[9fans] XP boot

[Joel Salomon <joelcsalomon@gmail.com>]

On Wed, 2 Feb 2005 18:16:43 +0100, boyd, rounin <boyd@insultant.net> wrote:
> boot.ini essentially points at a 'boot block'.  i'm a bit wary about [potentially]
> smashing a currently bootable system.
>
> this will take some thought.

Well, I checked the 9fans archives, since I recall getting help on
this problem some time ago, and voilà!

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Russ Cox
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 20:17:16 GMT
Subject: Re: [9fans] winnt boot method - hand editing boot.ini

You need to copy the first sector of your Plan 9 partition
into a file bootsect.p9 on your NT drive, and then use
something like (this is from my Win2000 system):

[boot loader]
timeout=3600
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000
Professional" /fastdetect
c:\bootsect.p9 = "Plan 9 from Bell Labs"

There are a few gotchas.  First, make sure your
9fat has the right PBS before you copy the first
sector.  For example,

disk/format -b /386/pbslba /dev/sdC0/plan9
dd -bs 512 -count 1 < /dev/sdC0/plan9 > bootsect.p9

will probably do the right thing.
Note that format -b doesn't do anything other than
replace the PBS code.  In particular it doesn't format
the disk.

<snip>

Russ