You have the option of installing the patch disk, which should patch your installation up to patch level 2a. This can patch the kernel to 2.1c as well, which is why you may find references to 2.1c being the “ultimate” version of AMIX. In actuality, 2.1p2a is the latest version you can install… and you do that with the patch disk.

Download the file from here: Amix 2.1 Patch Disk (ADF)

You have two choices here. If you can get the file onto your Amiga UNIX box, like over the network… do so, and you don't need to bother creating a floppy. If you can't, then write the file to floppy using either dd or some adf-to-disk program in AmigaOS like… erm… adf2disk. Or tsgui. In Amiga UNIX you'd write it like this:

dd if=amix_patch_2.1.adf of=/dev/dsk/fd0 bs=512

But if you can do that, the file is already there so why bother?

The patch disk, if you made the floppy, just contains a compressed version of the patches in an easily transportable format, a la sneakernet. You don't actually use the disk at all during the patch process. If you have the file on your amix system, you can uncompress it by running it with sh, like so:

sh amix_patch_2.1.adf

If you have written it to a floppy, insert the floppy into the system's drive and run it with sh like this:

sh /dev/dsk/fd0

A script will begin running, follow along with the prompts as it unarchives everything for you.

The script will exit after telling you exactly what to do next. Just so you'll see it here too:

shutdown -iS wait a while… Enter the root password at the prompt, and then… /var/patch/apply

And away you go. If you have the kernel configuration package installed (and you do if you followed my recommendation and installed everything) you will get the new 2.1c kernel installed. You can make the boot floppy if you like, when it prompts you, but on a stock system you should not have a problem with the new kernel.

When the patching has been completed (hopefully successfully) you will need to reboot with the command:

shutdown -i6

When the system boots, you will be run through the setup script again. Just answer the questions intelligently and you'll be fine. If you want to run XDM so you can see the ugly X login after your system boots, answer appropriately to that question. You can also login to your xdm from a remote system, like a Linux box with a nice 24-bit display, by issuing maybe X -query amix_box_address :1.0 on the remote system where the :1.0 is an available display number. If you are not already running X on that system, you can use :0.0 if you want.

If you'd like to see the changes that were applied to your system again, you can look at /var/patch/changes in your favorite text viewer. If you want to restore or examine old files replaced by the patch, they should be in /var/patch/old1.

Enjoy your new 2.1p2a system!