From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Latchesar Ionkov To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations? Message-ID: <20010118111221.A3854@gmx.net> References: <20010117015216.615BC19A05@mail.cse.psu.edu> <02f601c08029$c3ea4aa0$0ab9c6d4@cybercable.fr> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2i In-Reply-To: <02f601c08029$c3ea4aa0$0ab9c6d4@cybercable.fr>; from boyd@planete.net on Wed, Jan 17, 2001 at 03:04:02AM +0100 Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 11:12:21 -0500 Topicbox-Message-UUID: 4f74653c-eac9-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 On Wed, Jan 17, 2001 at 03:04:02AM +0100, Boyd Roberts said: > > I'd love to have USB support in Plan 9. > > i'd just like to be able to boot off my USB > floppy and then install using the stuff on c: > > i don't think that's possible -- no plan 9 > installed, no hacks to get it to boot. I believe you can install it without plan9 machine. I never install it that way, but that's what I am planning to do if I screw the installation on my usb-floppy-only laptop (I have linux and use it as example. I believe you can do the same in Windows with the right tools) 1. Download plan9 boot disk and copy it to a floppy disk. 2. Create partition for Plan9 install with the right partition type (0x39) 3. Create Plan9 partition image in a file dd if=/dev/zero of=9fat bs=1024 count=1440 mkdosfs -R 2 9fat mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy mount -o loop=/dev/loop0 9fat /mnt/9fat cp /mnt/floppy/* /mnt/9fat/ umount /mnt/9fat/ dd if=/dev/zero of=part9 bs=512 count=1 (echo part 9fat 0 2880 ; echo part nvram 2880 2881; dd if=/dev/zero bs=1 count=474) > 9ptbl cat 9fat /mnt/floppy/plan9.nvr > 9part0 (dd if=9part0 count=1 ; dd if=9ptbl ; dd if=9part skip=2) > 9part This should create Plan9 partition with 9fat (size 1440M) and nvram (size 512 bytes) subpartitions in 9part file. It will also copy all the files from the boot floppy to the 9fat subpartition. Note 1: standard mkdosfs misteriously doesn't recognize -R option even if it presents in the man page. You have to modify mkdosfs source (add "R:" at in the getopt function at mkdosfs.c:1410) Note 2: In theory there is no guarantee that copying files from the floppy to the newly created FAT filesystem will not fragment the files. In practice it doesn't happen -- I don't see any reason files will be fragmented if they are copied to a blank filesystem. 4. Copy 9part file in the real Plan9 partition dd if=9part of=/dev/hdaX 5. Modify plan9.ini in the floppy disk to read the kernel and the kfs filesystem from 9fat partition bootargs=local!#S/sdC0/9fat bootfile=sdC0!9fat!9pcflop.gz 6. Reboot. If you are lucky, you'll have running shell. Installation scripts are designed to work booting from floppy and you have to modify them to continue the installation. I didn't go that far and I don't guarantee that you can install that way. I can email you 9part file if you cannot create it using the OS you have. Lucho