Re: [9fans] Installing plan9

[Jim Choate <ravage@einstein.ssz.com>]

Uzair,

Since you sent this both private and to the list I'll respond here.
Perhaps it will save some poor soul from having a nervous breakdown or
giving up.

On Fri, 6 Feb 2004, antiallergic wrote:

> I have been trying to install plan9 for quite a long
> but never experienced a single boot ! (for
> installation)

Just to give you a benchmark, I spent over a year looking for hardware
that would work with Plan 9.

I can say that the Dell OptiPlex GX1's seem to work out of the box and
surplus you can pick them up for about $50-150 US. It's the only 'out of
box' system that I've tried that worked without a problem across many
examples of the same 'model' of the computer.

Plan 9  is -very- sensitive to hardware and BIOS changes. I've got a pile
of S3 cards for example that should work but not a one of them will
because of either the onboard ROM or some other deeper hardware
incompatibility. I have a couple of others that do work and they have
different ROM's between them. There does not seem to be any rhyme or
reason to it that I can tell and I've probably looked at 200+ systems over
the last 4 years.

It seems to be very hit or miss. Hang in there, it will work out.

> Tried making a boot floppy (with plan9.ini) and also
> burning the ISO of 4th Edition. The ISO boots with my
> IBM ThinkPad T30 but wont go for its VGA.

My experience is that none of the T30's will work with P9. I had one when
I was working at IBM year before last and spent some time playing around
with it but even being internal it was hard to get info on the video
graphics.

The network card is the other hardware that will drive you absolutely
around the bend. For example, I have an original Novel ethernet board that
is supposedly compliant, ain't so.

I can say the easiest test of compatibility with regard to the video is to
stick the floppy in and if you don't get the install screen then move on
to another video board. I've talked several of the local used dealers to
let me drop by once in a while and test their laptops and such. The
results are -very- disappointing.

> Whereas I have purchased a PC according to compatiability list,

The hardware compatibility list is -worthless- as anything other than a
starting place. I've tried examples of every piece of hardware on there
and had them fail.

Don't trust it! As part of H18 I'm working on a better way to
differentiate hardware and hopefully make this tedious and very annoying
step go away. Unfortunately none of them will help you now ;(

> unfortunately it wont boot from the plan9 CD not from
> the floppy (it does support boot from CDROM, I have
> installed NetBSD on the same system), What I got from
> the boot on that PC is as follows ...
>
> PBS...Palan 9 from Bell Labs
> ELCR:0E20
> apm ax=f000 cx=f000 dx=40 di=100 ebx=ef50 esi=ffff
> dev A0 port 1F0 config 0C5A capiabilitie 2F00 mwdma
> 0007 udma 043F
> pcirouting: South bridge 1022, 740B not found
> Boot Devices: fd0 sdD0!dos
> boot from: _

Looks like a problem with the PCI buss chipset at first blush. I'd pass on
this hardware as well. But you can put in the two devices it shows on the
next to last line; fd0 or sdD0!dos. If you've tried both of these and they
don't work then it's not worth pursuing further unless you just want to.
I'd move on to some other hardware at this point.

> I think I am stuck here, I have read troubleshooting
> documents but what I can do at this "boot from" prompt?

If you're speaking of the dox on the P9 homepage, they are at least two
years out of date and full of errors. The dox that come with the doxed set
are even worse.

> Please guide me in this, looking forward for a
> positive reply.

Hang in there and try another box, and be prepared to try several more
combinations if you can. I would -strongly- suggest getting in contact
with a few local used computer dealers if you can. I've found them to be
quite receptive to my similar dilema and will generaly let me play around
with their products until I get something that works.

You can try your local user group but be prepared for a generaly negative
response.

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