[9fans] booting plan 9 from LILO (was matrox ...)

[9fans] booting plan 9 from LILO (was matrox ...)

[Jatin Nansi]

Hi,

Since you say so, I redid the installation on a partition on the
primary master (/dev/hda2 on linux). And I also configured
lilo accordingly. Now I get the following:

PBS ... Bad format or I/O error
Press a key to reboot...

And I get stuck again.
Any ideas ?

Jatin

PS1: I dont know how the pointer looks when I boot into plan9
on the matrox G450, since I have yet to get the system to boot.
PS2: The AMD system in my earlier mail is another PC, and the wierd
thing is that on my PIII 500 MHz, the same floppy works just fine,
while i have the mount problem on the AMD.

Its just not my day :)

> I suspect the problem is that Plan 9 doesn't know how to boot
> from anything but the primary master.  More precisely, I don't
> know how that would work and so I'm not surprised that it
> doesn't.

> It could be that we're not dealing with LILO properly
> at all, although I think some people have gotten it working.  I would
> try it myself on my laptop but I'm afraid to wipe my MBR,
> since I'm not 100% sure how to put the Windows 2000 one back.

> Anyone want to share LILO success stories?

> Russ

Re: [9fans] booting plan 9 from LILO (was matrox ...)

[Russ Cox]

try booting plan 9 from a floppy and then running

	disk/format -b /386/pbslba /dev/sdC0/9fat

which won't format your 9fat partition but
will install a different boot block.  maybe
your plan 9 partition is too far into the disk,
although the install program is supposed to get
this right automatically.

Re: [9fans] booting plan 9 from LILO (was matrox ...)

[Russ Cox]

What does your LILO configuration look like?

Re: [9fans] booting plan 9 from LILO (was matrox ...)

[Jatin Nansi]

On Monday 06 May 2002 19:04, Russ Cox wrote:
> What does your LILO configuration look like?

on a Suse 7.3:
---------------------------------------
boot    = /dev/hda
vga     = normal
read-only
menu-scheme = Wg:kw:Wg:Wg
lba32
prompt
timeout = 80
message = /boot/message

  image  = /boot/vmlinuz
  label  = linux
  root   = /dev/hda3
  initrd = /boot/initrd
  append = "enableapic"

  other  = /dev/hda2
  label  = Plan9
  table  = /dev/hda

  image  = /boot/vmlinuz.suse
  label  = failsafe
  root   = /dev/hda3
  initrd = /boot/initrd.suse
  append = "disableapic ide=nodma apm=off"
  optional

  image  = /boot/memtest.bin
  label  = memtest86
-------------------------------------

Jatin

Re: [9fans] booting plan 9 from LILO (was matrox ...)

[Fco.J.Ballesteros]

:  Anyone want to share LILO success stories?

We use LILO to boot 3rd ed terminals from a plan 9 network.
Works like a charm.

boot=/dev/hda
compact
delay=50
vga=normal
default=linux
image=/vmlinuz
	root=/dev/hda1
	label=linux
	read-only
other=/dev/hdc1
	label=plan9
	table=/dev/hdc

Re: [9fans] booting plan 9 from LILO (was matrox ...)

[Russ Cox]

I've had very little luck with GRUB.
I don't think ït has a greater potential
for success than LILO.  LILO is simple and
works with legacy systems.  GRUB is complicated
and requires oodles of weird configuration
to make it think about talking to legacy systems.

Russ

Re: [9fans] booting plan 9 from LILO (was matrox ...)

[Michael H.Collins]

That is what I used to think till I started fscking with it.  I know you
guys are way ahead of me though.  I am just a hack.

have fun.


On Sun, 5 May 2002 02:00:31 -0400
"Russ Cox" <rsc@plan9.bell-labs.com> spewed into the bitstream:

~I've had very little luck with GRUB.
~I don't think ït has a greater potential
~for success than LILO.  LILO is simple and
~works with legacy systems.  GRUB is complicated
~and requires oodles of weird configuration
~to make it think about talking to legacy systems.
~
~Russ
~


--

       .--.
      |o_o |     Michael H. Collins
      |:_/ |     Admiral, Penguinista Navy
     //   \ \    http://www.linuxlink.com
    (|     | )   http://kpig.com
   /'\_   _/`\   http://kuro5hin.org
   \___)=(___/

[9fans] booting plan 9 from LILO (was matrox ...)

[Russ Cox]

> 2.  I installed plan9 on the 2nd partition of my secondary master (/dev/hdc2
> on linux). I made an 'other' entry in lilo.conf and run lilo. When I try to
> boot to plan9, I get an error that the disk is not a bootable. So what could
> be going wrong here?

I suspect the problem is that Plan 9 doesn't know how to boot
from anything but the primary master.  More precisely, I don't
know how that would work and so I'm not surprised that it
doesn't.

It could be that we're not dealing with LILO properly
at all, although I think some people have gotten it working.  I would
try it myself on my laptop but I'm afraid to wipe my MBR,
since I'm not 100% sure how to put the Windows 2000 one back.

Anyone want to share LILO success stories?

Russ

Re: [9fans] booting plan 9 from LILO (was matrox ...)

[Sam]

I haven't set up lilo to boot plan9, but I have set up
lilo to boot windows from the second ide channel, which
windows doesn't willingly do.  It involved adding special
lines in lilo.conf to make windows think he was on the
primary channel.  I can't recall the precise magick, but
odds are you can google for it.

Alternatively, I believe you should be able to
change the line boot=/dev/hdX in your lilo.conf
file to point to the second drive, install the boot
block there, power down, swap the drives on your ide
chain and reboot.  Linux boots fine from the secondary
channel, if I recall correctly.  If you futz it up,
some flavour of rescue disk might be handy. ;)

If you're super brave, you could always poke around
in the lilo code until you find the undocumented feature
you're looking for. ;-X

Sam

On Sat, 4 May 2002, Russ Cox wrote:

> > 2.  I installed plan9 on the 2nd partition of my secondary master (/dev/hdc2
> > on linux). I made an 'other' entry in lilo.conf and run lilo. When I try to
> > boot to plan9, I get an error that the disk is not a bootable. So what could
> > be going wrong here?
>
> I suspect the problem is that Plan 9 doesn't know how to boot
> from anything but the primary master.  More precisely, I don't
> know how that would work and so I'm not surprised that it
> doesn't.
>
> It could be that we're not dealing with LILO properly
> at all, although I think some people have gotten it working.  I would
> try it myself on my laptop but I'm afraid to wipe my MBR,
> since I'm not 100% sure how to put the Windows 2000 one back.
>
> Anyone want to share LILO success stories?
>
> Russ
>

Re: [9fans] booting plan 9 from LILO (was matrox ...)

[Quinn Dunkan]

> Anyone want to share LILO success stories?

I boot plan9 from the secondary slave on my desktop, and from the primary
master's 4th partition on the laptop, both using lilo.  I didn't do anything
special, just plugged in a "let's see if this works" value and it did.  This
is R3, BTW.

lilo entry on desktop:

other = /dev/hdd1
    label = plan9
    table = /dev/hdd


You can also play games with map-drive, here's what I used to trick NT4 since
it only wants to boot off the primary master:

# other = /dev/hdd1
#     label = nt
#     map-drive = 0x83    # E:
#         to = 0x80       # to C:
#     map-drive = 0x80
#         to = 0x83


It seemed to work then.

You can see I replaced NT with a more interesting system :)

Re: [9fans] booting plan 9 from LILO (was matrox ...)

[Michael H.Collins]

If I can get it to boot on this laptop, I will use Grub for a boot
manager.  �t has a much greater potential for success than lilo does.
Like I said though I have not tried it yet.  Gonna start turning of
things in the bios to get it to boot later tonight.  <One of the
problems of trying experimental things on ones primary machine. hehehe>

Anyone else played with grub to boot P9?

On Sat, 4 May 2002 13:35:08 -0400
"Russ Cox" <rsc@plan9.bell-labs.com> spewed into the bitstream:

~> 2.  I installed plan9 on the 2nd partition of my secondary master
~(/dev/hdc2> on linux). I made an 'other' entry in lilo.conf and run
~lilo. When I try to > boot to plan9, I get an error that the disk is
~not a bootable. So what could > be going wrong here?
~

--

       .--.
      |o_o |     Michael H. Collins
      |:_/ |     Admiral, Penguinista Navy
     //   \ \    http://www.linuxlink.com
    (|     | )   http://kpig.com
   /'\_   _/`\   http://kuro5hin.org
   \___)=(___/

Re: [9fans] booting plan 9 from LILO (was matrox ...)

[Tomas]

On Sat, 4 May 2002 at 1:35pm, Russ Cox wrote:

> > 2.  I installed plan9 on the 2nd partition of my secondary
> > master (/dev/hdc2 on linux). I made an 'other' entry in
> > lilo.conf and run lilo. When I try to boot to plan9, I get an
> > error that the disk is not a bootable. So what could be going
> > wrong here?
>
> I suspect the problem is that Plan 9 doesn't know how to boot
> from anything but the primary master.  More precisely, I don't
> know how that would work and so I'm not surprised that it
> doesn't.
>
> It could be that we're not dealing with LILO properly at all,
> although I think some people have gotten it working.  I would
> try it myself on my laptop but I'm afraid to wipe my MBR, since
> I'm not 100% sure how to put the Windows 2000 one back.
>
> Anyone want to share LILO success stories?

Yes. I installed r3 a few weeks ago on my second primary
partition. Booting Plan 9 from lilo works without problems, with

other=/dev/hda2
        label=plan9
        table=/dev/hda

in /etc/lilo.conf

I did however run into troubles. Since it's a while ago, I can't
remember exactly how I did things, but I know I partitioned the
drive using Linux's cfdisk and marked the partition as being of
type Plan 9. Then I let the Plan 9 install procedure format the
partition, and all of a sudden there's something wrong with my
partitions. Linux's cfdisk now refuses to start up ("FATAL ERROR:
Bad primary partition 2: Partition ends after end-of-disk"), and
this is what Linux's fdisk tells me:

Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 4111 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *         1       255   2048256    b  Win95 FAT32
/dev/hda2           256       510   2048287+  39  Plan 9
/dev/hda3           511      4112  28931047    f  Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5           511      4111  28925001    b  Win95 FAT32

I'm blaming Plan 9, since there was no problem with the
partitions before installing Plan 9. I haven't tried to do
anything about it yet, though, since I want to backup my system
before changing anything in the partition table.

I have since installed r4 on another machine, so I'll probably
just wipe the Plan 9 partition and use it for storing mp3s or
something.

/Tomas