[9fans] FYI: plan9 on qemu on freebsd

[Bakul Shah <bakul+plan9@BitBlocks.com>]

Installing plan9 under qemu takes a long time (3+ hours) but
once installed, it works well.  Its performance is good
enough for real work if the kqemu kernel module is used.

I did notice a few strange things.

- some basic timing seems to be messed up.  sleep <n>
  blocks for roughly <n>/10 of real time (but not always --
  `time sleep <n>' is more like <n>/7).

- date seems to flip between current time and jan 2 2000
  without any discernible pattern.

- occasionally the display goes blank and you have to click
  somewhere in the plan9 screen to refresh it.

Other oses under qemu do not have these problems.

More on installation:

To speed up the installation I have tried various tricks
(including installing on a memory disk) but nothing made any
real difference.

I just tried this again:

	qemu-img create plan9.disk 4G
	qemu -cdrom plan9.iso -boot d plan9.disk

This time I chose fossil+venti.  Clearing a 3GB venti arena
happens very fast, at a rate of 10+ MBps, but the copydist
step took 3:24 hours on a 2.4GHz celeron!  I do not see such
speed problems with other OSes under qemu.