From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Date: Tue,  3 Jul 2007 17:06:21 +0200
From: Michal Hajek <hajek1@karlov.mff.cuni.cz>
To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Subject: Re: [9fans] IBM X40 installation
Message-ID: <20070703150621.GL3938@wasi.karlov.mff.cuni.cz>
References: <20070702151406.GE3938@wasi.karlov.mff.cuni.cz>
	<997216119e97d922aaf406f643e9bd6c@coraid.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
In-Reply-To: <997216119e97d922aaf406f643e9bd6c@coraid.com>
User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.13 (2006-08-11)
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 8fb372c4-ead2-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025


* erik quanstrom (quanstro@coraid.com) [070702 17:21]:
> why not make your linux swap partition temporarly into a dos partition.
> then install plan 9 where you had the dos partition.  then teach grub
> to boot plan 9 and you can have your linux swap back.

just tried it and this scenario doesn't work either. 

Originaly I made partitions like this:

primary 1: dos containing files form plan 9 install floppy
FREE SPACE
primary 3: small linux (/boot)
primary 4: big linux (/)

Boot from usb-cdrom, supplied it with sdC0!dos!9pcflop.gz 
and began installation. 

Critical is the [partdisk] stage. 
The partitioning software asks about which disk to use, I answered sdC0, 
than it finds free space and makes it a plan9 partition. 
I want to write it and quit. But after "w" I got an error. 
"linux1: i/o error"

So I tried "q" and the software quited and let me continue. So I went to
further partitioning newly created plan9 partition. So far so good. 

Again I went through all the process until the question about booting. 
So I instructed the software to use MBR. But I got failure again. 
Thus I tried "stop" option and it made the installer somehow continue
but wanted to save the state of affairs onto floppy. Which of course
failed since I do not have any floppy. Finaly I had to reboot.
(ctrl-alt-del). 

After reboot, I could get to boot plan9 up to the point where it asks
about kernel. At the same time it shows these bootable devices: 

fd0, sdC0!dos, sdC0!9dos.

So I feed it with: 
sdC0!9dos!9pcf

Now the kernel starts loading and I can proceed as far as to 
user[none]: 

Here I supply "glenda" and get: 

user[none]: glenda
boot: can't connect to file server: '/boot/bzroot' does not exist
panic: boot process died: unknown
panic: boot process died: unknown
dumpstack disabled
cpu0: exiting

And the system is dead. 

At this point, I doubt something will change if I wipe the whole disk,
that is remove those linux partitions. Something else is wrong here I
suppose. 

Especially, I can't figure why I get those linux1 i/o errors when trying
to make partitions with plan9 installer. Linux fdisk never failed with
my hdd. Thus hw failure is unlikely. 

So, after all this fuss, maybe it is time to also try network install
:))) 
But I could not find any howto or description how to do it. 


Best regards
Michal