessible by editing the URL to http://.
• 8 Feb 2005: There is a serious security vulnerability in the Minix FTP daemon. A new version of the program is available.
• 2 Feb 2005: I've added some info about using Minix on Microsoft's Virtual PC. A ready-to-use virtual disk image for VPC for running DOSMinix on FreeDOS on a virtual machine is available for download.
• 16 Jan 2005: New versions of a number of Minix 2.0.4 man pages have been posted in /pub/minix.2.0/2.0.4/fixes/ as manfixes.tar.Z. Some of these are minor corrections of typographical errors, some are small but important corrections. Two pages, ps(1) and touch(1), contain major revisions.
  
• 13 Jan 2005: The contents of Paul Ashton's original Sun Minix (SMX) web page, no longer available at the original site, are now available on this site at minix1.{hampshire|bio.umass}.edu/smx/.
  
• 21 Nov 2004: The man2html package contains scripts to convert man pages written for nroff into web pages. See /pub/contrib/man2html.txt (requires Perl).
  
• 25 Oct 2004: Giovanni Falzoni has contributed a new ethernet support package for Minix. See /pub/contrib/kn_net13.txt.
  
• 9 Oct 2004: Release 0.2 of the Minix 3c589d ethernet card support is now available. See /pub/contrib/3c589d02.txt for info or download /pub/contrib/3c589d02.tar.Z.
  
• 2 Oct 2004: The Programming in the Minix Environment page has been updated.
  
• 22 Sept 2004: A Minix driver for 3c589 ethernet cards has been posted: see /pub/contrib/3c589d01.txt for info or download /pub/contrib/3c589d01.tar.Z.
  
• 5 July 2004: I have begun to compile a Teaching with Minix Howto page with links and information that may be helpful to those planning CS laboratory courses using Minix.
  
• 5 July 2004: I have posted additional notes from Javen Thyme as the Minix on Qemu Step-by-step article.
  
• 19 June 2004: Preliminary Notes: Minix on Qemu have been posted.
  
• 8 June 2004: Will Senn has posted Virtually Minix: A Tutorial & Intro to Minix on XP via Bochs on OSNews (http://osnews.com).
  
• 23 May 2004: A port of the Brandy BASIC language interpreter, version 1.0.16, ported to Minix by Harald Arnesen is now available in the contributed software directory.
  
• 22 May 2004: Andy Tanenbaum's Notes on "Who wrote Linux" and a followup article are mirrored here.
  
• 22 May 2004: Version 1.2.2 of Stian Sletner's of Minirc IRC client is now available in the contributed software directory.
  
• 24 March 2004: the Minix 2.0.4 Bochs image (next item) is now available from the SourceForge site. The URL to download it is: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/bochs/minix204.zip.
  
• 10 March 2004: a ready-to-run Minix on Bochs package for Windows is now available online.
  
• 6 March 2004: I have released a draft of the Minix on Bochs on Windows How-to document I have been working on. Minix on Bochs really works! Even networking!
  
• 6 Feb 2004: Bochs 2.1 has been released and several new articles about running Minix on Bochs on various platforms have been added. Links can found in the Minix on non-Intel platforms section of the Hints/FAQ page.
  
• 6 Feb 2004: Minix 2.0.4 is now available from this site (minix1.hampshire.edu or minix1.bio.umass.edu). Minix 2.0.4 is an interim release and as of this date documentation is not up-to-date and many changes are incompletely tested. This is for experts only.
  
• 4 Feb 2004: Claudio Tantignone ported lynx 2.8.5 to Minix. Lynx is a text mode web browser. Both a binary package and a source package can be found in the /pub/contrib/ directory. Read the associated text files ( lynx285bin.txt and lynx285src.txt), and be warned that compilation and use of lynx require lots of memory.
  
• 23 Nov 2003: Minix 2.0.4 released, available from the main Minix site at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.
  
• 23 Nov 2003: A CD-based Minix distribution has been developed by Aleksander Korzynski and colleagues. This approach boots a complete Minix 2.0.3 installation into a 32 MByte RAM disk from a CD-ROM or a floppy disk. This was developed for use in a teaching environment but there are numerous other uses.
  
• 12 Aug 2003: Expanded web pages on Programming in the Minix Environment and Minix-vmd. New contributed software: new httpd web server, patches and new man page for mail, FORTRAN, and RATFOR.
  
• 27 May 2003: Two important additions to Minix documentation have been released, covering important subjects outside the scope of the OSDI text: C. T. Wong's Minix Networking Documentation and Andrew Swartzbaugh's Minix Boot Code Documentation.
  
• 1 Jan 2003: Site design changes and technical upgrades to the minix1.* sites will be effective today. Announcement.
  
• 1 Jan 2003: Michael Temari has released Minix httpd version 0.99. It is now available here.
  
• 29 Dec 2002: Upgraded httpd on minix1.bio to version 0.98. Seems to fix incomplete directory listing problems when looking at large directories.
  
• 14 Dec 2002: Stian Sletner has contributed an IRC client, and NTP client, and patches for the ps command.
  
• 27 Oct 2002: Info on Michael Temari's progress in porting the Microwindows graphic windowing system to Minix is available here.
  
• 13 Oct 2002: Due to a policy change, the University of Massachusetts Free Software Mirror is no longer available to the general public. See the Minix 1 mirrors page for more information.
  
• 09 June 2002: The central Minix distribution site in Amsterdam, http://www.cs.vu.nl/pub/minix/, is now mirrored in Australia at http://planetmirror.com/pub/minix/. I don't know how long this mirror has been active. The Planet Mirror home page claims, " Planet Mirror is the Asia Pacific's largest and busiest online software repository. With high speed servers and massive bandwidth, we aim to provide the fastest downloads to our users."
  
• 15 April 2002: Problems with synchronization of minix1.hampshire.edu and minix1.bio.umass.edu have been solved, and the two sites will normally be in synch soon after any change.
  
• 16 March 2002: Access to minix1.hampshire.edu from the Internet has been non-existent since about March 8, and it was limited to web access only for a few weeks previous to that. This was not a fault of the system itself, but was a side effect of firewall installation on the Hampshire College network. It is hoped this will be remedied soon. Access to minix1.bio.umass.edu was not affected, but synchronization of the two sites has been difficult.
  
• 10 Feb 2002: Bob Zulawnik's remgdb for debugging of MINIX user-level processes with gdb running in remote configuration is now available in the pub/contrib area. See /ftp/contrib/remgdb.txt for information and go to /ftp/contrib/remgdb.tar.Z to download.
  
• 11 Oct 2001: Minix 2.0.3 is now available here at minix1.hampshire.edu and minix1.bio.umass.edu. See the changes.txt document there for information about what's new.
  
• 02 Sept 2001: Minix 2.0.3 is available now from Kees Bot's site. See the Minix 2.0.3 index page at ftp://ftp.cs.vu.nl/pub/. See the changes.txt document there for more information about what's new. The big changes appear to be improved networking and swapping.
  
• 22 Aug 2001: Claudio has a new e-mail address: C_Tantignone@sondaarg.com.ar
  
• 28 Oct 2000: Claudio Tantignone (c_tantignone@hotmail.com) wrote me recently:
  I am sending you some new files and versions. I added them to my page, [ http://habitantes.elsitio.com/clmt0] but it has some intermittent problems and sometimes may be down (sorry, it's free).
  • plip-0.4.tar.Z: new version with some bugs corrected
    [ASW note: see plip-0.4.txt for more info. Also, earlier versions plip-0.2 and plip-0.3 are available].
  • ftp-0.2.tar.Z: this file has a bug fix for 16 bits while downloading in binary mode from a Linux server, it hangs at 8400 bytes downloaded. [see also ftp-0.2.txt]
  • rlogin-fix.tar.Z: this has a fix for urgent data not managed by the original code under standard Minix (both 16 and 32 bits). [see also rlogin-fix.txt]
  • nat01.tar.Z: NAT (Network Address Translation) code for Minix 386 [see also nat01.txt]
  • ppp-1.43.tar.Z: the latest ppp version for 16 and 32 bits. Now has a server version so anyone can use it to make remote connections using Minix as server, authentication is by using a standard Minix account. [see also ppp-1.43.txt]
  In another message Claudio mentioned doing some more work with the Lynx text-based web browser:
  ... yesterday I modified some bits so it can compile under 2.0.2, because some changes in the compiler passes makes some noise. It is big (1.2MB).
  This new version of lynx is available at Claudio's site, http://habitantes.elsitio.com/clmt0/lynx-271.tgz.
  He further mentions: Also, you may update DOSPPP32.ZIP (1.8MB) from my page, now I added to it the NAT code. I have not been able to access Claudio's site yet. When I have a chance I will copy both packages here (to Minix1 and Turing).
  
• 28 Oct 2000: Matthew Zhou (matthewzhou@21cn.com) wrote to the Minix-L mailing list on 6 Oct 2000:
  I've ported perl5.005_03 to minix 2.0.2 -i386 during the one-week Oct. holidays. It works fine on my Cyrix MII PC, though some of the tests are not passed, and perl manual don't work well.
  See http://xfzhou.myetang.com/pub_html/index.htm
  Very much thanks to Steven Young, who helped me on the porting.
  
• 11 June 2000: With more disk space available I have done some reorganizing of the http directories. The Minix 2.0.0 directory is now a more complete subset of the master directory at ftp.cs.vu.nl. The complete manual pages are available in all formats. I made a modified version of the README from Kees and Andy's site to explain the differences beween my site and theirs.
  
• 7 May 2000: The old 486 that hosted Minix1.hampshire.edu since February 1997 was retired on May 5. It has been replaced with a Pentium and the OS has been upgraded to Minix 2.0.2. It is faster and should be more reliable. There is more disk space and the complete Minix 2.0.2 distribution is now available. Click here for technical info about the system.
  
• 25 April 2000: Michael Temari has provided web camera support. Interface a webcam to your Minix system and make the output available on your Minix web server.
  
• 7 April 2000: MINIX is now available under the BSD license.
  
• 4 April 2000: Version 1.4 of PPP/SLIP for Minix 2.0.2 is now available from minix1.hampshire.edu and turing.oit.umass.edu. Read the ppp-1.4.txt file for more information. It is also available from Claudio Tantignone's new web site in Argentina.
  
• 27 March 2000: A port of Minix to HP Jornada 680/690 machines has been announced. See http://minixsh.tripod.co.jp/index.html for more info.
  
• 19 March 2000: Claudio Tantignone has made more improvements to smr, the SMTP mail utility.
  
• 14 March 2000: I have posted as a work-in-progress a modified version of Steven Young's smr, an SMTP rmail utility.
  
• 12 March 2000: Alexis LeDoux's ATAPI CD-ROM driver and utilities are now here in the ftp section.
  
• 11 March 2000: Champollion, an implementation of pthreads for Minix, is here.
  
• 6 February 2000: Tom Butz has provided a description of how he accesses the Internet with PPP on a 640K XT with DOSMinix.
  
• 10 Jan 2000: Looking for people to port Kermit 7.0 and gkermit to Minix.
  
• 28 Dec 1999: release 0.1b of fkey, for remote access to kernel diagnostics. See http://minix1.hampshire.edu/pub/contrib/fkey01b.txt.
  
• 21 Nov 1999: Floppy 1.1, patches to increase floppy disk capacity from Claudio Tantignone, is now available at http://minix1.hampshire.edu/pub/contrib/flp-1.1.tar.Z, replaces earlier hflop package.
  
• 13 Nov 1999: Michael Temari has announced he is developing a DHCP client for Minix.
  
• 27 July 1999: Claudio Tantignone has supplied an easy-to-install demo of 16-bit DOS-Minix with PPP.
  
• 8 June 1999: Patches for Minix sh and grep from Michael Haardt are now available.
  
• 21 April 1999: Claudio Tantignone has supplied a zip file providing quick installation of DOSMinix 2.0.2 preconfigured for connection to an ISP with PPP or SLIP. It is available in ftp://thompson.oit.umass.edu/pub/minix.2.0/2.0.2ppp/. There is a small text file and a large zip file.
  
• 13 March 1999: FIPS 2.0 (works with Windows FAT32 file systems) is available in /pub/minix.2.0/dosutil on both minix1.hampshire.edu and thompson.oit.umass.edu.
  
• 13 March 1999: Minix 2.0.2 is available at minix1.hampshire.edu and minix1.bio.umass.edu in /pub/minix.2.0/. (It has actually been here for some time, but I have been keeping it quiet while testing the site).
  
• 14 Feb 1999: An experimental patch to add the select() system call is available in the contrib directory.
  
• 7 Feb 1999: There is an error in Minix 2.0.2's readclock command that affects its ability to set the CMOS clock. A fix is available here.
  
• 21 Jan 1999: PPP 1.2 for Minix 2.0.2 is now available. Now you can connect to an ethernet and an ISP simultaneously. The Readme is /pub/contrib/ppp1.2.txt and the complete package is /pub/contrib/ppp1.2.tar.Z.
  
• 3 Jan 1999: Will Rose has released an improved version of mined, Andy's small easy-to-use editor for Minix. Find more info in the mined2.txt file or just download mined2.tar.Z
  
• 1 Jan 1999: Minix 2.0.2 has been released. Its major features are the Minix under DOS option, allowing one to start Minix from MS-DOS, and improved networking support, including support for multiple network interfaces. For more info see Kees Bot's document, How to Get and Install Minix 2.0.2. Currently Minix 2.0.2 is available only at ftp://ftp.cs.vu.nl/pub/minix/2.0.2/. I will post it here on minix1.hampshire.edu soon, but it is not here yet.
  
• 26 Aug 1998: Claudio Tantignone has released PPP version 1.1 for Minix. It may be found at /pub/ct_net/ppp-1.1.tar.Z. Click here to see the README file.
  
• 1 July 98: An experiment in booting Minix on the HP200LX palmtop computer has been successful, although more work is needed for to make it useful. See Richard L. Dubs's http://www.erols.com/rld website for much more info.
  
• 1 July 98: PPP available for Minix 2.0.1.
  
• 5 June 98: How to modify Minix to access memory above 16M.
  
• 21 May 98: How to make DOS-Minix "disks" of any desired size.
  
• 8 May 98: Start Minix 2.0.1 from MS-DOS! Run Minix using MS-DOS file system: DOS-Minix.
  
• 30 April 98: Perl 5 for 32-bit Minix (work in progress) available in the /pub/contrib/ directory

Contributed software is in the /pub/contrib/ directory. (I have removed the list from this page, it was out of date).