A/UX 3.0 installation

Warning: These are the steps that worked for me. If there is a better way of doing something, I'd like to know about it. These steps are not based off any Apple documentation.

Double Warning: A/UX is still a copyrighted product owned by Apple. If you have an A/UX system for which you need replacement installation media, you can check Gamba's download page for a list of places to download Macintosh operating systems, including A/UX.

Partitioning

Normally, there are several partitions on an A/UX disk: the MacPartition, which actually boots the machine; the UFS or SVFS root partition, which actually has the kernel and is booted by the MacPartition; a swap partition; and an Autorecovery nee Eschatology partition, which is supposed to be a repository for critical files during system recovery but in my experience and the experience of others really serves the purpose of being a disk space black hole.

The partitioning scheme I prefer has two HFS partitions: one for the MacPartition, and then another standalone MacOS partition so you can still use your favourite extensions without messing with the MacPartition's system folder and causing trouble. (You can also install other system versions here without hurting A/UX.) I also don't bother with the Autorecovery partition, since even if it did (does) work, it has little functionality that a good fsck doesn't.

You will need a copy of HDSC Setup 7.3.5 for the first portion of this -- don't use A/UX's. I like the patched version on Gamba's hard drive page. This assumes you have some familiarity with Apple's hard drive partitioning utilities. Boot from your HDSC Setup-enriched boot floppy.

Remove all previous partitions; alternatively, low-level format and initialise, whatever it takes to clean the HD off and just leave the Mac Driver in the first (small, several kilobyte) partition.
Create your main MacOS partition however large you like it. Leave at least a couple hundred MB free for A/UX, plus whatever swap size you want. On my 1GB Seagate, I made the MacOS partition 256MB, leaving around 700MB total for the MacPartition, swap and A/UX. Lock it for safety!
Create the MacPartition as a regular HFS partition. It doesn't need to be more than 20MB or so (even that is plenty big).
Leave the remainder unpartitioned.

Now boot A/UX with the boot disk and A/UX install CD. Go to Custom Install and Step 1 (to continue partitioning).

Don't accept one of the predefined A/UX partition types; click Custom.
Create a "swap slice 1" the size of your desired swap space. A/UX is very swap picky and so you should be generous here; I have a 24MB IIci, but I gave it 128MB of swap to have room to grow. The regular 2:1 swap:physical RAM rule may be too small for A/UX; consider 3:1, just for a good safety margin.
Create your "root & usr" partition and consume the remainder of the space. This will be the A/UX filesystem. As part of this process, A/UX's Drive Setup will also do the equivalent of a newfs on the new partition.

Thus endeth the Partitioning.

Installation

Step 2 of the Custom Install puts the MacPartition boot files on the MacPartition. Start this step and make sure it chooses your MacPartition, not your locked MacOS partition which you will reserve for your beloved MacOS. This is very fast, typically.

Step 3 of the Custom Install builds the UFS/SVFS filesystem and installs the actual guts of A/UX. It should find your "root & usr" filesystem and chuck everything on it without further preamble. Pick the filesets you want installed.

Once finished, you will be instructed to reboot. When you reboot and the MacPartition starts up and tries to initialise A/UX, it will ... fail resoundingly. Don't be discouraged. This failure is because the Launcher's standalone copy of fsck looks for an Autorecovery partition, which we have gloriously eschewed. Go to Settings, Booting. Pick "custom command" and change the fsck command to cat /etc/motd. Change the launch command to launch -v so you have a better idea what's going on. Save the settings.

Boot with Command-B. This first boot will rebuild the kernel according to your system devices. Get a cup of coffee, preferably from Colombia, because on my IIci this took a good few minutes. You will then be instructed (forced) to reboot.

Welcome

Welcome to A/UX. If you did it right, on the next boot, the system will come up, start A/UX (and you'll see the kernel coming up), and then drop you into ... the Finder? However, if you go under the applications menu on the top right, you'll see the Command Shell. Select that, et voila -- a real shell in your real A/UX system.

At this point, you're on your own. Things to do might include:

Setting the root password to something other than (blank)!
Removing the guest account
Removing the file /mac/sys/Login System Folder/Preferences/Autologin so that the machine properly asks you for a password rather than allowing anyone on the console to be root (!)
Creating another user with adduser

Remember to shut down the usual way, i.e., Special, Shut Down. You can also log out under the Special menu as well. When you do shut down or reboot, don't forget to unlock your MacOS partition next time you have HDSC Setup handy.

Things Not To Do

None of these apply to your MacOS partition (but this DOES apply to the MacPartition as well as the UFS/SVFS partition), which we created to allow you to have some partition on the system for these things.

Don't install any version of MacOS other than the installed version on the MacPartition or the UFS/SVFS partition. You will be very sorry.
Don't install OpenTransport or any other version of MacTCP or AppleTalk.
The video subsystem works at 24-bit, but is very slow. Since I have an 8*24*GC card, I tried enabling acceleration and I was very sorry (and it was very difficult to get the Control Panel out because the Launcher does not properly mount the filesystems read/write if they are not marked clean). If you must use more than 8-bit colour, 16-bit is a better performance and palette compromise.

Disclaimer

This document is perpetually under construction. Have fun!

Cameron Kaiser