[9fans] Running Plan9 under Virtual PC

[9fans] Running Plan9 under Virtual PC

[Vincent van Gelderen]

Hello 9fans,

This may help people who are trying to
run Plan9, but find their hardware is
not supported.

Connectix has a product called Virtual PC,
which may be of help here. It is something
very much like VMWare. I've heard about
people trying to run plan9 under VMWare,
but not (fully?) succeeding. Probably
because of VGA troubles.

So trying to install plan9 under VPC seemed
a natural move, one which I've tried today.
It basically works, although I did not run any
real checks (other than run acme).


Advantages:

More people can run plan9 now, or at
least try it once.

You could run more than one installation
at a time on the same PC.


Disadvantages:

Everything is much slower, the install
on my PII-450 took over four hours.

Virtual PC costs $199, and the trial
period seems to have ended.



Conclusion:

It certainly does no harm to try, and I
can think of several meaningful applications
(laptop fileserver, painless install at work), 
but I personally will never remove my real Plan9 
setup in lieu of this emulated version.



References:

Connectix lives at http://www.connectix.com

I do a bit of explaining at my own site http://www.home.zonnet.nl/v-i-n-z/
which to some may be too terse, and for others more verbose.


Tips for the savvy:
  
Include 0xC00B5="VERSION 100" in TRIO64 section of /lib/vgadb
Delete partdisk's suggestions and do: a p1 63 2056320 (1GB should be ample)


Have fun!
Vincent

Re: [9fans] Running Plan9 under Virtual PC

[Matthew Hannigan]

Anyone tried or want to try plex86 or bochs?

RE: [9fans] Running Plan9 under Virtual PC

[Vincent van Gelderen]

I wrote:
> It would also explain why you can only
> let one guest PC be active at the same
> time. 

Wrong, this is configurable. Someday I'll
read the manual before blurbing...

This makes VPC immensely more useful.
But it still won't replace the real thang.

Regards,
Vincent

RE: [9fans] Running Plan9 under Virtual PC

[Vincent van Gelderen]

Russ Cox wrote:
> From: 9fans-admin@cse.psu.edu [mailto:9fans-admin@cse.psu.edu]On Behalf
> Of Russ Cox
> Sent: Sunday, August 19, 2001 3:22 AM
> To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
> Subject: Re: [9fans] Running Plan9 under Virtual PC
> 
> 
> I'm halfway through getting
> Plan 9 working under VMware 2.
> I fixed the ethernet driver last night
> and am pounding on vga.
> 

Good luck.

> How does Connectix work?  It looks
> like it does processor and hardware 
> emulation?
> 
> Russ
> 

The docs say the guest PC uses the
CPU in a native fashion. The rest
is emulated.

The technical info provided is pretty terse.
I am not really sure about this, but I believe
the Connectix people were originally in the 
Mac-business, also making PC emulators and suchlike.

That would explain their preference for
omitting technical stuff from the manual.
Philosophy: it works, you don't have to
know how. (Grudgingly, I have to admit
that it *does* work.)

It would also explain why you can only
let one guest PC be active at the same
time. This severely limits the possibilities
for a distributed OS like plan9.
I was looking forward to creating
a terminal, a cpu server, and a file server,
all in one go, but I am not prepared
to switch windows for every 9P message. :)



Keep up the good work,
Regards,
Vincent

PS.
wrap/inst-ing the updates is a lot
faster than the install.

Re: [9fans] Running Plan9 under Virtual PC

[Russ Cox]

I'm halfway through getting
Plan 9 working under VMware 2.
I fixed the ethernet driver last night
and am pounding on vga.

How does Connectix work?  It looks
like it does processor and hardware 
emulation?

Russ