[9fans] A few installation queries...

[Digby Tarvin <digbyt@acm.org>]

I have just spent a couple of hours experimenting with the June 14 2001
Plan9 release, and while I havn't really spent enough time on it
to say I am stuck, wanted to run a few funnies by the list before
I forget about them to see if anyone has an explanation or similar
experience...

I created a boot floppy from the CD and on my main system it worked
pretty much as expected, failing with an un-recognised video adapter.

I then tried it in another box with an EPOX 8kTA3 1.1GHz AMD Athlon
CPU, and I get:
	PBS...Plan 9 from Bell Labs
	apm ax=f000 cx=f000 dx=fdfa di=0 ebx=806c esi=-6c2dfc17
	using fd0!dos!plan9.ini
	dev A0 port 1F0 config 0040 capabilities 2F00 mwdma 0007 udma 203F
	no such FAT partition fd0!dos
	Boot devices: fd0 fd1 sdC0

I didn't really expect it to work, as this box also had a relatively
recent MATROX G400, but I am puzzled by the way that it failed, given
that the FAT partition was found perfectly fine on the first PC...

If any gurus out there could give a brief explanation of how to
decode the information in the 'dev' line, that would be great.
On systems that work, there seem to be two of these lines. I am
wondering if the floppy driver is not working for some reason..

I then tried an older P100 machine with some even older ISA cards
I dug up which seem to be in the supported hardware list. These
were a CL-GD542x (Cirrus Logic) video adapter and an 8013EPC LAN
board. I found an old 800Mb disk to install to, which had NT on
the first 200MB partition and BSD Unix on the second 600MB partition

The install went very smoothly. I removed the BSD partition and replaced
it with a Plan9 partition, accepting most defaults, and then both added
Plan9 to the NT boot menu as well as creating a boot floppy.

After rebooting post install, and using the NT boot option, attempting
to log in as 'glenda' gives me

	init: starting /bin/rc
	ndb/dns: can't read my ip address
	disk/fdisk: did not find master boot record
	i8042: fe returned to the ea command

and the system hangs...

When originally booting off the installation floppy, I saw the same
i8042 message, but it then proceeded successfully to a graphical display..

If I log on as user 'none', there is no rio but I sucessfully get a shell
prompt, so I assume there is some problem with the initialization of the
display adapter. I compared the 'vgadb' on the hard disk and the
updated install disk (where the graphics seemed to work)
and they were identical...

I tried booting direct from the Plan9 partition, which did not start
at all. I assume that the install option to make the Plan9 partition
active also causes the MBR to be written.

Finally, I tried the boot floppy, and it behaved the same as the hard
disk boot.

Any thoughts?

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