[9fans] plan9 on NeXTstation?

[James A. Robinson Jim.Robinson@Stanford.Edu]

> I just received a 68040 based NeXTstation and like to install plan9 on it.
> Unfortunately I cannot find /68020/9nextstation anywhere.

On the assumption that you have a full Plan 9 system (a license and
CDROM distribution).  If for some reason your Plan 9 setup does not have a
compiled 9nextstation kernel, you should be able to go to /sys/src/9/next,
and compile one.

If you don't in fact have a Plan 9 system, you would have to buy it
and set up a file server and auth/bootp server before you could get
started... You can buy it via a bookstore, the ISBN is 0-03-017143-1. You
can read more about it, and about the free PC test version, at the Bell
Labs Plan 9 server: http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/distrib.html

> In the manual is mentioned that the file is not part of the distribution, but
> it also mentions that it can be found under "/usr/template/client/tftpboot/boot
> on the vendor-supplied file system". Is here anybody with plan9 running
> on a NeXT who can give me a hint ? Are they talking about NeXTstep when
> they say 'vendor-supplied file system' ?

They aren't talking about the 9nextstation kernel here. What the docs are saying
is that there is a boot-loader file called 'boot' under the NeXTstep filesystem
which you need to copy to your auth/bootp server.  So you need both 9nextstation
(which you get with the Plan 9 CD), and the boot file (which indeed you need to
get from a working NeXTstep filesystem) in order to make a nextstation boot up
over the network.

If you don't want to set up a PC file server and auth/bootp server, you can
take a look at http://www.ecf.toronto.edu/plan9/info/next.html for at least
some information on using u9fs, the unix hack to do Plan 9 file service...


Jim