[9fans] MBR and nvidia hangups

[rgr@sdf.lonestar.org (Rob Ristroph)]

Hi, I've been doing some tests this Sunday morning and here are my
results:

A normal Plan 9 install, where Plan 9 is the only thing on a 60 GB
disk (except I also made a boot floppy):

Doesn't overwrite MBR, previously not working MBR gives an error
message (depends on what was left in there).  Also the boot floppy
wants to ream the filesystem and then panics when I use it.


Start over, re-install, this time at the [bootsetup] prompt in
addition to selecting plan9 as the method, I open another window and
type:

disk/mbr -m /386/pbslba /dev/sdC0

On reboot the machine hangs after "Verifying DMI Pool Data ......."
(which is also what happens if there is no MBR at all).

I boot from the install disk, make a new window, and run:

disk/mbr -m /386/pbs /dev/sdC0/data

This results in the message "I/0 err" followed by junk characters.

I did the same but this time used the command:

disk/mbr -m /386/mbr /dev/sdC0/data

And that worked well enough that I got to type "glenda" to log in for
the first time in weeks !  But it hung shortly after that on the "kfs
. . .version" stage.

Figuring I might finally have a working MBR, I re-imaged the install
floppy fresh and started in again.  It quickly did a "mountfs" and
then I chose to keep the plan 9 filesystem instead of wiping it; that
hung doing something for longer than it should take to wipe it, so I
rebooted, and this time wiped it and re-installed everything.

It now boots, allows me to select the disk or network, and log in as
glenda.  However, no rio comes up:

init: starting /bin/rc
aux/vga: nvidia: can't attach mmio segment
dossrv: serving #s/dos
rio: can't open display: initdisplay: /dev/draw/new: no frame buffer
init: rc exit status: rio 13: display open

init: starting /bin/rc
term%

(Note this is a card which was previously running Plan 9 in graphical
mode just fine, and will come up in graphical mode from the
installation floppy.)

I did

9fat:
cat /n/9fat/plan9.ini

but the plan9.ini file looked normal.

This is essentially where I was on the 6th of July, when I wiped my
drive with zeros in an attempt to make sure I had a fresh install.

However, I moved the drive to a machine that had an S3 video card
instead of the nvidia.  Then it booted fine, giving me a working Plan
9 with rio and everything.

In conclusion:

1) We have some work to do on the MBR/bootloader part of the
   installation procedure.  Once I finish configuring my machine I
   might try to take apart the installation floppy and find the
   installation program on it.  Any suggestions on that ?

2) We might have broken nvidia chip support ?  This seems improbable,
   but my card does still behave normally with knoppix.  I won't
   investigate this further right now, because I know where I can buy
   an S3 Virge for $5 and I'm on my way there now.

3) Now I can start figuring out how to authenticate and share services
   between my two Plan 9 machines, and shortly, other peoples !

Cheers,

--Rob