From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-Id: <200010061802.TAA13618@cthulhu.dircon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [9fans] REQ Info: Plan9 VMware Session?
In-Reply-To: <20001006170643.81AE3199F7@mail> from "jmk@plan9.bell-labs.com"
 at "Oct 6, 2000 01:06:42 pm"
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Date: Fri,  6 Oct 2000 19:02:08 +0100
From: Digby Tarvin <digbyt@acm.org>
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> 	Has anyone gotten Plan9 to run (heck, to even install) under a VMware
> 	session?
>
> I briefly lookde at this when it came up on the mailing list a while ago.
> VMware presents some 'hardware' in the virtual machine for which we have no
> drivers, e.g. the ethernet controller and the graphics chip. I believe
> the ethernet controller is a variant on the AMD controller for which we do
> have a driver, so that can probably be fixed easily. I've no idea what the
> graphics controller looks like.
>
> If I could be bothered installing NT or Linux on a system here I'd take a
> closer look.
>
> --jim
>
I have looked into this also. Unfortunately the virtual machine does not
seem to emulate any standard graphics controller except in VGA mode,
and the response I got from VMWare when I enquired was that they
consider the interface details to be proprietary.

They seem to think that getting reasonable graphics performance
requires clever tricks that give them an edge over potential
competitors. I suspect it is not handled as a 'virtual device'
but rather handles the display by communicating requests to the
host operating system.

Thus unless you can work with a VGA screen, you are restricted to
guest operating systems for which VMware have deemed to make
display drivers available. I have not checked, but that would
seem to indicate that the Linux driver is provided as binary
only. Does anyone know if that is really the case?

Of course it still seems that getting the network driver going
is a rather essential first step before being able to do anything
useful with a guest Plan9 system. Then at least a guest file and/or
cpu server should be a possibility. Their docs suggest this is
an 'AMD PCnet-PCI II' compatible.

The SCSI is 'BusLogic BT-958' and sound is 'Sound Blaster 16'.

I am planning to install Linux on one of my systems in a couple of
weeks when things are a little less busy here to do some experimenting.

Until then I am only working on what I have been told...

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