[9fans] Booting install without floppy?

[9fans] Booting install without floppy?

[David S. Geirsson]

Hi. Sorry, I'm not on the list, so if anyone can help me, it would be
great if they could CC me on the reply.

I have never used plan 9 before, but I have read a bit, and alot of
it's design decisions appeal to me. I'm trying to install it on my
laptop (a Mitac 6120N). The problem is that the floppy drive stopped
working a long time ago, so I can't boot from floppy. Now, I burned a
plan 9 CD a while ago (from the plan9.iso.bz2 archive). I can boot up
from that. But, it can't find sdD0!cdboot, so it 9load can't find the
kernel or anything. I did some silly trick of copying the files from
bootdisk.img from the cd onto a new DOS partition, booting from CD and
telling it to load sdC0!dos!9pcflop.gz. That worked (couldn't find
plan9.ini though, so it asked me for mouse/vga/etc parameters.
However, my problem seems to be that the graphics card in my laptop is
not in the vgadb. It has an ati mach64-based card ("ATI Technologies Inc
3D Rage LT Pro AGP-133"). I just checked, and I found an identification
string in the aux/vga output:

At 0xC00EB: MACH64LBPCIMTSGU

This string I saw in the vgadb, but at a slightly different memory
location if I remember correctly.

I'm wondering what's a decent way of booting without using floppies or
CDs, where I can edit the vgadb before, and start the install procedure?

Thanks.

--
David S. Geirsson
david@loesje.nl
+31 642561928 (0642561928)

Re: [9fans] Booting install without floppy?

[Russ Cox]

> Hi. Sorry, I'm not on the list, so if anyone can help me, it would be
> great if they could CC me on the reply.
>
> I have never used plan 9 before, but I have read a bit, and alot of
> it's design decisions appeal to me. I'm trying to install it on my
> laptop (a Mitac 6120N). The problem is that the floppy drive stopped
> working a long time ago, so I can't boot from floppy. Now, I burned a
> plan 9 CD a while ago (from the plan9.iso.bz2 archive). I can boot up
> from that. But, it can't find sdD0!cdboot, so it 9load can't find the
> kernel or anything. I did some silly trick of copying the files from
> bootdisk.img from the cd onto a new DOS partition, booting from CD and
> telling it to load sdC0!dos!9pcflop.gz. That worked (couldn't find
> plan9.ini though, so it asked me for mouse/vga/etc parameters.

Maybe it did find plan9.ini -- the bootdisk.img on the CD is set up
to prompt you for those parameters.

> However, my problem seems to be that the graphics card in my laptop is
> not in the vgadb. It has an ati mach64-based card ("ATI Technologies Inc
> 3D Rage LT Pro AGP-133"). I just checked, and I found an identification
> string in the aux/vga output:
>
> At 0xC00EB: MACH64LBPCIMTSGU
>
> This string I saw in the vgadb, but at a slightly different memory
> location if I remember correctly.
>
> I'm wondering what's a decent way of booting without using floppies or
> CDs, where I can edit the vgadb before, and start the install procedure?

Assuming it did find plan9.ini, add a line

	bootfile=sdC0!dos!9pcflop.gz

into the plan9.ini.  Then it will figure out that
the boot floppy is on sdC0!dos, and will use the
vgadb there, if found.

Russ

Re: [9fans] Booting install without floppy?

[mirtchov]

> Hi. Sorry, I'm not on the list, so if anyone can help me, it would be
> great if they could CC me on the reply. [snip]

The easiest will be to send the vgadb info for your particular card to
9trouble (you can get the email address off the Plan 9 download page).
Once they've put it in /lib/vgadb the cd image will be regenerated
with the new data and you'll be able to download and use it the next
day.

As for an easy way to boot Plan 9 without disks and floppies, I
personally prefer booting a terminal off a main Plan 9 server, but if
you lack the hardware for a full-blown installation just download
VMWare and use that...

cheers, andrey

Re: [9fans] Booting install without floppy?

[boyd, rounin]

> Hi. Sorry, I'm not on the list, so if anyone can help me, it would be
> great if they could CC me on the reply.

this might help:

    http://www.insultant.net/repo/plan9/usbflop.html