A/UX standalone program space is too small

[GondolinOnMyMind]

All,

Based on instructions on https://github.com/unxmaal/aux_sdcard I downloaded the image and copied that onto a sd card. That went well. The issue arises when the os is booting and ”A/UX Startup” is being run. I include messages both as pics and as text for search engines.

First error message is:

”Initialization. Error. Standalone program space is too small (=65660740). The shell needs to run in a particular area of memory. Either you are trying to run under a memory sharing System or the System heap is too big”

This has options to Continue or Exit.
If Continue is clicked then a sencond message is presented:

”Initialization. Warning. Standalone program space may be too small (=2048). The shell needs to run in a particular area of memory. Either you are trying to run under a memory sharing System or the System heap is too big”

Now the only option is to click Continue.
The shell starts but errors are printed to stdout

autorecovery
Couldn’t run fsck
chroot
_set tz
Couln’t execute _set tz
chdir
autolaunch
Couldn’t execute launch

Now prompt is presented but any and all commands are unknown.

The computer I’m running this at, is a Quadra 700, 68 MB ram and with a bluescsi.

Anybody got an idea what is going on?

 

[robin-fo]

Be sure to run A/UX startup from a minimal System 7.1 setup. Did you install any system extensions? Try start your Mac with the system extensions disabled and try again.

 

[MrFahrenheit]

Make sure 32 bit memory addressing is enabled in the Memory control panel.

 

[thecloud]

You have too much memory in the Quadra, maybe? The Apple Memory Guide has this to say about the Quadra 700: "Memory configurations above 20 MB have not been tested and are not officially supported by Apple Computer, Inc." You would need 32 bit memory addressing enabled to use >16MB of RAM. The error message seems to suggest that it can see 65660740 bytes of free memory, but thinks it's too small, so it could be doing signed integer arithmetic that overflows into a negative value or something along those lines.

 

[Mk.558]

I'm thinking that SCSI2SD image was not designed for a BlueSCSI. They work differently.

It's actually not that difficult to install A/UX 3.0.1. It's like 2-3 floppies and a CD image, the floppies aren't hard and the CD can live as a disk image on your BlueSCSI, which is how I did it.

 

[GondolinOnMyMind]

You have too much memory in the Quadra, maybe? The Apple Memory Guide has this to say about the Quadra 700: "Memory configurations above 20 MB have not been tested and are not officially supported by Apple Computer, Inc." You would need 32 bit memory addressing enabled to use >16MB of RAM. The error message seems to suggest that it can see 65660740 bytes of free memory, but thinks it's too small, so it could be doing signed integer arithmetic that overflows into a negative value or something along those lines.

So I replaced the memory down to 20 MB. But that did not help. The first error did change though to reflect smaller amount of memory.
edit: 4 MB on the digital board + 16 MB.

 

[GondolinOnMyMind]

Make sure 32 bit memory addressing is enabled in the Memory control panel.

Did check that. It was on.

 

[GondolinOnMyMind]

I'm thinking that SCSI2SD image was not designed for a BlueSCSI. They work differently.

It's actually not that difficult to install A/UX 3.0.1. It's like 2-3 floppies and a CD image, the floppies aren't hard and the CD can live as a disk image on your BlueSCSI, which is how I did it.

This sounds doable. Could you maybe give a bit of advice how to proceed?

 

[MrFahrenheit]

This sounds doable. Could you maybe give a bit of advice how to proceed?

Disk images can be found here:

Apple A/UX 3.0.0, 3.0.1, 3.1 (WGS95) Reference Archive - Macintosh Garden

This reference archive is a collection of clean, fresh extractions of original install disks, for Apple A/UX 3.0 and 3.0.1 operating system. The 3.0.0 CD extraction is from a regular retail release CD labeled simply 'A/UX 3.0'. The 3.0.1 'retail' extraction is from a regular retail release CD...

macintoshgarden.org

 

[cheesestraws]

I would always recommend doing a clean install of A/UX rather than using a pre-made install image. It's nowhere near as hard as people think it is, it's really not much harder than installing MacOS.

@MrFahrenheit's disk images that he linked to in the post above this are, as far as I know, the most faithful and un-mucked-about-with images out there and I would recommend using one of those.

A walkthrough of the installation process can be found here: https://aux-penelope.com/aux_3.0.htm

 

[Mk.558]

Our heroes at bitsavers.org have a wonderful A/UX PDF collection, browsable here. I believe Mr. Fahrenheit also backed those up.

Assuming you have the boot floppy, you use 2 disk images on the BlueSCSI. I wouldn't have more as it increases the chances of a mistake. I would use something like...

HD10 512 AUX301.hda
CD20 2048 AUX3CD.hda

Then just boot from the floppy disk and follow the installation instructions. A lot of people make huge partitions but realistically you probably won't even need beyond 120MB on the Macintosh partition and 320MB on /.

If you are curious about A/UX, I recommend also exploring A/UX 2.0. It runs with System 6, and is all in all a rather unique experience. It won't work on a Quadra though, but if you have another 68K compatible machine I recommend giving a whirl. Avoid A/UX 2.0.1 unless you specifically need it.

Immediately after the installation completes (follow the installation manual so you know when the time is right) and before the first boot I highly recommend yanking the SD card and making a backup copy of the A/UX installation image. While it's not hard to install A/UX, it's also a long, slow process, especially on a 68030 it takes about an hour and a half to install it. A/UX can corrupt itself in all kinds of fascinating, frustrating and flabbergasting ways, so leverage the advantage of your BlueSCSI to restore to an original image.

I wouldn't get too attached or rely on A/UX for that reason. From a historical perspective, it's interesting, but I don't run it on my machines for a reason: A/UX 3.0 feels like running 7.6.1 on a IIci or Mac OS 8 -- sluggish. Load a folder with a bunch of files (the / volume has a few) and you'll see what I mean.

 

[GondolinOnMyMind]

Thanks everybody for your input. Good advice there. I'll try the route to install it myself. The idea of installation has been somewhat intimidating due to almost absurd hardware requirements (this particular cdrom drive, that particular model etc), so I thought readymade image would be nice. Apparently it wasn't

I've been a linux admin almost 30 years and managed on the side AIX-hosts, too. I've been curious about A/UX for quite a long time now. Mostly getting it up and running and a little bit of poking around has been the general idea.

 

[GondolinOnMyMind]

So, like Borat would put it: "Great success!"

I do now have a running A/UX 3.1.1 installation. And it was quite a lot simpler process than I originally thought.
The only minor obstacle was how to write boot diskette with modern MBA, but after a bit of searching and two tries, it was a success.
For anyone doing the same: I did use dd and Disc copy 4.2 version of the Installation image.

The command to write diskette image:

sudo dd if="Installation Boot Disk.image"  of=/dev/disk5 bs=84 skip=1

Here "/dev/disk5" is the device file for my USB-connected floppy drive. You may need to check yours with

diskutil list

.

I then copied the iso-file to the SD-card, connected that to the bluescsi and booted from the floppy. When the installation process begun I just chose "simple install". Then chose the software to be installed. And after that everything was painless, although time consuming.

Now the exploration begins.


Notes:
* extracted archives in a basilisk II virtual machine, and used "unix" folder to transfer/write files in MacOS
* created a 2 GB empty drive with Disc Jockey ("HD10_512 2048AUX311.hda")
* copied iso image as "CD6 AUX311install.ISO"
* I did not get a bootable or readable diskette with DC6.3 format image and dd.
* after the initial installation was ready, the system asked to reboot the system for final configuration. At this point I did shut down the computer and backup the hda-file to my MBA. After copy I reattached the sd card to the bluescsi and booted the computer to continue the process.