Install modified by Madison Brooks

Madison Brooks — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 02:52:07 -0000

        INSTALLING ATHEOS

Even though it was possible to install previous versions of AtheOS on
a FAT partition the current version must be installed on a native
(AFS) partition. In the future it will be possible to boot from a native
FS that is located inside a file on a FAT FS (and other filesystems if
AtheOS drivers are written for them). I am working on an installer that
will automate most of the installation but it is not yet finished so
to install the current version you must write the "atheos-#.#.#.boot.##"
and "atheos-#.#.#.data.##" floppy images on a set of floppies and boot
AtheOS from there. After booting from the floppies you will have a
shell (BASH) in a terminal emulator. From the shell you can mount
existing FAT and AFS partitions, create AFS filesystems, and unpack
the install archive with the "tar" and "gzip" tools included on the
floppies.

Here is a step-by-step description on how to make the partition and
install the OS:

First you have to write the (currently 3) floppy images to a set of
floppy disks. From Linux, BeOS, AtheOS, and most other OS's you can do
this with "dd" from a shell. On Windows you will need a special
program that can write a raw disk image to a floppy. There is a
free utility named "rawwrite" that can be used to create the floppies
under Windows.

After creating the boot-floppies you should be able to boot AtheOS
and continue with the installation.

If you don't already have a partition ready for the AFS filesystem you
must first create one with the "DiskManager" tool that is included on
the boot floppies. Just run "DiskManager &" from the shell. The
partition editor has a fairly self-explanatory GUI where you first
select the disk to edit and then edit the partitions either
graphically by dragging the partition indicators or by explicitly
typing start and end positions for each partition.

Then you must get access to the archive containing the installation.
There are several ways to do this. If possible the best way to
achieve this is to put the base-atheos-#.#.#.tgz file on a FAT
partition before booting AtheOS and then mount that partition under
AtheOS. If you don't have a FAT partition and are not able to create
one you must resort to floppy disks. You must then split the archive
into files that can fit on a floppy. The simplest way to do this is
probably to write the segments to raw floppies, but you can also make
a FAT filesystem on the floppy and put each segment as a normal file
inside that FS (it will be annoying to mount/copy/unmount all the
floppies under AtheOS though).

To mount a FAT partition you must first make a mount-point and then
mount the right partition. A mount-point is simply a directory and
can be made with "mkdir". To mount the partition you must first figure
out what the path is for that partition inside the /dev/ directory
hierarchy and then mount it with the "mount" command.

The /dev/ directory in AtheOS is not flat like for example under Linux
but hierarchical, and the disk block-devices are located under /dev/disk/.

Currently the only driver available is the BIOS disk-device so all
disks are located under /dev/disk/bios/ and are named hda, hdb, hdc,
etc etc. These disk-names are themselves directories that contain the
actual device nodes. Under each drive you will find at least one node
named "raw" that represent the whole disk and if the disk has a valid
partition table you will find one node for each partition named "0",
"1", etc etc. So to get the second partition on the third drive you
will have to write /dev/disk/bios/hdc/1 (partition numbers start at 0).
The disks are listed in the order they were reported by the BIOS so
drive 0x80 is hda, 0x81 is hdb and so on.

In the following example I will assume that the base archive is
located at /download/atheos-base-0.3.0.tgz on a FAT partition on the
first partition (0) on the first drive (hda) and that we want to
install the OS on the second partition (1) on the first drive (still
hda :).

    INSTALLING THE OS FILES

First we make a mount-point for the FAT partition and mount it:

bash-2.03$ mkdir dos
bash-2.03$ mount /dev/disk/bios/hda/0 dos

Then we must create and mount the native FS, be 100% sure you select
the right partition before formatting it (see the fsprobe and devstat
notes below):

bash-2.03$ format /dev/disk/bios/hda/1 afs MyAtheOSPartition
bash-2.03$ mkdir afs
bash-2.03$ mount /dev/disk/bios/hda/1 afs

Now we are ready to unpack the base archive to install the FS:

bash-2.03$ cd /afs
bash-2.03$ tar -xvpzf /dos/download/atheos-base-0.3.0.tgz

This should create an "atheos" directory containing well... AtheOS and a
"boot" directory containing the GRUB bootloader inside the /afs/
mount-point.

    CONFIGURING THE BOOTLOADER

Next step is to configure and install the bootloader.

First you must tell GRUB where to find the kernel and the required
disk/FS drivers to load before booting AtheOS. This information is
found in "/afs/boot/grub/menu.lst". If you have other OS's installed
on the machine you must either configure GRUB as a boot-manager or
install another boot-manager that can "chainload" GRUB from the AFS
partition.

The menu.lst file should look something like this to boot AtheOS from
the installation described above:

 title  AtheOS
 root   (hd0,1)
 kernel /atheos/sys/kernel.so root=/dev/disk/bios/hda/1
 module /atheos/sys/drivers/fs/afs
 module /atheos/sys/drivers/dev/disk/bios

This will tell GRUB to boot partition number 2 on the first drive
through the "root (hd0,1)" command and where to find the kernel, the
boot block-device driver and the boot-FS driver on that partition. The
"root=/dev/disk/bios/hda/1" string after the kernel-path is a parameter
that is passed to the kernel and tells what partition to mount as
/boot/ before continue to boot. The kernel can also take a number of
other parameters (listed below) that are given in the same manner after
the "root" param.

If you install AtheOS on the second partition on the first drive the
default config-file is ok. otherwise you must edit the "root (disk,partition)
line to fit your setup. If you want to boot other OS's with GRUB you
must add them to the config file as well. For example to boot BeOS, or
Windows, or most other OS's that have a bootblock you can use the
"chainloader" command like this:

 title BeOS
 chainloader (hd0,3)+1

This will add a menu entry titled BeOS that will boot the OS
found on the fourth partition on the first disk.

You can also set a timeout for when to boot the first OS in the list
(or the default as set by the "default" command) with the "timeout"
command:

 timeout 5

    INSTALLING THE BOOTLOADER

When done editing the config file you must reboot the computer by
pressing <ctrl>, <alt>, and simultanously (DO NOT HIT THE RESET
OR POWER BUTTON. THIS WILL CAUSE CACHED DATA THAT HAS NOT YET BEEN
WRITTEN TO THE DISK TO BE LOST AND THE INSTALLATION TO BE CORUPTED!)
boot from the floppy disk again to install the bootloader. This time
you should abort GRUB before it boot AtheOS by hitting <esc> and then
hit "C" to enter the GRUB shell from which you can finish the install.
Now you must decide whether you want to install GRUB in the MBR
(Master Boot Record) of the first drive and use it as a boot-manager
(or if AtheOS is the only OS on the machine) or if you want to install
it on the AFS partition only and use another bootmanager select what
OS to boot.</esc></alt></ctrl>

In either case you must tell GRUB where to find the config file and
the second-stage loader by setting a "root" partition:

root (hd0,1)

If you did not install AtheOS on the second partition on the first
disk you must change the parameters accordingly.

Then you must install the boot-loader with the "setup" command.

To install on a MBR of the first drive run:

setup (hd0)

To install it on the AFS partition only run:

setup (hd0,1) (again change the parameters according to your setup)

Now it should be possible to boot AtheOS off the native partition.

            NOTE

GRUB understands the AFS filesystem and can boot any kernel located on
an AFS partition by changing the "kernel" line in the config file or
by manually loading the kernel and required modules from the GRUB
shell. There is no need to run any tools to update block-lists or
anything like that after installing new kernels.

Read the GRUB documentation http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/grub.html
and use the "help" command in the GRUB shell for more information on the
bootloader.

To edit the config file you can use "jed" which is a easy-to-use text
editor included on the boot-floppies.

There is a couple of tools on the floppy that can help you find the
right partition. To find an existing filesystem you can use "fsprobe".
"fsprobe" takes a block-device path as it's only parameter and will
ask each filesystem driver if they recognize the partition and, if one
of them do, it will print the FS-type, the volume label and some
size/usage stats. The other tool is "devstat" that also takes a
block-device path and prints the size and geometry of the disk/partition.
This can be useful to verify that the partition you are about to format
is really the one you intend to nuke.

    ADDITIONAL KERNEL PARAMETERS

You can pass various parameters to the kernel at boot-time through the
GRUB "kernel" line. Normally the only required parameter is
"root=/dev/disk/<boot-device>" to tell the kernel what FS to boot
from. Other parameters can be passed to override autodetected values,
disable features, etc etc to aid debugging and help AtheOS run under
"unusual" environments. All the kernel parameters and the general
rules for passing parameters to the kernel are described in
"/atheos/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt".</boot-device>

    HOW TO LOG IN, AND HOW TO ADD NEW USERS

AtheOS is a multiuser OS. Before you are able to do anything you will have to
log in using a user-name and a password. The base-installation comes with two
predefined users. "root" with the password "root" is the super-user and has
unrestricted access to the system. The other user is "guest" with the password
"guest". This is a normal user. Eventually I will write a GUI based tool for
adding users and change their attributes. In the meantime you will have to
add users by manually editing the password file found in /etc/password.

This files contains one line for each user. Each line looks something like this:
guest:$1$$ysap7EeB9ODCr:500:100:Guest account:/home/guest:/bin/bash
The user description consists of several elements separated by colons (:).
The elements are: login_name:password:userid:groupid:Full Name:home_dir:login shell

To add a user you copy the line describing the guest account and change the
following elements:

  o The username (first field).
  o The password (second field). The password is MD5 encrypted and can be
created by the "crypt" utility:

    >crypt mypassword
    >Password: '$1$$xyAQ/aL.VY49zzXfVYUfK0'

The crypt utility takes a string as a parameter and prints the MD5
encrypted hash that you should put in the password file.

  o User id (third field). Each user must have an unique ID. It should
be an integer number between 1 and 2147483648. Remember that this
ID will be used to identify the user throughout the system and will
be embedded in every file owned by this user. You should be very
careful not to change it after the user is created!

  o Group ID (fourth field). This ID should correspond to one of the
user groups defined in /etc/group. You should normally leave this
unchanged.

  o User name (fifth field). This should be the full name of the new user.

  o Home directory (sixth field). This should be a path pointing to the new
user's home directory. This is where user-specific configurations
are kept.
The home directory should normally be named after the login name. You
should copy the guest homedir to get a basic configuration for the new
user. (cp -a /home/guest /home/kurt)

This example shows a user with the following properties:

Login name: kurt
Full name:  Kurt Skauen
Password:   mypassword
User ID:    501
Group ID:   100
Home directory: /home/kurt
Shell:      /bin/bash

kurt:$1$$xyAQ/aL.VY49zzXfVYUfK0:501:100:Kurt Skauen:/home/kurt:/bin/bash



    INSTALLING OPTIONAL SOFTWARE PACKAGES

When you get the thing to boot, you can start installing the different optional
packages. To install a package you simply start a shell, become root (su -l) and
go into the /usr/ directory and unpack the tarball with a command like this:

>tar -xvpzf /atheos/packages/emacs-19.34.bin.tgz

Then you must run "pkgmanager -a /usr/packagedir" to register the package
with the system. To register emacs run the following:

>pkgmanager -a /usr/emacs

This will make a bunch of symlinks in various subdirectories of
/atheos/autolnk/ to make it possible for the system to find
executables and other files belonging to the package.

Voila you should now have the new package installed.

If you want to uninstall the package again you should clean out
the symbolic links from /atheos/autolnk/ by running:

>pkgmanager -r /usr/emacs

before deleting the actual package directory itself:

rm -R /usr/emacs (BE CAREFUL!).

Please note that this way of installing software should ONLY BE USED
FOR COMMAND LINE APPLICATIONS AND APPLICATIONs PORTED TO ATHEOS FROM
UNIX AND OTHER OS's USING A UNIX LIKE FILESYSTEM. Native applications
should use the various mechanism available in AtheOS for making the
application "position independent" so it can be installed anywhere on
the HD. This mechanism include the option of opening files using paths
relative to the location of the executable file (and to obtain the
path to the directory where the binary lives) and the ability to embed
resources within the executable image itself.

Remember that AtheOS is a multiuser OS and that you often must be
"root" in order to install new software packages. You become root by
typing "su -l" in a shell and then type the "root" password (Default
password is "root").

If you want a backdrop image on your desktops you can put a jpeg
image at: /system/backdrop.jpg (This will soon be configurable) and
restart the desktop manager (kill_all -TERM desktop; desktop &). The
image will be tiled if it is smaller than the desktop, and clipped if
it is larger.

If you have problems with the installation you might want to take a look
at the FAQ or subscribe to the mailing-list and/or read the list-archive.
Both the FAQ and the mailing-list can be found at https://atheos.sourceforge.net

Good luck with the installation.

Recent changes to Install

Install modified by Madison Brooks