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In my operating systems class we had to modify the boot screen of the Minix OS. I understood just about everything we did, but at the end of the make for compiling the new OS, there's a line:

cp image /dev/c0d0p0:/minix/2.0.4r2

I don't understand what the colon is for, can anybody explain this? I've searched all over with no luck.

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
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2 Answers2

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I found the answer. This is not a command. It is output.

The mkboot script echoes this to the screen in the following section:

echo "cp image $root:/minix/$target"
cp -p image $rootdir/minix/$target || exit

The $rootdir variable indicates a directory on which it has mounted the $root device earlier in the script, if the target root is something other than the actual mounted root:

case $action in
bootable | hdboot)
    # We need the root device.
    if [ $realroot = $root ]
    then
        rootdir=
    else
        umount $root 2>/dev/null
        mount $root /root || exit
        rootdir=/root
    fi
esac
Random832
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0

If you don't get a better answer, I'll take a near-wild guess at it:

It seems like that line allows you to copy a file to a device that may not be mounted by specifying the device /dev/c0d0p0 and the file /minix/2.0.4r2.

Jeremy J Starcher
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  • Thanks Jeremy, I was actually just considering that. I think that, because it has to move the image to the boot sector (is that even right?) it would have to specify a device outside the Minix filesystem and on to the root drive. Would that make sense? –  Sep 09 '12 at 22:17
  • The boot sector a whole different beast. I'll be honest, I've not used Minix in over 25 years and it was a way different beast back then... but it isn't unheard of for *nix variants to keep the boot code on a different partition. – Jeremy J Starcher Sep 09 '12 at 22:20