[9fans] Installing plan9

[9fans] Installing plan9

[antiallergic]

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=====
Uzair Hashmi

Senior Software Engineer
Uffaq Technologies
http://www.uffaq.com
uzair@uffaq.com

Phone: +92 21 5899677
Fax:   +92 21 5899676

75-C National Highway,
D.H.A. Phase II Extension,
Karachi 75500, Pakistan.

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Hello,

I have been trying to install plan9 for quite a long but never experienced a single boot ! (for installation)

Tried making a boot floppy (with plan9.ini) and also burning the ISO of 4th Edition. The ISO boots with my IBM ThinkPad T30 but wont go for its VGA. Whereas I have purchased a PC according to compatiability list, unfortunately it wont boot from the plan9 CD not from the floppy (it does support boot from CDROM, I have installed NetBSD on the same system), What I got from the boot on that PC is as follows ...

PBS...Palan 9 from Bell Labs
ELCR:0E20
apm ax=f000 cx=f000 dx=40 di=100 ebx=ef50 esi=ffff
dev A0 port 1F0 config 0C5A capiabilitie 2F00 mwdma 0007 udma 043F
pcirouting: South bridge 1022, 740B not found
Boot Devices: fd0 sdD0!dos
boot from: _

I think I am stuck here, I have read troubleshooting documents but what I can do at this "boot from" prompt ?

Please guide me in this, looking forward for a positive reply.

Regards,
Uzair


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Re: [9fans] Installing plan9

[Alberto Cortés]

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Some time ago, antiallergic said:

> PBS...Palan 9 from Bell Labs
> ELCR:0E20
> apm ax=f000 cx=f000 dx=40 di=100 ebx=ef50 esi=ffff
> dev A0 port 1F0 config 0C5A capiabilitie 2F00 mwdma 0007 udma 043F
> pcirouting: South bridge 1022, 740B not found
> Boot Devices: fd0 sdD0!dos
> boot from: _
> 
> I think I am stuck here, I have read troubleshooting documents but
> what I can do at this "boot from" prompt ?

Is your CDrom master of the secondary IDE controler?

if not, you can try:

sdC0!dos!9pcflop.gz
sdC1!dos!9pcflop.gz
sdD1!dos!9pcflop.gz

well, just the one that fits your hardware configuration :)

-- 
url: http://163.117.15.158/~acortes/index.html

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Re: [9fans] Installing plan9

[Brad Davis]

> Hello,
>
> I have been trying to install plan9 for quite a long
> but never experienced a single boot ! (for
> installation)
>
> Tried making a boot floppy (with plan9.ini) and also
> burning the ISO of 4th Edition. The ISO boots with my
> IBM ThinkPad T30 but wont go for its VGA. Whereas I
> have purchased a PC according to compatiability list,
> unfortunately it wont boot from the plan9 CD not from
> the floppy (it does support boot from CDROM, I have
> installed NetBSD on the same system), What I got from
> the boot on that PC is as follows ...
>
> PBS...Palan 9 from Bell Labs
> ELCR:0E20
> apm ax=f000 cx=f000 dx=40 di=100 ebx=ef50 esi=ffff
> dev A0 port 1F0 config 0C5A capiabilitie 2F00 mwdma
> 0007 udma 043F
> pcirouting: South bridge 1022, 740B not found
> Boot Devices: fd0 sdD0!dos
> boot from: _
>
> I think I am stuck here, I have read troubleshooting
> documents but what I can do at this "boot from" prompt
> ?
>
> Please guide me in this, looking forward for a
> positive reply.

I have one system that behaves exactly the same way. However,
it installs fine booting from a floppy.

At the bottom of the "Step 2" download page, click the
"make diskette image" button,  then download the floppy image
listed in "Step 3".

--
Brad

[9fans] Installing plan9

[antiallergic]

Hello,

I have been trying to install plan9 for quite a long
but never experienced a single boot ! (for
installation)

Tried making a boot floppy (with plan9.ini) and also
burning the ISO of 4th Edition. The ISO boots with my
IBM ThinkPad T30 but wont go for its VGA. Whereas I
have purchased a PC according to compatiability list,
unfortunately it wont boot from the plan9 CD not from
the floppy (it does support boot from CDROM, I have
installed NetBSD on the same system), What I got from
the boot on that PC is as follows ...

PBS...Palan 9 from Bell Labs
ELCR:0E20
apm ax=f000 cx=f000 dx=40 di=100 ebx=ef50 esi=ffff
dev A0 port 1F0 config 0C5A capiabilitie 2F00 mwdma
0007 udma 043F
pcirouting: South bridge 1022, 740B not found
Boot Devices: fd0 sdD0!dos
boot from: _

I think I am stuck here, I have read troubleshooting
documents but what I can do at this "boot from" prompt
?

Please guide me in this, looking forward for a
positive reply.

Regards,
Uzair


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Re: [9fans] Installing plan9

[andrey mirtchovski]

> Hello,
>
> I have been trying to install plan9 for quite a long
> but never experienced a single boot ! (for
> installation)
>

sdD0!dos!9pcflop.gz should do it.  check the groups.google.com
archives on comp.os.plan9...

Re: [9fans] Installing plan9

[Jim Choate]

Uzair,

Since you sent this both private and to the list I'll respond here.
Perhaps it will save some poor soul from having a nervous breakdown or
giving up.

On Fri, 6 Feb 2004, antiallergic wrote:

> I have been trying to install plan9 for quite a long
> but never experienced a single boot ! (for
> installation)

Just to give you a benchmark, I spent over a year looking for hardware
that would work with Plan 9.

I can say that the Dell OptiPlex GX1's seem to work out of the box and
surplus you can pick them up for about $50-150 US. It's the only 'out of
box' system that I've tried that worked without a problem across many
examples of the same 'model' of the computer.

Plan 9  is -very- sensitive to hardware and BIOS changes. I've got a pile
of S3 cards for example that should work but not a one of them will
because of either the onboard ROM or some other deeper hardware
incompatibility. I have a couple of others that do work and they have
different ROM's between them. There does not seem to be any rhyme or
reason to it that I can tell and I've probably looked at 200+ systems over
the last 4 years.

It seems to be very hit or miss. Hang in there, it will work out.

> Tried making a boot floppy (with plan9.ini) and also
> burning the ISO of 4th Edition. The ISO boots with my
> IBM ThinkPad T30 but wont go for its VGA.

My experience is that none of the T30's will work with P9. I had one when
I was working at IBM year before last and spent some time playing around
with it but even being internal it was hard to get info on the video
graphics.

The network card is the other hardware that will drive you absolutely
around the bend. For example, I have an original Novel ethernet board that
is supposedly compliant, ain't so.

I can say the easiest test of compatibility with regard to the video is to
stick the floppy in and if you don't get the install screen then move on
to another video board. I've talked several of the local used dealers to
let me drop by once in a while and test their laptops and such. The
results are -very- disappointing.

> Whereas I have purchased a PC according to compatiability list,

The hardware compatibility list is -worthless- as anything other than a
starting place. I've tried examples of every piece of hardware on there
and had them fail.

Don't trust it! As part of H18 I'm working on a better way to
differentiate hardware and hopefully make this tedious and very annoying
step go away. Unfortunately none of them will help you now ;(

> unfortunately it wont boot from the plan9 CD not from
> the floppy (it does support boot from CDROM, I have
> installed NetBSD on the same system), What I got from
> the boot on that PC is as follows ...
>
> PBS...Palan 9 from Bell Labs
> ELCR:0E20
> apm ax=f000 cx=f000 dx=40 di=100 ebx=ef50 esi=ffff
> dev A0 port 1F0 config 0C5A capiabilitie 2F00 mwdma
> 0007 udma 043F
> pcirouting: South bridge 1022, 740B not found
> Boot Devices: fd0 sdD0!dos
> boot from: _

Looks like a problem with the PCI buss chipset at first blush. I'd pass on
this hardware as well. But you can put in the two devices it shows on the
next to last line; fd0 or sdD0!dos. If you've tried both of these and they
don't work then it's not worth pursuing further unless you just want to.
I'd move on to some other hardware at this point.

> I think I am stuck here, I have read troubleshooting
> documents but what I can do at this "boot from" prompt?

If you're speaking of the dox on the P9 homepage, they are at least two
years out of date and full of errors. The dox that come with the doxed set
are even worse.

> Please guide me in this, looking forward for a
> positive reply.

Hang in there and try another box, and be prepared to try several more
combinations if you can. I would -strongly- suggest getting in contact
with a few local used computer dealers if you can. I've found them to be
quite receptive to my similar dilema and will generaly let me play around
with their products until I get something that works.

You can try your local user group but be prepared for a generaly negative
response.

 -- --

Open Forge, LLC  24/365 Onsite Support for PCs, Networks, & Game Consoles
512-695-4126 (Austin, Tx.)  help@open-forge.com  irc.open-forge.com

Hangar 18  Open Source Distributed Computing Using Plan 9 & Linux
512-451-7087  http://open-forge.org/hangar18  irc.open-forge.org

James Choate  512-451-7087  ravage@ssz.com  jchoate@open-forge.com

Re: [9fans] Installing plan9

[michael h. collins]

hp vectras seem to work out of the box with a compat vid card.

Jim Choate wrote:

>Uzair,
>
>Since you sent this both private and to the list I'll respond here.
>Perhaps it will save some poor soul from having a nervous breakdown or
>giving up.
>
>On Fri, 6 Feb 2004, antiallergic wrote:
>
>

Re: [9fans] Installing plan9

[Jim Choate]

On Fri, 6 Feb 2004, michael h. collins wrote:

> hp vectras seem to work out of the box with a compat vid card.

How many have you tried? How many different runs. If it's only one or two
boxes this is not sufficient. I've tested over a dozen of the Dell
OptiPlex GX1's and not a single one has failed, some of them were built
nearly a year apart.

Though this is a good place to start to build another possible compatible
box to look for. I'd want to see at least two runs of machines and the
video cards and network support should also be at least two revs. This
implies you'd probably want to test 6-8 boxes to be reasonably sure of
listing them as 'compatible'.

I'll add it to my list of boxes to look for.

 -- --

Open Forge, LLC  24/365 Onsite Support for PCs, Networks, & Game Consoles
512-695-4126 (Austin, Tx.)  help@open-forge.com  irc.open-forge.com

Hangar 18  Open Source Distributed Computing Using Plan 9 & Linux
512-451-7087  http://open-forge.org/hangar18  irc.open-forge.org

James Choate  512-451-7087  ravage@ssz.com  jchoate@open-forge.com

Re: [9fans] Installing plan9

[michael h. collins]

We bought 10 one year and ten another year plus i have had some given to
me.  All seem to be good to go.'

And they all were different runs according to the serial numbers.  I
imagine they were all scrapped when the .bombs fell out.

Jim Choate wrote:

>On Fri, 6 Feb 2004, michael h. collins wrote:
>
>
>
>>hp vectras seem to work out of the box with a compat vid card.
>>
>>
>
>How many have you tried? How many different runs. If it's only one or two
>boxes this is not sufficient. I've tested over a dozen of the Dell
>OptiPlex GX1's and not a single one has failed, some of them were built
>nearly a year apart.
>

Re: [9fans] installing plan9

[Russ Cox]

Yes, add "eia1=disabled" to plan9.ini, and then the serial driver
won't grab IRQ3 for its own uses.

Russ

Re: [9fans] installing plan9

[Andries Brouwer]

I wrote:

>> the plan9 boot messages show that plan9 gets the ne2000 irq wrong
>> and assumes irq 9 instead of 3. After adding "irq=3" in plan9.ini I get
>>
>> i8259enable: irq 3 shared but not level
>> intrenable: couldn't enable irq 3, tbdf 0xffffffff for ether0

rsc@plan9.bell-labs.com (Russ Cox) answers:

> Add "eia1=disabled" to plan9.ini, and then the serial driver
> won't grab IRQ3 for its own uses.

Thanks! This works.


Second question.
Before getting this answer, I had installed plan 9 by first installing
a small Linux system, getting the plan 9 distribution to a local disk,
and installing from there. Afterwards, floppy boot worked, but LILO
boot failed.

Given this answer, I discarded the 60MB partition with the distribution
(plan9.9gz) and reinstalled via ethernet. This time both floppy boot
and LILO boot worked. Interesting.

Why did booting via LILO fail the first time? The error message was

	Bad format or I/O error
	Press almost any key to reboot...

given by the plan 9 boot sector.
I see 3 differences between the first and the second time:
 (i) during 2nd installation I had asked for a plan9 boot
(apparently all this does is make the partition active;
it gave an error message that the action was useless because
the installation was on the second, not the first IDE disk)
 (ii) the second time the installation was on the first partition,
the first time on the second one (both primary)
 (iii) the first time there was already a nonempty partition on
the disk; the second time plan 9 fdisk was the only one to write
something in the partition table. Linux assigns this disk a geometry
CHS=1057/16/63. Plan 9 wrote a table as if the geometry was 528/16/63.
A bug in plan9 fdisk? Could this influence booting?


So far about the question why booting via LILO failed the first time.
(This installation is not yet usable - in particular the video mode
does not really allow one to do anything useful - so I cannot yet
read the sources.)

Andries

[9fans] installing plan9

[Andries Brouwer]

A moment ago I attempted to install Plan 9 on some machine.
It has a NE2000 card.
At the downloading stage, nothing happens, except that it
emits an arp for itself.

Looking at the errata I find "nodummyrr" suggested, but that
makes no difference.

Watching the boot messages more closely, I see that plan9 gets the irq wrong
and assumes irq 9 instead of 3. After adding "irq=3" in plan9.ini I get

  i8259enable: irq 3 shared but not level
  intrenable: couldn't enable irq 3, tbdf 0xffffffff for ether0

Looking in dejanews whether somebody has told how to circumvent
this problem, I only find the same question by Doug Gwyn:

: Unfortunately I'm getting a similar conflict with IRQ 3, which
: in my system is assigned for exclusive use of the 3C509B.
: I assume this is because the installation/resulting Plan 9 systems
: are assuming the existence of 2 serial ports; how do I disable the
: second one (in PLAN9.INI presumably)?

But no answer to this question was given.

Is it possible to install Plan 9 on such a system (using ether0)?

[9fans] Installing plan9

[jim]

	>I think you are looking at a not-yet-released version of the driver.

probably. i have a 6.3GB ata drive on order with the intention of setting up
a plan9 system to be better able to fix rpblems like this and get updates out.

--jim

[9fans] Installing plan9

[miller]

> that print will only come from the driver if debugging is on (is it?).

I think you are looking at a not-yet-released version of the driver.
In the most recent update of devata.c on plan9.bell-labs.com, the
Creqsense message is printed even when debugging is off, and is followed
by an error(Eio).

But you are right that the real problem is probably the 2GB disk
limitation in devata.c.  I think b.com is actually all right up to 4GB.

-- Richard

[9fans] Installing plan9

[jim]

that print will only come from the driver if debugging is on (is it?).
since the request-sense is only used to clear any lingering state, it's probably
ok to just delete the test completely, any real error will cause the error-stack
to be called.
if debugging isn't on then the print comes from the similar test on the capacity
command which would be more serious as more bytes were returned than asked for.
if debugging is on i'd expect a lot more diagnostic output.

back to the original problem. have you ever had plan9 running on this machine?
in mail you said the disk is 3GB. check the 'start' argument to ataxfer is a ulong.
b.com has a similar problem.

--jim

------ forwarded message follows ------

>From cse.psu.edu!owner-9fans Thu May  7 05:48:52 EDT 1998
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From: hamnavoe.demon.co.uk!miller
Message-Id: <199805070947.FAA11265@cse.psu.edu>
To: cse.psu.edu!9fans
Date: Thu, 7 May 1998 10:43:04 BST
Subject: Re: [9fans] Installing plan9
Sender: cse.psu.edu!owner-9fans
Reply-To: cse.psu.edu!9fans
Precedence: bulk

The message

> cmd=00, lastcmd=A0 cdsize count 14, status 0x50, error 0x00

probably means that an ATAPI cd-rom is returning 14 bytes of data
instead of 18 to a Creqsense command.  That's what my Mitsumi FX400
does.  You can make the message go away by changing
	if(cp->count != 18){         /* ?Mitsumi? */
to
	if(cp->count != 18 && cp->count != 14){
in devata.c (it doesn't seem to do any harm).

-- Richard Miller

[9fans] Installing plan9

[miller]

The message

> cmd=00, lastcmd=A0 cdsize count 14, status 0x50, error 0x00

probably means that an ATAPI cd-rom is returning 14 bytes of data
instead of 18 to a Creqsense command.  That's what my Mitsumi FX400
does.  You can make the message go away by changing
	if(cp->count != 18){         /* ?Mitsumi? */
to
	if(cp->count != 18 && cp->count != 14){
in devata.c (it doesn't seem to do any harm).

-- Richard Miller

[9fans] Installing plan9

[Franklin]

We have successfully retrieved, unpacked and compiled the file
9/pc/824494421.rc ( 16-Feb-96 update) which has the devata.c driver. We
copied the files to the proper source directory (/sys/src/9/pc)  and typed
mk installall generating the 9dos, 9pc, 9pcdisk kernels. Then we copied
9pcdisk to DOS (c:/plan9/) and fetched 9pcdisk and tried it via Plan9.ini
(bootfile=hd!0!/plan9/9pcdisk), but here's what happens:

CPU is a 200MHz Pentium735 (cpuid: ax52cdx1bf)
scsibuf: 0x2bbb84
scsibuf: 0x2dbb94
scsibuf: 0x2fbba4
scsibuf: 0x31bbb4

root is from (local, 9660, 19200, il)[local!#H/hd0disk]: local!#H/hd0fs

user: franklin
password:

cmd=00, lastcmd=A0 cdsize count 14, status 0x50, error 0x00
cmd=00, lastcmd=A0 cdsize count 14, status 0x50, error 0x00

boot: can't connect to file server: file does not exist
panic: boot process died: unknown

What did we miss? Any suggestions?

Franklin.

[9fans] Installing plan9

[Franklin]

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ed@washoe.cs.unr.edu wrote:

> Kevin:
>
> I use an NE200 clone with no problems.  Delete the
>
>         ip/arpd -b bcast-addr
>
> line as arpd is started by ip/ipconfig unless told not to.
> My system hangs if I try to start a second arpd this way also.
>
> The #Q device has to be compiled into the kernel as the distribution
> does not have it.  You need the source for this and the instructions
> are:
>
> addd the line;
>         icmp    Q



> ***********************************************************
> to the pcdisk file (or whatever configuration you are building)
> in /sys/src/9/pc, type mk.  Copy the new kernel to the
> boot partition and then:
> ************************************************************



> add to /lib/namespace:
>         bind -a #Q /net
>
> add to /rc/bin/termrc:
>         bind -a '#Q' /dev
>         aux/icmp
>         echo -n 'add tcp il udp icmp' >/net/cs
>
> Others have addressed the ATAPI issue.  I use SCSI cdroms.
>
> ed wishart



     Ed what´s does mean the line above: Copy the new kernel to the boot
partition... ?

    Thanks.

Franklin.

[9fans] Installing plan9

[Kevin]

Thanks, Ed, as soon as I get the CDROM installed I'll try this. 

Kevin

At , you wrote:
>Kevin:
>
>I use an NE200 clone with no problems.  Delete the
>
>        ip/arpd -b bcast-addr
>
>line as arpd is started by ip/ipconfig unless told not to.  
>My system hangs if I try to start a second arpd this way also.
>
>The #Q device has to be compiled into the kernel as the distribution
>does not have it.  You need the source for this and the instructions
>are:
>
>addd the line;
>	icmp	Q
>
>to the pcdisk file (or whatever configuration you are building)
>in /sys/src/9/pc, type mk.  Copy the new kernel to the
>boot partition and then:
>
>add to /lib/namespace:
>        bind -a #Q /net 
>
>add to /rc/bin/termrc:
>        bind -a '#Q' /dev
>        aux/icmp
>        echo -n 'add tcp il udp icmp' >/net/cs
>
>Others have addressed the ATAPI issue.  I use SCSI cdroms.
>
>ed wishart
>
>
>

---
Kevin McQuiggin VE7ZD
mcquiggi@sfu.ca