[9fans] installing Plan 9 under Microsoft's free Virtual PC?

[9fans] installing Plan 9 under Microsoft's free Virtual PC?

[Andrew Hudson]

Since Microsoft just decided to release its Virtual PC virtualization
product for free I decided to give it a spin and see how Plan 9 worked
as a virtualized OS. I downloaded Virtual PC from here
(http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/downloads/sp1.mspx) and
installed it on a Proliant server with a 2.4 GHz Xeon processor, 1.3
GB of RAM, and a 15K SCSI disk, Windows 2000 Server. Virtual PC
complained that it was only supported on Windows 2003 and Windows XP
but seemed to install fine.

At the partdisk prompt I was not able to install a Master Boot Record
(mbr) in Virtual PC's virtual disk partition and so the installation
stopped dead. Does anyone have any insight to this problem or a
possible work-aounrd? Running Plan 9 under the now free Virtual PC
would eliminate a lot of hardware compatibility headaches and make
Plan 9 more accessible to a large number of people running Windows.

- Andrew

Re: [9fans] installing Plan 9 under Microsoft's free Virtual PC?

[elbing]

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2006/7/24, Andrew Hudson <ahudson.inc@gmail.com>:
>
> Since Microsoft just decided to release its Virtual PC virtualization
> product for free I decided to give it a spin and see how Plan 9 worked
> as a virtualized OS. I downloaded Virtual PC from here
> (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/downloads/sp1.mspx) and
> installed it on a Proliant server with a 2.4 GHz Xeon processor, 1.3
> GB of RAM, and a 15K SCSI disk, Windows 2000 Server. Virtual PC
> complained that it was only supported on Windows 2003 and Windows XP
> but seemed to install fine.
>
> At the partdisk prompt I was not able to install a Master Boot Record
> (mbr) in Virtual PC's virtual disk partition and so the installation
> stopped dead. Does anyone have any insight to this problem or a
> possible work-aounrd? Running Plan 9 under the now free Virtual PC
> would eliminate a lot of hardware compatibility headaches and make
> Plan 9 more accessible to a large number of people running Windows.
>
> - Andrew




I've got running Plan9 in a Virtual PC 5.3.582.27 (not free), with XP in an
Acer Aspire AMD 2.0GHz (Sempron 3000, 1GB RAM) and tipycal hardware. When it
asked me about mbr, it offered to create a new mbr, I said "y" and
installation continued without problems. It copied filesystem very slow,
around one hour.

Elbing

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Re: [9fans] installing Plan 9 under Microsoft's free Virtual PC?

[Paweł Lasek]

On 7/24/06, elbing <elbingmiss@gmail.com> wrote:

> I've got running Plan9 in a Virtual PC 5.3.582.27 (not free), with XP in an
> Acer Aspire AMD 2.0GHz (Sempron 3000, 1GB RAM) and tipycal hardware. When it
> asked me about mbr, it offered to create a new mbr, I said "y" and
> installation continued without problems. It copied filesystem very slow,
> around one hour.

Normal, at least for me - never got Plan 9 to copy itself faster than
nosebleed (since I never had time to delve into it, I left it as-is),
no matter on what it was installed...

tried hardware:
Celeron 1100 MHz, 256MB RAM, 5400 4.3GB ata-disk (slow drive, about 10
MB/s peak?) - I stopped checking how much time passed and found myself
a long book (after around 1 hour)
the same - under Xen 2.0.7, same disk (needed to left it to work at night)
the same - under Qemu w/o kqemu, disk image on 7,200 120 GB ata-drive
(maybe not a speed demon, but fast drive) (all night work again)

Compaq Proliant 1850R (netbsd xen 2.0.7 host), 1x Pentium II 400 MHz,
32 MB ram, installing with disk being an image on UFS at 7,200 SCSI
4,3GB (got plan9 installed after over 2 hrs)
> Elbing
>


--
Paul Lasek

Re: [9fans] installing Plan 9 under Microsoft's free Virtual PC?

[andrey mirtchovski]

did you try 'echo dma on > /dev/sdC0/ctl; echo rwm on > /dev/sdC0/ctl'?

what does 'cat /dev/sd??/ctl say?

> Normal, at least for me - never got Plan 9 to copy itself faster than
> nosebleed (since I never had time to delve into it, I left it as-is),
> no matter on what it was installed...

Re: [9fans] installing Plan 9 under Microsoft's free Virtual PC?

[Paweł Lasek]

On 7/24/06, andrey mirtchovski <andrey@lanl.gov> wrote:
> did you try 'echo dma on > /dev/sdC0/ctl; echo rwm on > /dev/sdC0/ctl'?

I didn't, because I didn't know about it - It was my first try at Plan 9.

Maybe someone with access could add this to install instructions?

> what does 'cat /dev/sd??/ctl say?
>

Unfortunately I can't answer it now (I don't have time nor free
machine to work with).
I'll check it next time.

Thanks for help.


--
Paul Lasek

Re: [9fans] installing Plan 9 under Microsoft's free Virtual PC?

[Sascha Retzki]

> On 7/24/06, andrey mirtchovski <andrey@lanl.gov> wrote:
>> did you try 'echo dma on > /dev/sdC0/ctl; echo rwm on > /dev/sdC0/ctl'?
>
> I didn't, because I didn't know about it - It was my first try at Plan 9.
>
> Maybe someone with access could add this to install instructions?

I am pretty sure the installer now asks if one want to enable dma. I could be wrong, tho

>
>> what does 'cat /dev/sd??/ctl say?
>>
>
> Unfortunately I can't answer it now (I don't have time nor free
> machine to work with).
> I'll check it next time.
>
> Thanks for help.
>
>
> --
> Paul Lasek

Re: Re: [9fans] installing Plan 9 under Microsoft's free Virtual PC?

[David Leimbach]

On 7/24/06, Sascha Retzki <sretzki@gmx.de> wrote:
> > On 7/24/06, andrey mirtchovski <andrey@lanl.gov> wrote:
> >> did you try 'echo dma on > /dev/sdC0/ctl; echo rwm on > /dev/sdC0/ctl'?
> >
> > I didn't, because I didn't know about it - It was my first try at Plan 9.
> >
> > Maybe someone with access could add this to install instructions?
>
> I am pretty sure the installer now asks if one want to enable dma. I could be wrong, tho

It did on the last ISO I used.

Dave
>
> >
> >> what does 'cat /dev/sd??/ctl say?
> >>
> >
> > Unfortunately I can't answer it now (I don't have time nor free
> > machine to work with).
> > I'll check it next time.
> >
> > Thanks for help.
> >
> >
> > --
> > Paul Lasek
>
>

Re: [9fans] installing Plan 9 under Microsoft's free Virtual PC?

[andrey mirtchovski]

>> did you try 'echo dma on > /dev/sdC0/ctl; echo rwm on > /dev/sdC0/
>> ctl'?
>
> I didn't, because I didn't know about it - It was my first try at
> Plan 9.
>
> Maybe someone with access could add this to install instructions?
>

the installation should have asked you whether you want dma turned
on, if you said "yes" and it was still slow then the chipset is
probably not supported. with dma on the installation copies all files
in less than 5 minutes on reasonable hardware.

when you get to it, run 'pci' and send it to the list. it may turn
out that we just need to add the did/vid pair to sdata.c...

Re: [9fans] installing Plan 9 under Microsoft's free Virtual PC?

[Paweł Lasek]

> the installation should have asked you whether you want dma turned
> on, if you said "yes" and it was still slow then the chipset is
> probably not supported. with dma on the installation copies all files
> in less than 5 minutes on reasonable hardware.

Back when I have been installing it didn't ask anything about DMA.

I'll check if I can spare the bandwith to download newest ISO...

> when you get to it, run 'pci' and send it to the list. it may turn
> out that we just need to add the did/vid pair to sdata.c...
>

I don't know about Xen support (it seems that nobody touched it since
wiki article),
but my chipset (on both machines) is i440bx - rather supported IIRC :)

--
Paul Lasek

Re: [9fans] installing Plan 9 under Microsoft's free Virtual PC?

[Sascha Retzki]

>> the installation should have asked you whether you want dma turned
>> on, if you said "yes" and it was still slow then the chipset is
>> probably not supported. with dma on the installation copies all files
>> in less than 5 minutes on reasonable hardware.
>
> Back when I have been installing it didn't ask anything about DMA.
>

then the image might be hell-old ;)

> I'll check if I can spare the bandwith to download newest ISO...
>
>> when you get to it, run 'pci' and send it to the list. it may turn
>> out that we just need to add the did/vid pair to sdata.c...
>>
>
> I don't know about Xen support (it seems that nobody touched it since
> wiki article),
> but my chipset (on both machines) is i440bx - rather supported IIRC :)
>
> --
> Paul Lasek

Re: [9fans] installing Plan 9 under Microsoft's free Virtual PC?

[Ronald G Minnich]

Paweł Lasek wrote:

> I don't know about Xen support (it seems that nobody touched it since
> wiki article),
> but my chipset (on both machines) is i440bx - rather supported IIRC :)
> 

once I got it going on 2.0, there was really nothing to do. And now that 
  Richard Miller has it going on 3.0, there is again ... not much else 
to do.

Every time I used 2.0, it Just Plain Worked -- try the Xen-knoppix cd.

I can not yet build xen 3.0 on my box, but as soon as I can , well, I'll 
be doing plan  9 + xen

ron

Re: [9fans] installing Plan 9 under Microsoft's free Virtual PC?

[Paweł Lasek]

On 7/24/06, Ronald G Minnich <rminnich@lanl.gov> wrote:

> once I got it going on 2.0, there was really nothing to do. And now that
>   Richard Miller has it going on 3.0, there is again ... not much else
> to do.
>
> Every time I used 2.0, it Just Plain Worked -- try the Xen-knoppix cd.

So I am safe to assume that when I'll try to recompile the sources
there won't be some fuc*-up because of version mismatch? :-D

Actually it's pretty important information - When I return to school
I'll be propably upgrading our plan9 cpu/auth server (the proliant
box) while making it work at last :-) (Still can't get auth working so
I could drawterm inside...)

> I can not yet build xen 3.0 on my box, but as soon as I can , well, I'll
> be doing plan  9 + xen

It would be interesting to see Plan9 as Xen3 guest... because I have
seen somewhere an "inofficial" linux/xen3 module named along the lines
of "nvidia-xen" :-D Since I can;t spare another machine at home, I'd
like not to loose hw accel on graphics (And no, it's not because of a
lot of pixels for desktop - actually my desktop works fine with low
footprint while looking IMHO better than Gnome/XGL :D)

> ron
>
>


--
Paul Lasek

Re: [9fans] installing Plan 9 under Microsoft's free Virtual PC?

[Ronald G Minnich]

Paweł Lasek wrote:
> On 7/24/06, Ronald G Minnich <rminnich@lanl.gov> wrote:
> 
>> once I got it going on 2.0, there was really nothing to do. And now that
>>   Richard Miller has it going on 3.0, there is again ... not much else
>> to do.
>>
>> Every time I used 2.0, it Just Plain Worked -- try the Xen-knoppix cd.
> 
> 
> So I am safe to assume that when I'll try to recompile the sources
> there won't be some fuc*-up because of version mismatch? :-D

sure, assume that. What could possibly go wrong? IT's just software!

which software do you mean here? xen 2, xen 3, plan 9 on xen[23]?

ron

Re: [9fans] installing Plan 9 under Microsoft's free Virtual PC?

[Paweł Lasek]

On 7/24/06, Ronald G Minnich <rminnich@lanl.gov> wrote:
> sure, assume that. What could possibly go wrong? IT's just software!

Well - After my last work of trying to get cpu/auth server running I
got quite tired with software :-)

And when I am tired I start to think about worst cases....

> which software do you mean here? xen 2, xen 3, plan 9 on xen[23]?

All of it :-)

My original intent was if any bit required to compile xenU kernel has
changed enough to break compilation - but I'll try it, as soon as I
get back to nexus (proliant machine) console - which will be in
September....

> ron
>


--
Paul Lasek

Re: [9fans] installing Plan 9 under Microsoft's free Virtual PC?

[Richard Miller]

>> which software do you mean here? xen 2, xen 3, plan 9 on xen[23]?
>
> All of it :-)
>
> My original intent was if any bit required to compile xenU kernel has
> changed enough to break compilation

The guest/host OS interface changed sufficiently between xen2 and xen3
that the 9xen network and block device drivers needed to be rewritten
from scratch.

The Plan 9 guest kernel needs to be compiled using the xen/public C header
files from the xen host version you want to run on.  I have tested
it with xen3.0.2 (the current "stable" release), which is the only
xen3 version I have been able to build and run on any of my machines.
In theory a guest kernel built for xen3.0.n is supposed to work with
{xen3.0.m: m >= n}, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Above the kernel level, of course, everything does "just work" - in
fact I switch back and forth between native Plan 9 and 9xen using
the same fossil root file system.

Re: [9fans] installing Plan 9 under Microsoft's free Virtual PC?

[Ronald G Minnich]

Paweł Lasek wrote:


> My original intent was if any bit required to compile xenU kernel has
> changed enough to break compilation - but I'll try it, as soon as I
> get back to nexus (proliant machine) console - which will be in
> September....


you're probably fine on older linux distros.

ron

Re: [9fans] installing Plan 9 under Microsoft's free Virtual PC?

[Paweł Lasek]

On 7/24/06, Ronald G Minnich <rminnich@lanl.gov> wrote:
> you're probably fine on older linux distros.

nexus is netbsd 3.0 xen0 kernel (the one bundled with distro), because
we have enough windows and linux machines and wanted a place to have
fun with *BSD. NetBSD got in because of having both host and guest
kernel, allowing us to dump linux (which was to be the host in the
beginning, with *bsd guest and plan9 guest), which is good with our
limited resources.... (128MB ram isn't much when you have to divide it
between 3 oses and xen :-) )

> ron



--
Paul Lasek

[9fans] installing Plan 9 under Microsoft's free Virtual PC?

[Andrew Hudson]

For the record, I got past the MBR problem by running under Windows XP
(Not sure if that's necessary) and choosing the virtual file system as
the boot device.

Although I'm now in the 9660srv command, and it is unable to find the
distribution on the CD. Is this an indication of a bad CD image? When
I cd to various folders and lc I get an I/O Read Error. I can see the
bootdisk.img in this folder.

Thanks,
Andrew

Re: [9fans] installing Plan 9 under Microsoft's free Virtual PC?

[Álvaro Jurado Cuevas]

El Lunes, 24 de Julio de 2006 20:34, Andrew Hudson escribió:
> For the record, I got past the MBR problem by running under Windows XP
> (Not sure if that's necessary) and choosing the virtual file system as
> the boot device.
>
> Although I'm now in the 9660srv command, and it is unable to find the
> distribution on the CD. Is this an indication of a bad CD image? When
> I cd to various folders and lc I get an I/O Read Error. I can see the
> bootdisk.img in this folder.
I selected root CD directory and worked fine.

> Thanks,
> Andrew

-- 
Elbing

Please change your mailing lists to update my address to:
Por favor, cambia mi dirección en tus listas de mailing y actualízala a:

elbingmiss@gmail.com

Re: [9fans] installing Plan 9 under Microsoft's free Virtual PC?

[Sascha Retzki]

> For the record, I got past the MBR problem by running under Windows XP
> (Not sure if that's necessary) and choosing the virtual file system as
> the boot device.
>
> Although I'm now in the 9660srv command, and it is unable to find the
> distribution on the CD. Is this an indication of a bad CD image? When
> I cd to various folders and lc I get an I/O Read Error. I can see the
> bootdisk.img in this folder.
>

Yes that sounds like a broken disk or similar. Btw, basicly the distribution is in /, so you can just browse to / and exit (and you end up in / when you start 'browsing') - but iirc you cannot just enter / because there is a mountpoint in front. (imho)

So the fastest method of selecting the distribution is to 'browse' and imedietly exit the little-shell.

> Thanks,
> Andrew