[9fans] booting plan9 cd on thinkpad x23

[9fans] booting plan9 cd on thinkpad x23

[Dennis D. Jensen]

Hello,

I wanted to try out plan9 on my newly bought thinkpad
x23. It is light and comes with absolutely no disk or
cd drives. I use an USB connected cdrom writer when I
want to boot something.

Apparantly the plan9.iso cannot recognize the storage
via USB. Does anybody know a remedy for this? I
currently still have a win2k on a reduced partion
(soon to be replaced), but I cannot immediately see
how that would help me booting plan9. 9load just stops
and asks "boot from:".

Note: I've mostly used Debian GNU/Linux in the past
(and Gentoo, Suse, Mandrake, FreeBSD), but finally
decided to try out plan9. I've used 9wm, rc, sam and
wily for over a year, grown to like it more than
anything else in GNU/Linux-land, and now wants to try
out the real thing. (-: I mainly stayed in the console
until I got 9wm.

I plan on installing a GNU/Linux anyway (probably
Gentoo) and get rid of win2k. I've gotten used to have
several distributions lying around... Would there be
any improvement on possibility of booting things from
GNU/Linux? Is there another iso-image or such thing I
could download to bootstrap plan9-installation?

In hope and best regards,
Dennis Decker Jensen


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Re: [9fans] booting plan9 cd on thinkpad x23

[Russ Cox]

> I wanted to try out plan9 on my newly bought thinkpad
> x23. It is light and comes with absolutely no disk or
> cd drives. I use an USB connected cdrom writer when I
> want to boot something.
>
> Apparantly the plan9.iso cannot recognize the storage
> via USB. Does anybody know a remedy for this? I

unfortunately, i don't think we can handle the usb cd drives.
if you have a usb floppy drive you could download a boot
disk and do a network install.  (we don't really handle the
usb floppy drives either but the bios tricks us enough that
it's okay.)

russ

Re: [9fans] booting plan9 cd on thinkpad x23

[John Stalker]

Don't get rid of Win2k just yet.  It may be helpful
in getting plan9 installed.  In particular there is
a DOS program ld which can load 9load from a FAT
partition.  You can use this as a replacement for the
boot floppy.  The plan9 installer can read the iso
image from a FAT partition as well, so you can
use that as a replacement for the install cd.
Maybe someone with more experience and a better
understanding of the installer can suggest a
plan9.ini to use.  I think it should be possible to
make this work even if you never get the cd drive
working.

> Hello,
>
> I wanted to try out plan9 on my newly bought thinkpad
> x23. It is light and comes with absolutely no disk or
> cd drives. I use an USB connected cdrom writer when I
> want to boot something.
>
> Apparantly the plan9.iso cannot recognize the storage
> via USB. Does anybody know a remedy for this? I
> currently still have a win2k on a reduced partion
> (soon to be replaced), but I cannot immediately see
> how that would help me booting plan9. 9load just stops
> and asks "boot from:".
>
> Note: I've mostly used Debian GNU/Linux in the past
> (and Gentoo, Suse, Mandrake, FreeBSD), but finally
> decided to try out plan9. I've used 9wm, rc, sam and
> wily for over a year, grown to like it more than
> anything else in GNU/Linux-land, and now wants to try
> out the real thing. (-: I mainly stayed in the console
> until I got 9wm.
>
> I plan on installing a GNU/Linux anyway (probably
> Gentoo) and get rid of win2k. I've gotten used to have
> several distributions lying around... Would there be
> any improvement on possibility of booting things from
> GNU/Linux? Is there another iso-image or such thing I
> could download to bootstrap plan9-installation?
>
> In hope and best regards,
> Dennis Decker Jensen
>
>
> __________________________________
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>

--
John Stalker
Department of Mathematics
Princeton University
(609)258-6469

Re: [9fans] booting plan9 cd on thinkpad x23

[Dennis D. Jensen]

--- John Stalker <stalker@Math.Princeton.EDU> wrote:
> Don't get rid of Win2k just yet.  It may be helpful
> in getting plan9 installed.  In particular there is
> a DOS program ld which can load 9load from a FAT
> partition.  You can use this as a replacement for
> the
> boot floppy.  The plan9 installer can read the iso
> image from a FAT partition as well, so you can
> use that as a replacement for the install cd.

I read about ld somewhere, it must have been the
plan9-wiki. I'll go there again.

ld -> 9load -> kernel on iso-image on fatfs ->
install?
Hmmm. That certainly sounds like an option if ld and
9load are up to it!

Thank you,
Dennis Decker Jensen


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Re: [9fans] booting plan9 cd on thinkpad x23

[John Stalker]

> I read about ld somewhere, it must have been the
> plan9-wiki. I'll go there again.
>
> ld -> 9load -> kernel on iso-image on fatfs ->
> install?
> Hmmm. That certainly sounds like an option if ld and
> 9load are up to it!
>
> Thank you,
> Dennis Decker Jensen
>

It is, unfortunately, a bit more complicated than that.  ld can
load 9load and 9load can load a kernel, but not one on an iso
image as far as I know.  You need a kernel on your dos partition.
This is not a big problem, just copy 9pcdisk from the install
CD, which should be readable under Win2k, to C:.  You will need a
plan9.ini which tells 9load where to find this kernel, but that
is not a big problem.  It's after your kernel loads that the problems
begin, since you don't have a plan9 userland.  Normally the kernel
would run an rc script named termrc, roughly analogous to an init
script, but you don't have either the shell or the shell script
until you've unpacked your iso image.  You will need to create
enough of a plan9 userland under Win2k to get things rolling.
This should be possible, but it may take a few tries to get it
right.  I can try doing this on one of my machines to see where
the pitfalls are, but I might not have time for a day or two.

--
John Stalker
Department of Mathematics
Princeton University
(609)258-6469

Re: [9fans] booting plan9 cd on thinkpad x23

[Dennis D. Jensen]

--- John Stalker <stalker@Math.Princeton.EDU> wrote:
> You will need
> to create
> enough of a plan9 userland under Win2k to get things
> rolling.

What if I made a partition (fat16) with a copy of the
plan9 cd, specificly for the purpose of installing
plan9, and after installation removed that partition
again? That should ensure a proper the userland. I can
use a GNU/Linux live cd to do the partitioning job.

> I can try doing this on one of my machines
> to see where
> the pitfalls are, but I might not have time for a
> day or two.

I don't have much time either, at least until the
weekend, so there is no need to rush things.

Thank you,
Dennis Decker Jensen


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Re: [9fans] booting plan9 cd on thinkpad x23

[Dennis D. Jensen]

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--- John Stalker <stalker@Math.Princeton.EDU> wrote:
> You will need a
> plan9.ini which tells 9load where to find this
> kernel, but that
> is not a big problem.  It's after your kernel loads
> that the problems
> begin, since you don't have a plan9 userland.

Right.

I copied plan9-cd directly to win2k and before that to
its own partition. It turns out that win2k resides on
a fat32lba-disk, which is recognized by 9load, so I
didn't really need a particular dos-partition.

LD.COM doesn't work. I have tried many differenct
options, but it just doesn't start. I've tried booting
in dos-mode (failsafe).

When I boot from the plan9-cd it fails to find
9pcdisk, but I can tell where it resides on�the win2k,
but then it cannot find root of a kfs ("Root from:"
with default local!#S/sdC0/fs) and it cannot recognize
anything anymore, certainly not the graphic card
anyway. As you said: I cannot get past the kernel.

I've been experimenting, booting and rebooting all
afternoon and some of the night and am a little tired
now. I'll let things rest for a while unless somebody
has an idea how to continue.

> You will need
> to create
> enough of a plan9 userland under Win2k to get things
> rolling.
> This should be possible, but it may take a few tries
> to get it
> right.

The kernel seems to insist on loading a kfs-system
which I do not have yet: all things are on a
fat-partition. It looks like the classic problem of
the chicken and the egg: I cannot make any kfs before
booting plan9 which cannot boot before I have any
kfs... I don't know how to tell it where kfs (root)
is: It won't accept any of the variants of "local!..."
I've tried.

The kernel did recognize my NIC (e100/eepro100), the
cardbus and my usb! I've been reading up on the
manual-pages 9load(8) and plan9.ini(8), but I don't
know what to try next...

Thank you,
Dennis Decker Jensen


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Re: [9fans] booting plan9 cd on thinkpad x23

[John Stalker]

> Right.
>
> I copied plan9-cd directly to win2k and before that to
> its own partition. It turns out that win2k resides on
> a fat32lba-disk, which is recognized by 9load, so I
> didn't really need a particular dos-partition.
>
> LD.COM doesn't work. I have tried many differenct
> options, but it just doesn't start. I've tried booting
> in dos-mode (failsafe).

I've never tried to use it, but I'll try it out
on my laptop.  Win2k's DOS emulation is kind of
flaky.  FreeDOS may work better.  I hope to avoid
going that route if possible, though.

>
> The kernel did recognize my NIC (e100/eepro100), the
> cardbus and my usb! I've been reading up on the
> manual-pages 9load(8) and plan9.ini(8), but I don't
> know what to try next...
>
> Thank you,
> Dennis Decker Jensen
>

I will see if I can get this to work on my desktop.  I have
the advantage that I have a working plan9 installation on
my laptop which I can compare things to.

--
John Stalker
Department of Mathematics
Princeton University
(609)258-6469

Re: [9fans] booting plan9 cd on thinkpad x23

[Russ Cox]

> > I copied plan9-cd directly to win2k and before that to
> > its own partition. It turns out that win2k resides on
> > a fat32lba-disk, which is recognized by 9load, so I
> > didn't really need a particular dos-partition.

I may have a different way to make this work,
but I'm still in the middle of preparing it.

Re: [9fans] booting plan9 cd on thinkpad x23

[boyd, rounin]

> LD.COM doesn't work. I have tried many differenct
> options, but it just doesn't start. I've tried booting
> in dos-mode (failsafe).

strange. w2k install just worked (modulo vga woe).

this data is old but might help:

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

Re: [9fans] booting plan9 cd on thinkpad x23

[Dennis D. Jensen]

--- "boyd, rounin" <boyd@insultant.net> wrote:
> > LD.COM doesn't work. I have tried many differenct
> > options, but it just doesn't start. I've tried
> booting
> > in dos-mode (failsafe).
>
> strange. w2k install just worked (modulo vga woe).
>
> this data is old but might help:
>
>    http://www.insultant.net/repo/plan9/usbflop.html

The comment at the bottom provided a good hint.

Details, details. The following is from confused and a
little mixed up memory.

I downloaded plan9.iso.bz2, burned it to cd-rom,
copied all of the content of the cd-rom to a directory
named plan9 on my win2k-partition, which has a
fat32lba filesystem.

In c:\plan9\386\ there is a ld.com and 9pcdisk.gz,
etc. "ld", "ld sdC0!dos!plan9/386/9pcdisk.gz" "ld
sdC0!dos!plan9" or something like it from failsafe dos
mode all have the same result: Nothing. I just get
another prompt after a blank line.

Then I boot the plan9-cd from the usb cd drive. It
recognizes my win2k-partition, and errors when trying
to walk to 9pcdisk.gz via "sdC0!dos!plan9/plan9.ini",
i.e. c:\plan9\plan9.ini. That plan9.ini currently
contains this line: "bootfile=sdC0!dos!9pcdisk.gz". I
have another ini-file: c:\plan9.ini, which contains an
experiment to load a floppy-image, but 9load claims
that the floppy-image is incorrect. It contains this:

adisk=#S/sdC0/dos
bootfile=sdC0!dos!9disk.flp

At the "Boot from:" I tell it
"sdC0!dos!plan9/386/9load", but that signals an error
that 9load is an incorrect kernel. Well, of course, it
is not a kernel... I then tried the kernel
"sdC0!dos!plan9/386/9pcdisk.gz" which is the only
thing that has worked so far.

It then goes on to "Root from:". Experimenting and
using the above hint I now reply "local!#S/sdC0/dos",
continue as user "none" and it actually tries to start
kfs, but complains and eventually fails on the ground
that 9P cannot be initialized. Before failing
completely (9P) it asks a question about "reme?" or
something like that about kfs, which I cannot remember
right now. If I don't answer anything, the kernel
panics after a few seconds: The panic message says
something with illegal access -- that something is
tinkering with the kernel...

I probably forgot some important details. It's just to
let everyone know what I tried.

I still think it should be possible to tell 9pcdisk,
the kernel, where to find userland, i.e. c:\plan9\ and
c:\plan9\386\.

BTW: The plan9.iso.bz2 is the stable one, if it should
matter. The wiki talks about some more current,
bleeding snapshots I've not seen mentioned anywhere
else.

Best regards,
Dennis Decker Jensen


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Re: [9fans] booting plan9 cd on thinkpad x23

[John Stalker]

> It then goes on to "Root from:". Experimenting and
> using the above hint I now reply "local!#S/sdC0/dos",
> continue as user "none" and it actually tries to start
> kfs, but complains and eventually fails on the ground
> that 9P cannot be initialized. Before failing
> completely (9P) it asks a question about "reme?" or
> something like that about kfs, which I cannot remember
> right now. If I don't answer anything, the kernel
> panics after a few seconds: The panic message says
> something with illegal access -- that something is
> tinkering with the kernel...

Ream.  It thinks you have a corrupted kfs file system.  In
fact you have no kfs file system.  It's probably a good thing
the kernel panics at this point as trying to repair or reformat
that nonexistent filesytem might do nasty things to the other
operating system(s) on your hard disk.
--
John Stalker
Department of Mathematics
Princeton University
(609)258-6469

Re: [9fans] booting plan9 cd on thinkpad x23

[John Stalker]

> I still think it should be possible to tell 9pcdisk,
> the kernel, where to find userland, i.e. c:\plan9\ and
> c:\plan9\386\.

I played around a bit over the weekend.  Not much progress
to report.  I think 9pcflop may be a better starting point
than 9pcdisk.  When the install floppy boots after loading
the kernel it claims to start kfs.  There is no kfs partition
on the boot floppy, however.  It must be starting one in RAM,
using something precompiled into the kernel as a starting
point.  This is essentially what you want to do.  I wish I
understood a bit better how the boot floppies are generated.
--
John Stalker
Department of Mathematics
Princeton University
(609)258-6469

Re: [9fans] booting plan9 cd on thinkpad x23

[Dennis D. Jensen]

--- John Stalker <stalker@Math.Princeton.EDU> wrote:
> I think 9pcflop may be a better starting
> point
> than 9pcdisk.  When the install floppy boots after
> loading
> the kernel it claims to start kfs.  There is no kfs
> partition
> on the boot floppy, however.  It must be starting
> one in RAM,

Thanks for trying out!

I guess it means burning a cd with a floppy-image in
order to boot, but where do you have your
plan9-userland when booting the floppy? On cd?
Obviously that is not an option in my case, since my
cd drive will be working as an overkill floppy... :-)

When I boot from cd instead of floppy, I hope it will
be able to recognize my plan9 directory on the
harddisk drive (the fat32lba partition, c:\plan9).

Best regards,
Dennis Decker Jensen




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