[9fans] Plan 9 on a USB flash drive

[9fans] Plan 9 on a USB flash drive

[john]

Has anybody tried booting Plan 9 from a USB flash drive?
It seems like an ideal way to have a portable terminal. I'd like
to try it, but I have no idea what might need to be done to
make it boot.



John

Re: [9fans] Plan 9 on a USB flash drive

[tlaronde]

Hello,

On Mon, Jul 09, 2007 at 11:38:39AM -1000, john@csplan9.rit.edu wrote:
> 
> Has anybody tried booting Plan 9 from a USB flash drive?
> It seems like an ideal way to have a portable terminal. I'd like
> to try it, but I have no idea what might need to be done to
> make it boot.

The problem is the one encountered [and related in some recent threads]
by people using CDROM over USB or stick on USB.

The PBS2 uses BIOS services to load 9load---i.e. if the BIOS can boot
the device, 9load is loaded---but 9load by itself doesn't use the BIOS
services, switches to protected mode and drives directly the hardware
being then limited to the one it is compiled with support for.

The best solution is indeed the one indicated in Russ Cox' note:
implement vm86 and use a vanilla kernel (I made some development with
GRUB some [long] years ago and in fact, a "sophisticated" boot loader is
definitively not needed since one ends developing just another kernel;
so a simple boot selector and a kernel is the best solution [plus clean
code to allow generating EPROM from the kernel sources for netboot
perhaps]).

The note:
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/Replacing_9load/index.html

(there is even an alternative solution given with the code in
/n/sources/contrib/rsc/load).
-- 
Thierry Laronde (Alceste) <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                 http://www.kergis.com/
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