[9fans] kfs on sparc

[9fans] kfs on sparc

[Elliott]

> Finally, the entry for the sparc in BOOTING(8) only mentions
> net booting. Can a Sun be made into a stand alone Plan9
> workstation?

good question. making a SPARC kernel with kfs is easy (the
Plan 9 FAQ even tells you how). booting that off the net is
similarly easy. booting from a local disc... that part has
escaped me. in the end i worked out that the only way it
was going to work was if i left a minimal Solaris partition
on my disc with the second- and third-stage boot loaders
and replaced the Unix kernel with the Plan 9 one. sadly a
friend had kindly installed Solaris 2.6 over Solaris 2.5 on
my little old IPC, and the boot loader in 2.6 only supports
ELF binaries. i don't have an ELF kernel, and frankly haven't
the faintest idea how to make one easily. versions of
Solaris earlier than 2.6 may (i'm wary of being more
confident, though i know forsyth used to boot an SLX from
local disc) support booting of a Plan 9 kernel.

as if one needed any more reason _not_ to "upgrade" to a
new version of Solaris...

[my IPC is currently running a stripped-down Solaris 2.6
install and has a very minor role on the network. and to
think it could have been running acme and 5s!]

-- 
quest'avventura // ah, come diavolo // mai finira'?

[9fans] kfs on sparc

[Bengt]

In article <199811110855.JAA331408@relay.ch.genedata.com>,
9fans@cse.psu.edu wrote:

> > Finally, the entry for the sparc in BOOTING(8) only mentions
> > net booting. Can a Sun be made into a stand alone Plan9
> > workstation?
> 
> good question. making a SPARC kernel with kfs is easy (the
> Plan 9 FAQ even tells you how). booting that off the net is
> similarly easy. booting from a local disc... that part has
> escaped me. in the end i worked out that the only way it
> was going to work was if i left a minimal Solaris partition
> on my disc with the second- and third-stage boot loaders
> and replaced the Unix kernel with the Plan 9 one. sadly a
> friend had kindly installed Solaris 2.6 over Solaris 2.5 on
> my little old IPC, and the boot loader in 2.6 only supports
> ELF binaries.

The only way to boot from a disk is to have a boot loader that supports
plan9 kernels. Such a loader is installed if one use SunOS4 or OpenBSD
(and apperantly old versions of Solaris? I tried 2.5, but it did not work
for me)

What one can do on a Solaris system is to get hold of the following SunOS4
programs/data files:

/boot
/usr/kvm/mdec/installboot
/usr/kvm/mdec/bootsd

and do the following on a minimal 'a' partition (I had the /dev
compatibility package installed on Solaris) on _another_ disk, not the
Solaris boot disk:

mount /dev/dsk/c0t1d0s0 /mnt
cp /boot /mnt/boot
/usr/kvm/mdec/installboot /mnt/boot /usr/kvm/mdec/bootsd /dev/rsd1a
cp plan9kernel /mnt

[9fans] kfs on sparc

[Digby]

>
>I've done this with a MIPS Magnum workstation, but not a sparc.
>You'll need a kernel with kfs support, try 
>'diff /sys/src/9/magnum/magnum /sys/src/9/magnum/magnumdisk' for help with that
>
>There are scripts in the subdirs of /rc/bin for setting up standalone systems
>Take a look at /rc/bin/magnum/home, which preps the disk
>copies the boot partition and kernel, then uses kfs to
>setup the filesystem. You'll probably want to run disk/prep manually.
>You might not need a boot partition with sparcs.
>
>Once your system is setup and running, you can sync it with your
>fileserver by running something like /rc/bin/magnum/update
>
Hi Steve,

Thanks for the clues. 

I hadn't even gotten up to thinking about how I
was going to copy the system onto the disks yet.

Your information should be very helpful.

Regards,
DigbyT
-- 
Digby R. S. Tarvin                                              digbyt@acm.org
http://www.cthulhu.dircon.co.uk

[9fans] kfs on sparc

[Digby]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the quick reply.

>
>Not the world's best wording is it?
>
With free support like this, I guess it doesn't have to be :-)

>Since you have a scsi drive, you want 'disk/prep /dev/sd?'.  ls -l /dev/sd*
>to see what's there after the bind and replace ? with the right number.
>
>It works for non-PC's, or at least used to.  Just don't expect to see any DOS
>partitions to be found.
>
>A sun can be stand-alone.
>
Ah, thanks. Still mystified about how this relates to the '#w/hd0' in the
docs, but I think I know what it should be now.

Regards,
DigbyT
-- 
Digby R. S. Tarvin                                              digbyt@acm.org
http://www.cthulhu.dircon.co.uk

[9fans] kfs on sparc

[Steve]

Digby Tarvin wrote:
> I have a SPARCstation 2 which I can network boot using u9fs
> running on a local Unix machine, and I am trying to set it
> up to use its local hard disk.
> 
> I can see the disk ok after doing a
> 	bind -a '#w1' /dev
> But can't figure out how to partition and format it.
[snip]
> Finally, the entry for the sparc in BOOTING(8) only mentions
> net booting. Can a Sun be made into a stand alone Plan9
> workstation?

I've done this with a MIPS Magnum workstation, but not a sparc.
You'll need a kernel with kfs support, try 
'diff /sys/src/9/magnum/magnum /sys/src/9/magnum/magnumdisk' for help with that

There are scripts in the subdirs of /rc/bin for setting up standalone systems
Take a look at /rc/bin/magnum/home, which preps the disk
copies the boot partition and kernel, then uses kfs to
setup the filesystem. You'll probably want to run disk/prep manually.
You might not need a boot partition with sparcs.

Once your system is setup and running, you can sync it with your
fileserver by running something like /rc/bin/magnum/update

[9fans] kfs on sparc

[presotto]

Not the world's best wording is it?

Since you have a scsi drive, you want 'disk/prep /dev/sd?'.  ls -l /dev/sd*
to see what's there after the bind and replace ? with the right number.

It works for non-PC's, or at least used to.  Just don't expect to see any DOS
partitions to be found.

A sun can be stand-alone.

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Subject: [9fans] kfs on sparc
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 01:06:23 +0000 (GMT/BST)
In-Reply-To: <199705100132.VAA25559@cse.psu.edu> from "beto@ncube.com" at May 9, 97 06:30:28 pm
From: Digby Tarvin <digbyt@acm.org>
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Hi,

I have a SPARCstation 2 which I can network boot using u9fs
running on a local Unix machine, and I am trying to set it
up to use its local hard disk.

I can see the disk ok after doing a
	bind -a '#w1' /dev
But can't figure out how to partition and format it.

PREP(8) requires as argument a 'special', which is described
as a 'maximal prefix of names of the logical units on the disk',
but I can't find a definition of what this means. The example
given is '#w/hd0', but I don't see how that relates to '#1'?

Also, the '-a' is supposed to create default partitions on a
new disk, but the description indicates this includes a DOS
partition, so I am worried that maybe this is for the PC
version only....

Finally, the entry for the sparc in BOOTING(8) only mentions
net booting. Can a Sun be made into a stand alone Plan9
workstation?

Thanks,
DigbyT
-- 
Digby R. S. Tarvin                                              digbyt@acm.org
http://www.cthulhu.dircon.co.uk

[9fans] kfs on sparc

[Digby]

Hi,

I have a SPARCstation 2 which I can network boot using u9fs
running on a local Unix machine, and I am trying to set it
up to use its local hard disk.

I can see the disk ok after doing a
	bind -a '#w1' /dev
But can't figure out how to partition and format it.

PREP(8) requires as argument a 'special', which is described
as a 'maximal prefix of names of the logical units on the disk',
but I can't find a definition of what this means. The example
given is '#w/hd0', but I don't see how that relates to '#1'?

Also, the '-a' is supposed to create default partitions on a
new disk, but the description indicates this includes a DOS
partition, so I am worried that maybe this is for the PC
version only....

Finally, the entry for the sparc in BOOTING(8) only mentions
net booting. Can a Sun be made into a stand alone Plan9
workstation?

Thanks,
DigbyT
-- 
Digby R. S. Tarvin                                              digbyt@acm.org
http://www.cthulhu.dircon.co.uk