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 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 a 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.
Her is a step-by-step descrition on how to make the partition and
install the OS:
First you have to write the (currently 2) 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 some 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 have a pritty self-explaining GUI where you first
select the disk to edit and then edit the partitions eighter
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 is several ways to do this. If possible the best way is to
achive 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
propably 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 anoying 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 hierarchial, and the disk block-devices is located under /dev/disk/.
Currently the only driver available is the BIOS disk-device so all
disks are located under /dev/disk/bios/ and is named hda, hdb, hdc,
etc etc. These disk-names are themself 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 have 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 was 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 containg 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 eigther 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 patition. The
"root=/dev/disk/bios/hda/1"string after the kernel-path is a parameter
that is passed to the kernel and tell what partition to mount as
/boot/ before continue to boot. The kernel can also take a number of
other parameters (listed below) that is 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. otherwhice 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 aswell. To for example 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 and
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 form which you can make 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.
In eighter case you must thell 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 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 of the native partition.
NOTE
GRUB understand the AFS filesystem and kan 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 here
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 take a
block-device path and it will print the size and geometry of the
disk/partition. This can be usefule to verify that the partition you
are about to format is realy the one you intend to nuke.
ADDITION KERNEL PARAMETERS
You can pass various parameter 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".
HOW TO LOG INN, 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 have
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 tools 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$$ysap7EeB9ODCr:500:100:Guest account:/home/guest:/bin/bash
The user description consist of several elements separated by colons (:).
The elements are: login_name:password:userid:groupid:Full Name:home_dir:login shell
To add a user you copy the line describing the guest account and change the
following elements:
o The username (first field).
o The password (second field). The password is MD5 encrypted and be
created by the "crypt" utility:
crypt mypassword
Password: '$1$$xyAQ/aL.VY49zzXfVYUfK0'
The crypt utility takes a string as parameter and prints the MD5
encrypted hash that you should put in the password filed of the user.
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 verry
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
users 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 followin 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 got 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
goes 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 update the different environment variables in order to find
binaries, info-file, man-pages, etc etc by running the find_packages.sh
shell script:
/system/config/find_packages.sh
And then restart the shell by typing:
exec bash -login
If the binaries you installed must be found by the desktop manager you must restart it:
kill_all -TERM desktop
desktop &
Voila you should now have the new package installed.
To uninstall a packet you simply delete the directory conatining it in /usr/ and
rerun the /system/config/find_packages.sh script.
Remember that AtheOS is a multiuser OS and that you normally 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 picture on your desktops you can put an 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-arcvhive.
Both the FAQ and the mailing-list can be found at http://www.atheos.cx/
Good luck with the installation.