[9fans] small vmware images

[9fans] small vmware images

[andrey mirtchovski]

Hello,

Every once in a while I need to run a full-blown (auth/cpu/file) servers
under vmware. So far I've been managing with copying the original vmware
image (1.2GB) to a new directory and booting it as a cpu server off a
running instance of the first vmware image...

This all worked fine, until I needed something like 6 cpu servers -- just
don't have that kind of spare disk space. So I created a very small (10MB)
vmware image that contains only the bare necessities to boot up from a
remote system and act as either a cpu server or a terminal:

	http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~mirtchov/p9/vmware/

It contains a 10MB 9fat partition and a 1 sector nvram image (download size
approx 3MB). 9fat contains a simple plan9.ini that will prompt you whether
you want to boot a 9pccpu or 9pcdisk kernel (you can edit this once you know
your network parameters).

You can find installation instructions and the images at the above URL. I'm
using vmware 3 under Linux, so there is a slight chance  you may not be able
to boot plan9 successfully -- email me if you have any questions.

If there's interest I may give you instructions (or an rc script) to create
those images yourselves: you'll need a brand new vmware image and a cdrom
with the plan9 bootable iso on it.

andrey