08 Installing Software

Installing software

Michael Parson's re-bundled SVR4 packages are on the Amiga Unix Wiki: https://www.amigaunix.com/doku.php/downloads. They install with pkgadd rather than needing to be built.

Before the first install

groupadd staff

Every package was built on a host with a staff group. Without it each install reports attribute verification failed and Installation partially failed — cosmetic, the files still land correctly, but it obscures real errors.

Gotchas

• pkgadd -d needs an absolute path. A bare filename fails with errno=2 even from the directory containing it.
• SVR4 chown has no user:group form. Use chown root x; chgrp sys x.
• SVR4 grep has no -E. Use egrep, or install gnugrep early.
• Decompress .pkg.gz on the host side — base AMIX has no gunzip, which is exactly why the packager ships fsfgzip-1.3.5.pkg uncompressed.
• Delete each .pkg immediately after installing it. Holding archives and installed copies at once is what runs a 600 MB disk out of space.

OpenSSH

Order: zlib, openssl, prngd, openssh.

prngd is not optional. There is no /dev/random on a 1992 kernel and this OpenSSH build's ssh-rand-helper is hard-wired to PRNGD on TCP port 708 — without it, key generation fails with Entropy collection failed. The package installs /etc/init.d/prngd, /etc/prngd.conf and /etc/rc2.d/S70prngd, and starts with:

/usr/local/sbin/prngd /var/run/egd-pool tcp/localhost:708

/var/run is a Solaris 2.x convention that SVR4.0 predates, so create it first if missing. Note /etc/prngd.conf is a Solaris 2.6 contribution and validates each entropy source's path before using it; sources that do not resolve are silently skipped.

Privilege separation needs an account and an empty directory:

mkdir /var/empty; chown root /var/empty; chgrp sys /var/empty
chmod 755 /var/empty
groupadd sshd
useradd -g sshd -d /var/empty -s /bin/false sshd

Host keys go where sshd_config expects them. ssh-keygen writes whatever -f says — the host in the filename is not automatic:

ssh-keygen -t rsa1 -f /usr/local/etc/ssh_host_key -N ""
ssh-keygen -t rsa  -f /usr/local/etc/ssh_host_rsa_key -N ""
ssh-keygen -t dsa  -f /usr/local/etc/ssh_host_dsa_key -N ""

Then link it into the boot sequence, after prngd's S70:

ln -s /usr/local/etc/init.d/sshd /etc/rc2.d/S99sshd

Compiler

gcc 2.7.2.3 alone is enough. The 2.5.8 → 2.6.3 → 2.7.2.3 chain described in the packager's README is build-time ancestry, not a runtime dependency — these are prebuilt binaries. Installing only 2.7.2.3 saves 27.6 MB and works (verified). Install binutils-2.7 alongside it, then immediately:

mv /usr/local/bin/as /usr/local/bin/gas

or it shadows the system assembler.

PATH=/usr/local/gcc-2.7.2.3/bin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH

Shells

There is no bash in the collection. ksh (ksh88) is the best interactive shell present, but line editing is off until enabled and arrows are unbound:

set -o emacs                   # then ESC ESC completes, ESC = lists
alias __A="$(print '\020')"    # up    -> Ctrl-P
alias __B="$(print '\016')"    # down  -> Ctrl-N

csh with set filec gives literal Tab completion, if that matters more.