Re: [9fans] on the topic of viruses

Re: [9fans] on the topic of viruses

[rob pike]

This was described in Ken Thompson's Turing Award lecture:

	http://www.acm.org/classics/sep95

-rob

Re: [9fans] on the topic of viruses

[Digby Tarvin]

Yep - that was it. A brilliant explanation too. Thanks to all that
pointed it out to me.

It seems more recent than I had guessed - or could the 1984 article
have been written some time after Ken's experiment??

Regards,
DigbyT

rob pike:
> This was described in Ken Thompson's Turing Award lecture:
> 
> 	http://www.acm.org/classics/sep95
> 
> -rob
-- 
Digby R. S. Tarvin                                              digbyt@acm.org
http://www.cthulhu.dircon.co.uk

Re: [9fans] on the topic of viruses

[Boyd Roberts]

> It seems more recent than I had guessed - or could the 1984 article
> have been written some time after Ken's experiment??

iirc, i think he is rumoured to have done it around when he went to UCB.
that musta been the early '80s 'cos i think that how he came back with
4.1BSD which became 8th Ed (it was around in '84).

yes, correct your family tree diagrams now :)

[9fans] A few installation queries...

[Digby Tarvin]

I have just spent a couple of hours experimenting with the June 14 2001
Plan9 release, and while I havn't really spent enough time on it
to say I am stuck, wanted to run a few funnies by the list before
I forget about them to see if anyone has an explanation or similar
experience...

I created a boot floppy from the CD and on my main system it worked
pretty much as expected, failing with an un-recognised video adapter.

I then tried it in another box with an EPOX 8kTA3 1.1GHz AMD Athlon
CPU, and I get:
	PBS...Plan 9 from Bell Labs
	apm ax=f000 cx=f000 dx=fdfa di=0 ebx=806c esi=-6c2dfc17
	using fd0!dos!plan9.ini
	dev A0 port 1F0 config 0040 capabilities 2F00 mwdma 0007 udma 203F
	no such FAT partition fd0!dos
	Boot devices: fd0 fd1 sdC0

I didn't really expect it to work, as this box also had a relatively
recent MATROX G400, but I am puzzled by the way that it failed, given
that the FAT partition was found perfectly fine on the first PC...

If any gurus out there could give a brief explanation of how to
decode the information in the 'dev' line, that would be great.
On systems that work, there seem to be two of these lines. I am
wondering if the floppy driver is not working for some reason..

I then tried an older P100 machine with some even older ISA cards
I dug up which seem to be in the supported hardware list. These
were a CL-GD542x (Cirrus Logic) video adapter and an 8013EPC LAN
board. I found an old 800Mb disk to install to, which had NT on
the first 200MB partition and BSD Unix on the second 600MB partition

The install went very smoothly. I removed the BSD partition and replaced
it with a Plan9 partition, accepting most defaults, and then both added
Plan9 to the NT boot menu as well as creating a boot floppy.

After rebooting post install, and using the NT boot option, attempting
to log in as 'glenda' gives me

	init: starting /bin/rc
	ndb/dns: can't read my ip address
	disk/fdisk: did not find master boot record
	i8042: fe returned to the ea command

and the system hangs...

When originally booting off the installation floppy, I saw the same
i8042 message, but it then proceeded successfully to a graphical display..

If I log on as user 'none', there is no rio but I sucessfully get a shell
prompt, so I assume there is some problem with the initialization of the
display adapter. I compared the 'vgadb' on the hard disk and the
updated install disk (where the graphics seemed to work)
and they were identical...

I tried booting direct from the Plan9 partition, which did not start
at all. I assume that the install option to make the Plan9 partition
active also causes the MBR to be written.

Finally, I tried the boot floppy, and it behaved the same as the hard
disk boot.

Any thoughts?

Regards,
DigbyT
-- 
Digby R. S. Tarvin                                              digbyt@acm.org
http://www.cthulhu.dircon.co.uk

Re: [9fans] A few installation queries...

[Boyd Roberts]

> apm ax=f000 cx=f000 dx=fdfa di=0 ebx=806c esi=-6c2dfc17
> using fd0!dos!plan9.ini
> dev A0 port 1F0 config 0040 capabilities 2F00 mwdma 0007 udma 203F
> no such FAT partition fd0!dos
> Boot devices: fd0 fd1 sdC0

weird, sounds like you're in floppy/disk hell.  read:

    http://home.fr.inter.net/boyd/plan9/usbflop.html

maybe i should add the plan9.ini too.

> init: starting /bin/rc
> ndb/dns: can't read my ip address
> disk/fdisk: did not find master boot record
> i8042: fe returned to the ea command
> 
> and the system hangs...

i have some vague recollection that if you screw up the boot/partition
stuff during the install all sorts of horrible things happen.

> If I log on as user 'none', there is no rio but I sucessfully get a shell
> prompt, so I assume there is some problem with the initialization of the
> display adapter. I compared the 'vgadb' on the hard disk and the
> updated install disk (where the graphics seemed to work)
> and they were identical...

yes, this is possible.  my TFT LCD is XGAx16 (iirc) and that does
not work.  setting it to be XGAx8 works fine.

Re: [9fans] A few installation queries...

[Digby Tarvin]

> > apm ax=f000 cx=f000 dx=fdfa di=0 ebx=806c esi=-6c2dfc17
> > using fd0!dos!plan9.ini
> > dev A0 port 1F0 config 0040 capabilities 2F00 mwdma 0007 udma 203F
> > no such FAT partition fd0!dos
> > Boot devices: fd0 fd1 sdC0
> 
> weird, sounds like you're in floppy/disk hell.  read:
> 
>     http://home.fr.inter.net/boyd/plan9/usbflop.html
> 
> maybe i should add the plan9.ini too.

Thanks, I'll have a look. 

> > init: starting /bin/rc
> > ndb/dns: can't read my ip address
> > disk/fdisk: did not find master boot record
> > i8042: fe returned to the ea command
> > 
> > and the system hangs...
> 
> i have some vague recollection that if you screw up the boot/partition
> stuff during the install all sorts of horrible things happen.
>
I'll give the install another try. I'm not sure what I could have
mucked up. I just used the plan9 fdisk utility to delete the
second partition and replace it with a plan9 partition, and
then accepted all the defaults for formatting it....

> > If I log on as user 'none', there is no rio but I sucessfully get a shell
> > prompt, so I assume there is some problem with the initialization of the
> > display adapter. I compared the 'vgadb' on the hard disk and the
> > updated install disk (where the graphics seemed to work)
> > and they were identical...
> 
> yes, this is possible.  my TFT LCD is XGAx16 (iirc) and that does
> not work.  setting it to be XGAx8 works fine.
> 
I found another video adapter that appears in vgadb, and get exactly
the same symptoms. So I guess it is not the video card after all.

Regards,
DigbyT
-- 
Digby R. S. Tarvin                                              digbyt@acm.org
http://www.cthulhu.dircon.co.uk

Re: [9fans] A few installation queries...

[Thomas Bushnell, BSG]

boyd@fr.inter.net (Boyd Roberts) writes:

> weird, sounds like you're in floppy/disk hell.  read:
> 
>     http://home.fr.inter.net/boyd/plan9/usbflop.html
> 
> maybe i should add the plan9.ini too.

This URL fails for me.

Re: [9fans] A few installation queries...

[Boyd Roberts]

"Thomas Bushnell, BSG" wrote:
> >     http://home.fr.inter.net/boyd/plan9/usbflop.html
> 
> This URL fails for me.

I moved it, in a cleanup, to:

    http://home.fr.inter.net/boyd/code/plan9/usbflop.html