Installing A Small MiNT

by Bohdan Milar

There are many ways to install MiNT, it is up to you which one you choose. It partly depends on how you want to use MiNT, as I described last time. In general we have two ways:

Simple with no UNIX functionality.
Full GNU system.

The first choice is as simple as copying several files to the correct places and make (or modify) one configuration file. You can find links to all these at http://www.freemint.de. We can describe the whole installation in five steps:

Copy the MINT.PRG file to your AUTO folder.
Copy the MINT folder to your boot partition.
Install your favouritte AES (graphical environment) to a special directory.
Modify the MINT.CNF file.
Modify the configuration files of your AES.

And now more in detail. The most important is the kernel itself. You can get it in a tar.gz (standard GNU packer) archive or as .lzh (which is more sutable for the TOS environment). There are many files in the archive. The name of the kernel itself is MINT*.PRG (where * means any character string or nothing).

You have to choose which kernel to use. MINT000.PRG is reserved for computers with MC 68000 processors (Atari ST, STE, Mega ST, Mega STE...), MINT020.PRG is for those with MC 68020 processors (very rare) and MINT030.PRG is for MC 68030 (Atari Falcon, TT). A special kernel for Milan computers is available as MINTMIL.PRG.

So you take what you need and copy it to the AUTO folder on your boot partition. You can rename it to MINTNP.PRG. This will disable the memory protection functions which are incompatible with some applications (for a list of supported software, see http://freemint.de/docs/mint.mmp_txt.html).

Now you need the MINT directory in the root of your boot partition. All kernel modules and basic configuration files are situated here. Earlier it was the MULTITOS directory playing this role. MiNT can still use it and also looks directly to the root directory of the boot partition.

Into the MINT directory you have to copy all the modules you want to use. You may find several types of modules distributed with the kernel. There are three types:

XFS: file system drivers, which allows the system to use new partition types.
XDD: device drivers, provides new features to FreeMiNT.
XIF: network interfaces.

You can copy whichever XFS module you want. They are Minit (compatible with old UNIX-like OS), Ext2 (Linux compatible) and NFS (Network File System). The kernel itself can use FAT (GEMDOS compatible), VFAT and dynamic RAM disk (available as /ram).

Be careful when choosing XDD modules. Some of them may cause conflict so FreeMiNT won't be able to boot. The audiodev.xdd will add a device (/dev/audio) to use the sound hardware of your Atari in a UNIX way (for example, cat sample > /dev/audio). Similarly, flop_raw.xdd adds devices for direct access to floppies. Thus you can create and use floppy images easily.

The xconout2.xdd is used for redirecting the error messages to a GEM application, so the errors during your work will not be written directly to the screen, but to an application's window. The application suitable for this is TosWin2. MFP, SCC and UART drivers handle the serial ports on different types of machines.

A special module is the sockdev.xdd (in the developing FreeMiNT 1.16 it is called inet4.xdd). This provides the networking capabilities (compatible with Internet Protocol version 4) to MiNT. It is also called MiNTNet and it is this module which looks for the XIF sub-modules during boot.

There are many XIF modules avaliable. Which to choose depends on what network interface you want to use. It is unrecommanded to copy any other XIF module to the MINT directory on your boot partition. The slip.xif provides the serial line TCP/IP (point-to-point) connection. Similarly, plil.xif is for the parallel line connections. Other XIFs are mostly drivers for various Ethernet network cards.

Installing and configuring an AES is another topic. You can read how to do that in the documentation of your favourite AES. For the same reason I will skip the fifth item (AES configuration). But we will show briefly the MiNT configuration.

It is mostly done in the MINT.CNF file in the MINT directory. MINT.CNF contains many useful settings. They are mostly special commands, variable settings and external program executions. Let's mention some of them:

VFAT=A,J sets VFAT on drives A: and J:
HIDE_B=YES ignores the virtual B: drive
WRITEPROTECT=R,S prevents writing to the drives R: and S:
echo print something.
setenv set an environment variable.
sln create a symbolic link (used mainly for top level directories, such as /bin)

You can put comments into the CNF file. Lines beginning with # are ignored. The most important line of MINT.CNF starts with GEM= or INIT= (there can be only one of them). GEM= indicates that MiNT should directly load and use the definet AES as the main (and only) user interface. It could be INIT=c:\xaaes\xaaes.prg. INIT= is used to define standard GNU program to continue the boot. Typical is INIT=/sbin/init.

If your MINT.CNF does not have any INIT= and GEM=, system should run the AES (and desktop) of your TOS from ROM. However this environment will be provided with new functions of the FreeMiNT kernel (dynamic RAM disk, networking, new file systems...). I could write a whole article about MINT.CNF, but you can find a lot of information at http://freemint.de/docs/mint.appendix_C.html

Once you have the kernel in the AUTO, modules in the MINT directory and MINT.CNF in the same place, you should de-activate all the other AUTO folder applications and accessories (by changing the last letter of their names to X). After you reboot, FreeMiNT should start. Then you can try to gradually add some AUTO programs and accessories.

Next time we will show how to install a large distribution. I hope I will have a new version of my OSMD installer ready to launch by then.

MyAtari magazine - Feature #3, August 2004