[9fans] 9legacy USB image boot problems

[9fans] 9legacy USB image boot problems

[Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM)]

Has anyone been having problems booting the USB image from 9legacy.org?
I tried installing it on a Supermicro 1U (2014 vintage) and the
BIOS refuses to acknowledge there is anything on the thumb drive.
The BIOS sees the hardware, and I have the boot preferences to pick
it first (#1 in BIOS mode and #2 in UEFI).

I have never had a problem with the older Supermicros not booting
something,  Is this really my hardware?  Or is something off
with the .img file?  I will try to boot it from a DVD, but not
until tomorrow ...

--lyndon

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Re: [9fans] 9legacy USB image boot problems

[Ron Minnich]

I just had a mysterious boot failure on a supermicro server, and it
turned out to be a USB stick that I've used everywhere for 8 years,
that the supermicro BIOS could not handle. Anytime this happens, my
first step is to try a different USB stick.

The supermicro BMC and BIOS stack was not great in this case, and I
think that's not unusual.


On Fri, Oct 24, 2025 at 6:13 AM Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM)
<lyndon@orthanc.ca> wrote:
> 
> Has anyone been having problems booting the USB image from 9legacy.org?
> I tried installing it on a Supermicro 1U (2014 vintage) and the
> BIOS refuses to acknowledge there is anything on the thumb drive.
> The BIOS sees the hardware, and I have the boot preferences to pick
> it first (#1 in BIOS mode and #2 in UEFI).
> 
> I have never had a problem with the older Supermicros not booting
> something,  Is this really my hardware?  Or is something off
> with the .img file?  I will try to boot it from a DVD, but not
> until tomorrow ...
> 
> --lyndon

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Re: [9fans] 9legacy USB image boot problems

[Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM)]

Ron Minnich writes:
> I just had a mysterious boot failure on a supermicro server, and it
> turned out to be a USB stick that I've used everywhere for 8 years,
> that the supermicro BIOS could not handle. Anytime this happens, my
> first step is to try a different USB stick.

I used the same USB stick to install FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and
OpenIndiana on other instances of the same model, so that's
not it.

--lyndon

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Re: [9fans] 9legacy USB image boot problems

[Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM)]

It gets stranger.  The DVD boots, but the stage1 loader enumerates
all the disks (sdE[0-3] sdF[01]) and for each it complains

        dosinit: can't open #S/sdXX/plan9

The sdF[01] devices are the two internal drives.  I'm not sure why
it sees four sdE* devices as there is only one USB DVD drive attached
(assuming sdE* is referring to the DVD -- that part of the device
enumeration scrolls off the screen before I can read it).

I'm starting to think the problem is Supermicro's lame BIOS.  They
always seem to do the least amount of work they can, and we've run
into their braindamage before.

I guess the next step is to try to get 9legacy installed as a VM,
and then try using that to bootstrap a network install.

I really wasn't looking for a project ... :-P

--lyndon

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Re: [9fans] 9legacy USB image boot problems

[hiro]

maybe try the 9front project

On Sun, Oct 26, 2025 at 10:30 PM Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM)
<lyndon@orthanc.ca> wrote:
> 
> It gets stranger.  The DVD boots, but the stage1 loader enumerates
> all the disks (sdE[0-3] sdF[01]) and for each it complains
> 
> dosinit: can't open #S/sdXX/plan9
> 
> The sdF[01] devices are the two internal drives.  I'm not sure why
> it sees four sdE* devices as there is only one USB DVD drive attached
> (assuming sdE* is referring to the DVD -- that part of the device
> enumeration scrolls off the screen before I can read it).
> 
> I'm starting to think the problem is Supermicro's lame BIOS.  They
> always seem to do the least amount of work they can, and we've run
> into their braindamage before.
> 
> I guess the next step is to try to get 9legacy installed as a VM,
> and then try using that to bootstrap a network install.
> 
> I really wasn't looking for a project ... :-P
> 
> --lyndon

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