Teaching with Minix Howto modified: 12 July 2006

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

Minix was written for use in teaching operating systems concepts:

"When Unix was young (Version 6), the source code was widely available, ... [click here for more]

This page is a work-in-progress. Much of the information to be referenced on this page already exists on the web and can be found on or via my Minix Hints/FAQ page. What I hope to do here is to organize links to this information in ways that will be useful for teachers and professors who want to teach a laboratory course using Minix. I would appreciate feedback, and (especially) links to your course pages and other references you find useful. Please e-mail me (Al Woodhull <asw@woodhull.com>).

Topics to be referenced here may include:

• Course web sites (OS courses using Minix).
• Minix versions and their use in teaching.
• How to install Minix 2 in a lab
  • on dedicated computers (available also as a Postscript file).
  • on computers shared with other operating systems
  • on computers shared with other courses
  • using emulators and virtual computers
  • installing from floppy disks
  • installing Minix from CD-ROM
  • installing on a networked computer
  • Minix on MacIntosh and other non-Intel systems
• How to make Minix available to students working outside the lab
• Documentation resources
• Programming in the Minix environment
• Other teaching resources
  • transparency masters for illustrations from OSDI/2e
  • Paul Ashton's technical reports (PDF documents):
    • SunOS Minix: a tool for use in Operating System Laboratories (Technical report COSC 05/93)
    • Use of interaction networks in teaching Minix (TR-COSC 08/95)
    • Using Interaction Networks for Visualization of Message Passing (TR-COSC 04/96)
  • James Howatt, Operating System Projects -- Minix Revisited (pdf)
  • Wenliang Du et al, A Novel Approach for Computer Security Education Using Minix ... (pdf)
  • There are a number of papers and books on-line on Raphael Finkel's website, including his Operating Systems Vade Mecum (2nd ed.,1988). (Recommended by Jeff Parker, Middlebury College).
  • Well known author William Stallings maintains a Computer Science Student Resource Site (http://williamstallings.com/StudentSupport.html) with information and links of interest to students and professionals.
  • Alvarez Llorente et al, Learning Symmetrical Multiprocessing with Minix (Spanish, PDF). Also available as HTML from Google.
  • Pablo Pessolani, MINIX4RT (Minix for RealTime) (formerly New Real-Time microkernel and facilities for MINIX (RT-MINIX version 2.0.2)).
  • Cynthia E. Irvine, Department of Computer Science, U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, A Common Criteria-Based Team Project for High Assurance Secure Systems (PDF file)
• Academic Projects based on Minix 3
  • Jorrit Herder, Towards a True Microkernel Operating System, Master's Thesis, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, Netherlands, February 2005. (PDF, also available as a PostScript file.)
  • Jorrit Herder, Herbert Bos, and Andrew S. Tanenbaum, A Lightweight Method for Building Reliable Operating Systems Despite Unreliable Device drivers, Technical Report IR-CS-018, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, Netherlands, January 2006.
  • Jorrit N. Herder, Herbert Bos, Ben Gras, Philip Homburg, and Andrew S. Tanenbaum, Modular System Programming in MINIX 3, ;login, Vol 31, No 2, Usenix, April 2006, pp. 19-28.
  • Ivan Kelly, Porting MINIX to Xen, Final Year Project, University of Limerick, Ireland, April 2006.

Suggestions for other topics are welcome!

Minix was written for use in teaching operating systems concepts:

"When Unix was young (Version 6), the source code was widely available, under AT&T license, and frequently studied. John Lions, of the University of New South Wales in Australia, even wrote a little booklet describing its operation, line by line. This booklet was used (with permission of AT&T) as a text in many university operating system courses.

"When AT&T released Version 7, it began to realize that Unix was a valuable commercial product, so it issued Version 7 with a license that prohibited the source code from being studied in courses, in order to avoid endangering its status as a trade secret. Many universities complied by simply dropping the study of Unix and teaching only theory.

"Unfortunately, teaching only theory leaves the student with a lopsided view of what an operating system is really like. The theoretical topics that are usually covered in great detail in courses and books on operating systems, such as scheduling algorithms, are in practice not really that important. Subjects that really are important, such as I/O and file systems, are generally neglected because there is little theory about them.

"To remedy this situation, Andrew Tanenbaum decided to write a new operating system from scratch that would be compatible with Unix from the user's point of view, but completely different on the inside. By not using even one line of AT&T code, this system avoids the licensing restrictions, so it can be used for class or individual study. In this manner, readers can dissect a real operating system to see what is inside, just as biology students dissect frogs. The name Minix stands for mini-Unix because it is small enough that even a nonguru can understand how it works.

"In addition to the advantage of eliminating the legal problems, Minix has another advantage over Unix. It was written a decade after Unix and has been structured in a more modular way."

- From Operating Systems Design and Implementation, 2nd. edition

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