Re: [9fans] Bootsetup will not create floppy

[Joshua Wood <josh@utopian.net>]

>> Seems like there would be an option number:
>>
>> 3) Make a boot floppy, as discussed in update(8) and esp. the
>> EXAMPLES subhead in prep(8).
>>

My advice above is not directly useful to you. As Eric pointed out,  
9load + 9pcf.gz won't fit together on a 1.44MB floppy. I just didn't  
see his message before sending mine, and hadn't thought about putting  
a fossil kernel on a floppy. My apologies for the misdirection.

As Erik also notes, fossil systems generally boot not from floppy,  
but from the 9fat partition on a hard disk.

>
> Hi, CD drive is now sdD0, installed again but got the same error  
> message on attempting to create boot floppy.
>
> Downloaded plan9.flp.gz, on attempting to decompress got the  
> following error:
> gunzip: data stream error
> gunzip: plan9.flp.gz: uncompress failed
>
> Is the file on the server corrupt, or am I doing something wrong  
> (again!).

Plan9.flp.gz is an installer image -- basically what you already have  
on the bootable CD. I don't think it's appropriate for what you're  
trying to do, and I didn't recommend it. That said, while gnu gzip  
may not open it, plan9 gzip(1) will (from your live cd); windows 7zip  
will too, by my test. So I don't believe it's corrupt on the server.

> One last thing, perhaps I should have mentioned. Plan 9 (on the  
> hard disk) is installed in the last 6 GB of a 40 GB disk, behind  
> Windows XP on NTFS, Windows is the active partition.

That's rather pertinent. There are messages in the list archives  
about dual-booting; I think /n/sources/contrib/rsc/mbr.bootmgr,  
``Smart Boot Manager,'' might help. I can't say I've tried it myself,  
beyond just now checking that it brings up a partition selection  
screen on boot, once installed as the mbr on a disk.

--
Josh