#UNIX ?
21 messages in this thread
I would appreciate anyone's input on this question. I just bought an Amiga 3000
UX from a college student who didn't use it very much. The machine looks good,
but it has UNIX on it. My question is should I keep the software & docs or
recover the space from the hard drive? I've got the documentation he was given
at school but don't know if it still has appliaction. Any thoughts would be
appreciated.
-Bud
Bud,
Depends…the UX machines also had an Amiga partition on them, so you
might go thru the documentation and try to boot it in Amiga mode and see how
much room you've got. I forget the exact procedure for doing that but it
should be in the documentation.
Don
Don,
Thats really the issue. They have partitioned the 100 meg drive with
10meg to amiga and 90 to un. I don't suppose I can reclaim the UNIX area
without formating the entire drive, can I?.
Bud
Bud,
Sure you can reclaim the space without formatting…presuming you want
a 10 meg and a 90 meg partiton for AmigaDOS.
But realistically…I presume you want a 100 Meg Amiga partition, so
you need to reset the partition size via HDToolBox. Format and then restore
you files. Obviously…to restore the files, you need to make a backup before
you start this process.
Don
Why? Since Amiga HD systems come from the factory with about an 8 meg
Workbench: partition and the rest as Work:, why shouldn't his system be
set up that way?
Dale Larson
– An Amiga Software Engineer with some time on his hands.
Dale,
It's not so much a question of why he shouldn't set it up that way,
but why he should leave it that way? A single partition, among other
things doesn't use as much resource such as buffers…or uses those
resources more efficiently. 30 buffers to each partition, or 60 to one
partition…it would seem to me that the 60 would be more efficient.
The size itself doesn't seem to slow things down…for example, one of
my HD's on my 2000 is a 150 Meg drive. I tested it empty with diskperf
and now it's half full…no real change in diskperf numbers.
Don
The inner tracks of a HD are much faster than the outer tracks. If you
have a spare HD, make an small inner and a small outer partiontion and
test each with DiskSpeed 3. Having the (most commonly used) system files
in a small partition in the inner tracks results in better overall system
performance for most people.
Dale Larson
– An Amiga Software Engineer with some time on his hands.
Don,
We are having an ongoing argument in our local club over this very
thing. My stance is, while fewer partitions does uses fewer resources,
multiple partions are safer and easier to manage. My main drive, a 105
meg, the first is my dos partition (15 megs) then my work (35 megs) Play
(30 megs) then IBM (for the bridgeboard). I backup my dos partion once
every major change or about every 3 months or so, work: I back up weekly,
play: back up whenever I feel like it (I keep games and graphics there).
The other 105 is mostly junk stuff, but my point is it sure is easier on
backups or if I have problems with the hard drive I only lose a small
portion of it and not the whole thing. It also makes it a lot easier to
find stuff and keep things in logical order. But here again this is just
my opinion!
…Steve
====>>> Motorola 68030 Inside <<<====
Steve,
If the drive itself fails…the size of the backup isn't an issue, you
either have it or your don't. True, if you get a filesystem crash in a
partition…it's easier (or quicker) to restore from a smaller save set.
But then…I backup everything about once a month….and do it in the
background to a tape drive. Takes about 40 minutes, only prompts me once for a
new tape and I keep working in the foreground. Even when I did floppy
backups…I did a full backup about every 6 months and then incrementals from
there on. So true, if I crashed, I would have had to restore the full backup
plus all the incrementals…but to be honest that wasn't a big consideration.
While I've had a couple of close calls due to the drive hardware itself
failing…I don't recall ever having a filesystem crash…so never needed a
full restore.
Don
I also use a tape backup to backup all the partitions. I do daily backup
of changed files (appending) and a complete backup weekly.
-Jonathan
Don:
Perhaps I'm more on the paranoid side than you are. I have 2 200meg drives
in my machine , and I have them divided up into 6 40meg partitions, and a
60 meg partition (my TMP directory), and a 100 meg Mac partition. The
reason I keep most of my partitions at 40 megs is so that I can easily
keep a copy of the partition on SyQuest cartridges (older 44 meg ones).
Basically I hackup to a 250meg tape about twice a week, and once a week I
backup to the SyQuest cartridges. While it takes slightly longer to backup
to the SyQuests, and isn't as automatic, it's a real handy backup, as I
can just pop in the cartridge, and the drive is there, I can use it as the
partition it's backing up if I have to, try that with a tape!
I think I've gotten this paranoid about backups from 2 places, my brother
is ALWAYS talking about loosing data (he's the network manager at MIT, and
specializes in computer network security – 'Network Police' – as he's
called himself), and also, my first HD controller on my first Amiga must
have been bad or something, cause it crashed at least once a week,
sometimes as many as 3 times a week!
And it's always better to be safe than sorry. (or so they say).
// -Mike Schiller
\X/ AMIGA! On AutoPilot in sunny Fort Lauderdale
There is a company that makes a mountable device for tape drives.
Essentially make your tape drive an accessible device ( a slow one! )
-Jonathan
That company is Moonlighter, the makers of AmiBack…
Bob Comer — Cruising the nets on AutoPilot from Cheyenne, Wyoming
Mike,
You logic makes some sense, but I do the same thing by assigning
logical drives to directories on the real drive. There's DH0:, but under it
are several "xx:" logicals as the result of ASSIGNs. Performs the same
function of "smaller drives" without the overhead.
If you HD controller trashes the drive…I suspect you'll have to
restore everything in any event.
BTW, since I've got multiple drives, I backup some of the logical
directories on the small drives onto the larger HD as a quick way to recover if
needed. For example, that's how I handled those "close calls" I talked about
in my previous message. Dumped the small drive onto the large drive, replaced
the HD and restored from the large drive. Real quick.
Don
Mike,
I have had cases where there were filesystem problems or operator error (a
nice way of saying I was stupid!) and I was glad that I had multiple
partitions.
Just last month my (ugh) PC at work decided to have a memory error in the
middle of a disk write, which totally trashed the directory structure for
that partition. Even with my suite of HD recovery tools (this was a
SuperStored drive), I lost a bunch of data. The other three partitions on
this drive were untouched.
Nothing can totally save you from a total disk crash, but multiple
partitions do give you a little extra protection.
//
\X/ Amiga -Steve ——> On AutoPilot from Silicon Valley
Steve,
My 200 meg drive was once a single partition. Late one night I decided to
format a floppy in df0: As it started to format I woke up really quickly
when I saw it was formatting the first of several hundred tracks. I
aborted immediately, but too late. The first track of my hard disk had
been reformatted. I sweated for several hours to restore all that data.
Since then I, like you, believe in several partitions per hard disk!
Pete Jones, flying on AutoPilot from Brussels, Belgium
Don, Thanks for the information. I must be a dinosaur. I've just upgraded to a
A3000 from an A1000. Yes a 1000!. So I am quickly trying to catch up. Called a
local rep only to find out the 3000 is being discontinued. OH WELL!. I can't
seem to afford to get ahead of the curve. 😎
Bud
Yes. Go into HDToolBox, select your drive, select Partition Drive.
Select the unix partition, rename it to "Work." Select Advanced Options
so that you can change the filetype to FFS or something else sensible.
Save Changes to Drive. Use AmigaDOS format to format Work: and voila.
Also make sure you are running a modern version of AmigaDOS. At least
2.04, signified as v37+ from WorkBench's About menu item.
If you have a Unix tape and the manuals, you may consider selling them (as
long as you are deleting Unix from your HD). I think standalone unix sold
for quite a few hundred dollars, though it probably isn't worth that now.
Dale Larson
– An Amiga Software Engineer with some time on his hands.
Dale:
Do you know what the technicalities are of using an AT&T dirived Unix? I
have the Amiga SVR4 Unix tape (and boot & root floppies) that came with my
A3000UX, so does that mean that I have a license to use Unix? I currently
also have a 486 that I have Interactive SVR3.2 Unix for, as well as an old
AT&T PC7300 (3b1) (SVR2), so does that mean that I in effect have 3
different licenses as well?
// -Mike Schiller
\X/ AMIGA! On AutoPilot in sunny Fort Lauderdale
I believe that Unix is licensed on a per-machine basis. I would assume
that if you have something labeled 3000UX that came with a tape and boot
and root floppies that you have a license to run Unix on that machine.
Sounds like you have three machines licensed to run Unix. If what you are
asking is "does that mean I can run Unix on a fourth without paying any
more fees" I think that the answer is no.
I believe that the licenses are different for different machines (or at
least, classes of machines) such that you can't just destroy your 3000UX
tapes and start running Unix on your Cray without paying additional fees.
You should be able to remove Unix from you A3000UX and start using it on a
different A3000UX (or an A2500UX).
DISCLAIMER: I ain't a lawyer and I don't know for sure. The above is just
my common sense and good guesses.
Dale Larson
– An Amiga Software Engineer with some time on his hands.