[9fans] A few installation questions...

[9fans] A few installation questions...

[Poly-poly man]

Hiya! I've used linux for almost my entire life, and absolutely love it. But
when I found out about plan 9 the other day, I loved some of the features
built into it (not to mention Glenda ;) )

Anyway, I've been playing a little bit with the livecd (I haven't had many
chances to play with it because my Gentoo partition on this computer is
emerging... and whenever I can let it compile...). I do, however, want to
install on my hard drive. I have a bunch of questions, though.

1. I want to keep Gentoo on here. I already have an extra partition (that I
had _something_ on, but I can wipe it). It looks like:

hda1: 100mb, gentoo's /boot, has grub info, ext2
hda2: 1gb, linux swap
hda3: 123gb, gentoo's /, ext3
hda4: 30gb, can be deleted (put plan9 here ;) )

Firstly, from what I've seen in the docs, there'll be no problem using that
and not touching anything else, right? If you wipe my Gentoo, I wipe your
face! The more important problem is booting. I have grub installed in the
mbr (from my gentoo installation), and would really like to keep grub.
Assuming I install plan 9 in hda4 (or whatever you call it ;) ), what steps
would I have to take to get it to be able to boot plan9?

2. I live in America, where the government was stupid enough to change what
day Daylight Savings Time changes fall on. Unfortunately, release 4 was
released back in 2002 - before the new law came into play. What will I have
to do to fix the daylight savings time rules? This is a particular problem,
because I am planning on installing within the week (and this week is the
week that should have been an hour back already, but is not yet under the
new laws... stupid country ;) ).

Thanks in advance,
poly-p man

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

[Martin Neubauer]

* Poly-poly man (pyrophobicman@gmail.com) wrote:
> Firstly, from what I've seen in the docs, there'll be no problem using that
> and not touching anything else, right? If you wipe my Gentoo, I wipe your
> face! The more important problem is booting. I have grub installed in the
> mbr (from my gentoo installation), and would really like to keep grub.
> Assuming I install plan 9 in hda4 (or whatever you call it ;) ), what steps
> would I have to take to get it to be able to boot plan9?

Installing in a dedicated partition next to some already installed system
should be no problem. I have done this before without any trouble. As usual,
check before writing a new partition table.

At the end of the installation you will be asked about the boot method. Just
leave the mbr alone and only write the plan 9 boot sector on the plan 9
partition. Then grub can use chainloading.

> 2. I live in America, where the government was stupid enough to change what
> day Daylight Savings Time changes fall on. Unfortunately, release 4 was
> released back in 2002 - before the new law came into play. What will I have
> to do to fix the daylight savings time rules? This is a particular problem,
> because I am planning on installing within the week (and this week is the
> week that should have been an hour back already, but is not yet under the
> new laws... stupid country ;) ).

Nothing to worry about. You'd be hard pressed to get installation discs
dating back from '02, so the time zone rules should be quite current. If
not, just submit a patch.

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

[sqweek]

On 10/30/07, Poly-poly man <pyrophobicman@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2. I live in America, where the government was stupid enough to change what
> day Daylight Savings Time changes fall on. Unfortunately, release 4 was
> released back in 2002 - before the new law came into play.

 Updates are made all the time. I don't know when the law was passed,
but probably pretty safe to say these haven't been changed as the last
change I see to the US timezone files is 2006-04-02. I'm in a similar
position actually, since last year we're having DST trials here in
western australia - I just put in on my TODO today to try and update
the plan9 TZ definitions (freaked me out on sunday [yes, we have DST
in summer, wtf] when all my computer clocks jumped forward an hour and
my other clocks didn't).
-sqweek

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

[johnny]

I would add that it is important not to try to install plan9 on an "extended" partition, as plan9 doesn't like that kind of thing. Last I tried that, it overwrote some other partition on my disk.

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

[erik quanstrom]

> 2. I live in America, where the government was stupid enough to change what
> day Daylight Savings Time changes fall on. Unfortunately, release 4 was
> released back in 2002 - before the new law came into play. What will I have
> to do to fix the daylight savings time rules? This is a particular problem,
> because I am planning on installing within the week (and this week is the
> week that should have been an hour back already, but is not yet under the
> new laws... stupid country ;) ).

the us tz files have been updated.

in venezuela where the government has decided on gmt -5½ hours for
"a more equitable distribution of sunlight".

- erik

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

[sqweek]

On 10/30/07, johnny@sorosj.hd.free.fr <johnny@sorosj.hd.free.fr> wrote:
> I would add that it is important not to try to install plan9 on an "extended" partition, as plan9 doesn't like that kind of thing. Last I tried that, it overwrote some other partition on my disk.

 It didn't overwrite anything when I tried it, just rearranged the
partition table and kind of forgot to put all my existing extended
partition table entries back. All recoverable ;)
-sqweek

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

[erik quanstrom]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 350 bytes --]

this timezone should cover the dst trial period.  let me know
if there are problems.  if there are none, i will submit it.

to try it out, copy the attachment to /adm/timezone/Australia_West
then
	cp /adm/timezone/Australia_West
	cat /adm/timezone/Australia_West>/env/timezone
	date

daylight savings time always covers the summer.

- erik

[-- Attachment #2: Australia_West --]
[-- Type: text/plain, Size: 131 bytes --]

WST 28800 WDT 32400
 152071200  162957600  436327200  447213600  690343200  699415200
1193536800 1206842400 1224986400 1238292000

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

[sqweek]

On 10/30/07, erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net> wrote:
> this timezone should cover the dst trial period.  let me know
> if there are problems.  if there are none, i will submit it.

 Huh, thanks! Lots of interest in timezones on the list it seems.
 At first when I tried it date started reporting GMT, but it works
fine after I added a newline to the end of the file.
 Thanks again, saves me from having to worry about the local DST rules at all :D
-sqweek

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

[erik quanstrom]

>> this timezone should cover the dst trial period.  let me know
>> if there are problems.  if there are none, i will submit it.
> 
>  Huh, thanks! Lots of interest in timezones on the list it seems.
>  At first when I tried it date started reporting GMT, but it works
> fine after I added a newline to the end of the file.
>  Thanks again, saves me from having to worry about the local DST rules at all :D
> -sqweek

somehow the newline was chopped from the file when mailed.

i'll submit this.  i only did this year and next as the current
law is temporary.  this will need revisiting if dst is made
permanent.

- erik