[9fans] Questions: plan9.ini; NE2000

[Kevin McQuiggin <mcquiggi@sfu.ca>]

Hi Group:

I'm sort of new to the list, I played with Plan 9 about 1.5 years ago but
put it aside due to work commitments. I'm back and working on installation
of Plan 9 from the new (June 7) release.

A couple of questions:

1. Any docs available on the syntax and options for the plan9.ini file?

2. I have a Novell NE2000. It gets detected on boot but when I set up IP
address, netmask and gateway to download the distribution from the Net,
nothing happens. The box just sits there, no network traffic at all. Are
there config restrictions on the card or something? As I said, it _does_
get detected. It's IRQ 9 and (I recall) 0x320 for the card address.

3. Any docs on what gets written to the floppy after the initial boot? I
find that if I start with a freshly formatted floppy, dd the image to it,
it'll boot and start the install process fine, but the _second_ time I get
messages similar to "boot device:". Choosing fd0!9PCFLOP.GZ seems to start
the process but then I get a kernel panic.

The maddening thing here is that even if I take the floppy to a DOS
machine and remove the .nvr file that gets created, and reset all the
files to their initial contents, that the floppy won't boot into the
install properly again. Even re-doing the dd of the image onto the floppy
and booting from it gives me the unworkable "boot from:" prompt.

The only solution is to completely reformat the floppy (using fdformat
under Linux), and re-copying the boot image. Then a boot of the floppy
will start the normal install process again.

Any docs on how to streamline this process would be helpful. Of course it
won't be a problem once I get my NE2000 to work. Then I'll have the
distribution and be off to the races!

Thanks,

Kevin


-- 
Kevin McQuiggin VE7ZD
mcquiggi@sfu.ca