[9fans] project JD: some initial success!

["ron minnich" <rminnich@gmail.com>]

OK, Aki and I spent a fun-filled day today. And we got it!

If you get sources/xen/xen3/xentest.tgz, and set it up in its own
partition, and set up a grub/menu.lst as follows:
title           tiny horrible xen
        root            (hd0,3)
        kernel          /boot/xen-3.0.3-1-i386.gz
        module          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-3-xen-686 root=/dev/hda4
ro console=tty0
        module          /boot/initrd.img-2.6.18-3-xen-686

(this example for hda4)

then boot. It will drop you pretty quickly into a shell prompt (12
seconds  on my machine) with almost nothing running. You have a few
tools, but not many; why would you need them? You're here to run Plan
9, not linux.

We have set it up so that, boot to boot, the partition will fill up
with log junk not at all, but you can still see all the stuff in logs.
This is done via use of tmpfs all over.

It is set up to run with few scripts and the bare minimum of linux
crud. So, the footprint is a "mere" 256MB or so. Run firefox and you
add a "mere" 128MB. Ah well.

To get it going, read the README, but it's basically this:
runme # sets up the basic tmpfs mounts, modules, and so on
ath0 # sets up a default 802.11, does dhcp (fix things in this script
for your setup)
# lots of errors from dhclient, I didn't have time to shrink down the
577-line dhclent-script
# , we'll do that later.
xend start
hanska # script will start a plan 9 instance, and then connect to it.
You can watch it boot.
# to fix the fs and auth it tries to use, fix the IP addresses in
/etc/xen/hanska.
# it currently homes in on 9grid.net

once hanska is up
drawterm -a (your auth server) -c (ip address of hanska)
we currently use 9grid.net for our auth.

yes, included, free with this package, is Aki's framebuffer-only drawterm.

It feels a whole lot like a plan 9 machine. There is stil tons to do
but this is a milestone. It feels like we carried a stone for a mile.

We have successfully booted ina coffee shop and my house. Wow, two places :-)

Still to come are the knobs to control linux -- after all, plan 9
should control linux. Linux is just a device driver, after all!

now you have no excuse for not using plan 9 on your T60.

We also noticed something interesting. With Linux trimmed way down,
not running much of anything, the Plan 9 side feels quite peppy, as
does drawterm.

thanks

ron