[9fans] floppy install?

[9fans] floppy install?

[John Osborne]

Hi -
I have a oldish, small form factor workstation (a Toshiba Equium 7100
to be exact, 4GB hard drive, 64MB ram, network card recognized) with
no CD drive, and I've attempted to install via floppy and I get as far
as the download portion of the install, and then the download craps
out with

(download): null list in concatenation

And then thinks it's ready for mounting the dist.

Any suggestions, ideas?

Thanks in advance!
--
John Osborne
osborne6@ieee.org/osborne6@gmail.com/jro@freeshell.org

Re: [9fans] floppy install?

[erik quanstrom]

i suppose you could avoid this step by mounting the distribution from cd.

- erik

On Mon Jan 29 09:48:29 EST 2007, osborne6@gmail.com wrote:
> Hi -
> I have a oldish, small form factor workstation (a Toshiba Equium 7100
> to be exact, 4GB hard drive, 64MB ram, network card recognized) with
> no CD drive, and I've attempted to install via floppy and I get as far
> as the download portion of the install, and then the download craps
> out with
>
> (download): null list in concatenation
>
> And then thinks it's ready for mounting the dist.
>
> Any suggestions, ideas?
>
> Thanks in advance!

Re: [9fans] floppy install?

[John Floren]

On 1/29/07, erik quanstrom <quanstro@coraid.com> wrote:
> i suppose you could avoid this step by mounting the distribution from cd.
>
> - erik
>
> On Mon Jan 29 09:48:29 EST 2007, osborne6@gmail.com wrote:
> > Hi -
> > I have a oldish, small form factor workstation (a Toshiba Equium 7100
> > to be exact, 4GB hard drive, 64MB ram, network card recognized) with
> > no CD drive, and I've attempted to install via floppy and I get as far
> > as the download portion of the install, and then the download craps
> > out with
> >
> > (download): null list in concatenation
> >
> > And then thinks it's ready for mounting the dist.
> >
> > Any suggestions, ideas?
> >
> > Thanks in advance!
>

Erik, he could avoid this step by mounting the distribution from cd if
you were to, say, send him a CDROM drive. Otherwise, when he says it
doesn't have a drive, that would mean he can't mount the cd.
I've had this same problem myself. Is it one of those "Oh, not worth
fixing, everyone should be booting from CD anyway" problems (known
about but not going to be fixed, ever), or what?


John
--
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

Re: [9fans] floppy install?

[Gabriel Diaz]

Hello

if you can create a partition on the disk, then you can download it
manually and store it there. When the installer ask where is it, just
point it to the partition on which you downloaded it.  I think the
installer just hget a file, but that file probably no longer exists
:-?, i think there is only a CD iso now, so you can download the iso,
save it on a partition and mount it :-?

may be using other computer is possible too (mount via 9p other host
with the distribution) :-?

i've never needed this :)

slds.

gabi


On 1/29/07, John Osborne <osborne6@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi -
> I have a oldish, small form factor workstation (a Toshiba Equium 7100
> to be exact, 4GB hard drive, 64MB ram, network card recognized) with
> no CD drive, and I've attempted to install via floppy and I get as far
> as the download portion of the install, and then the download craps
> out with
>
> (download): null list in concatenation
>
> And then thinks it's ready for mounting the dist.
>
> Any suggestions, ideas?
>
> Thanks in advance!
> --
> John Osborne
> osborne6@ieee.org/osborne6@gmail.com/jro@freeshell.org
>

Re: [9fans] floppy install?

[John Osborne]

That would be nice, and I would have tried that first, but as I
mentioned below, the machine in question doesn't have a CD drive, and
to make matters worse, when I've tried to connect a CD drive to it in
the past, the CD drive doesn't seem to work with this machine.

Now, in the installation document on the wiki, it says the archive can
be pulled from a bzip-ed cd image or uncompressed cd image.  I'm
assuming that I could pull the disk (or somehow copy the image over)
onto the fat partition and install that way -- anyone else try that
recently?

On 1/29/07, erik quanstrom <quanstro@coraid.com> wrote:
> i suppose you could avoid this step by mounting the distribution from cd.
>
> - erik
>
> On Mon Jan 29 09:48:29 EST 2007, osborne6@gmail.com wrote:
> > Hi -
> > I have a oldish, small form factor workstation (a Toshiba Equium 7100
> > to be exact, 4GB hard drive, 64MB ram, network card recognized) with
> > no CD drive, and I've attempted to install via floppy and I get as far
> > as the download portion of the install, and then the download craps
> > out with
> >
> > (download): null list in concatenation
> >
> > And then thinks it's ready for mounting the dist.
> >
> > Any suggestions, ideas?
> >
> > Thanks in advance!
>


--
John Osborne
osborne6@ieee.org/osborne6@gmail.com/jro@freeshell.org

Re: [9fans] floppy install?

[erik quanstrom]

okay, sorry.  i'm wearing the dunce cap today.

i didn't know the floppy install was broken.

would it make sense to provide a fossil install image that could
be dd'd from linux or something onto a drive?  or one could boot
from the floppy and then hget > /dev/sd$disk/fossil.

- erik

Re: [9fans] floppy install?

[erik quanstrom]

at the risk of missing the point again, what do you mean by "not work"?
do you mean, the machine won't boot from the machine or do you mean
it just doesn't see the cd?

i have 2 440MX/BX  motherboards that will not boot from cd.
however, once booted via the floppy, i can mount the cd just fine.
i don't know if this is the case for you.

hope this helps,
- erik

Re: [9fans] floppy install?

[John Osborne]

It's not that the machine in question doesn't see the CD drive, it
just doesn't have a CD drive.  The install from floppy works up to the
point where it is trying to download the archive.  I just need a way
to get the archive via the floppy, keeping in mind this machine has no
CD drive whatsoever.  Hopefully I'll have time tonight to maybe do one
of two things, 1.) pull the drive from the machine and put the bzip-ed
cd image on the fat partition via my linux box, or 2.) use some other
non plan9 boot floppy to mount the fat partition and
ftp/grab-some-other-way the bzip-ed cd image from the linux box and
save it to the fat partition.

Just to clarify, the floppy install worked up to the point of
downloading the archive.  I have the hard disk fully partitioned.

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone!

On 1/29/07, erik quanstrom <quanstro@coraid.com> wrote:
> at the risk of missing the point again, what do you mean by "not work"?
> do you mean, the machine won't boot from the machine or do you mean
> it just doesn't see the cd?
>
> i have 2 440MX/BX  motherboards that will not boot from cd.
> however, once booted via the floppy, i can mount the cd just fine.
> i don't know if this is the case for you.
>
> hope this helps,
> - erik
>


--
John Osborne
osborne6@ieee.org/osborne6@gmail.com/jro@freeshell.org

Re: [9fans] floppy install?

[Anthony Sorace]

i believe the problem is that the dowloadable floppy is no longer
modifying its plan9.ini file to set installurl, which the 'download'
script relies on. edit plan9.ini (you can do this from anything that
can read fat floppies), adding
installurl=http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/download/plan9.iso.bz2.

i believe this broke when the url for the image stopped being
dynamically generated.

Re: [9fans] floppy install?

[Steve Simon]

> (download): null list in concatenation

I have a suspicion (and its only that) that, that
the variable that is not defined is dist=

This used to point to an auto generated html path on the
bell-labs server. It was to ensure people could only download
plan9 if they clicked through a disclaimer.

If I am right you need to use a Windows machine to edit the
file plan9.ini on the floppy - its a standard DOS format disk.
Add the line:

	installurl=http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/download/plan9.iso.bz2

and try again.

I am fairly sure, but not not definite this will work, however
if I am close I reckon someone will jump in and correct me :-)

-Steve

Re: [9fans] floppy install?

[Steve Simon]

Sorry for the confusiuon, just re-read what I wrote:

The variable in question is installurl= not dist= (my first
guess before I checked the source).

-Steve

Re: [9fans] floppy install?

[Russ Cox]

Thanks to Steve and Anthony for pointing that out.
I think I have posted a new floppy image that has
the installurl set in plan9.ini.

Russ