Re: [9fans] Recommended emulators/VMs for P9 install

[Eric Van Hensbergen <ericvh@gmail.com>]

ymmv, but here are two configurations I use:

VMware fusion on Mac -- but only to run cpu/fs/auth -- I use either drawterm or ACME-sac to get into it.  It is very snappy.  Easily as snappy (for me) as my standalone Plan 9 equivalent and I do basically all my work in this environment.  I do not run Venti on it, the plan was to use venti running on the host, linux box, or on the actual plan 9 box to back up the vm, but I never got around to setting it up.

Plan 9 running on kvm on Intel with a similar configuration (no graphics, just cpu/fs/auth) and without venti.

I've also dabbled with looking at using underlying Linux or MacOSX file systems to host files for the root of the Plan 9 system to make things even easier.  As it is my source directory is bound from /mnt term even though my root is from fossil on the virtual disk.  There are probably better file server configurations, but essentially I don't really trust fossil from a performance or stability standpoint.

Ron has his lguest stuff, that seems to work pretty well too, but he's in the process of fixing it for more recent kernels as the underlying platform is still a bit of a moving target.

    -eric



On Apr 15, 2010, at 12:11 PM, Joel C. Salomon wrote:

> My computer died, so I'm in the market for a new one.  I figure I'd
> like to get back into hacking on Plan 9 so I plan to install it
> beneath a VM in whatever machine I buy.  I'm even considering Windows
> 7 Pro with Virtual PC, but I think I'd prefer Xen or one of the
> Linux-based things (VirtualBox, etc.).
> 
> Ease of installation is important, as is the ability to run a somewhat
> normal (Windows or Linux) host OS.  Are there any recommendations?
> 
> —Joel
>