Re: [9fans] Serious Problem Running Plan 9 on Virtual PC

[erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>]

> First of all, lots of thanks for taking the time to help.

you're welcome.

> Then, I really understand very little, if any, of computer hardware and/or
> systems programming. Given that, I dare ask a naive question: Could the
> problem be because of running a "32-bit virtual machine" on a "64-bit OS?"

likely not.  i think it is more likely a bug in the vm or a bug in plan 9.
(that really narrows it down, doesn't it?)

> Right now, I think one way to test any ideas is for me to boot into the
> live system and somehow try to access the virtual hard disk. I would be
> grateful if someone would instruct me on any diagnostic procedures and/or
> various access methods from the live system. Things equivalent to the
> UNIX/Linux mount, mkfs, and fsck.

it's not clear that simple io to your virtual disk works.  you could
open a window in the installer and use
	; cat /dev/sdctl
to give you information on this disks in your system.  this information
is going to be interesting.  then you can try  (where XX is likely C0
on your machine)
	dd -if /dev/sdXX/data -of /dev/null -bs 8k
if that works, then you might want to try a write test
	dd -if /dev/sdXX/data -bs 512k |
		dd -of /dev/sdXX/data -bs 8k
this may destroy your installed image.

if any of these steps barf, you may want to fiddle with the dma
settings on sdXX:
	dmaon

- erik