From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: Date: Tue, 31 May 2005 05:49:34 -0400 From: Russ Cox To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] Plan9 installation In-Reply-To: <1568.24.6.25.223.1117542355.squirrel@www.infernopark.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline References: <1568.24.6.25.223.1117542355.squirrel@www.infernopark.com> Topicbox-Message-UUID: 586d2c8a-ead0-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 > - first, where can i get the latest cd image? can i get the latest one in > http://cm.bell-labs.com/magic/9down4e/ureg?haveread=3Dyes&exportok=3Dyes > or > "download the distribution archive" link of download section? or is that > both have the latest nightly build cd image? they're the same file and both the latest nightly build cd. > - bootsetup seems to get confused many times. i tried with CDROM image an= d > bootsetup reported errors like "null concatenation" or didnt install 9fat > contents properly or install plan9.ini config lines, etc. everytime i had > one problem or the other. somehow if 9fat already exists or the disk has > some previous data, bootsetup gets confused. it is difficult to predict > what exactly is happening. what is the reliable, predictable way of makin= g > bootsetup do its job? what is more, it doesnt do boot floppy creation > also. maybe a bug has been introduced. people have been working on the installer recently. installing plan 9 onto a disk already containing plan 9 is a tricky case and not often tested. > - i tried with another hard disk i had and then i was able to proceed wit= h > fossil+venti installation. it takes a long time but atleast i could > install plan9. i read that venti can work faster if arenas partition > sector offsets are multiples of 16. given that venti attempts to compress > 8k blocks, how good is this facility? will it still be beneficial? and > what about fossil? will it be good if it can be on a similar boundary? venti is slow for reasons other than bad sector offsets. i doubt very much that making the sector offsets multiples of 16 matters, since cylinder boundaries are so often odd anyway. the suggestion (which i think is my fault) was likely naive paranoia on my part. there should be a new venti by the end of the summer. i have it running a linux system at mit. i'm going to convert my home venti server over the summer and hopefully we'll convert the bell labs venti server too. the new venti code is at least 10x faster. > - a small routine could put arenas parition (and fossil, if needed) at th= e > facourable boundary in case of automatic paritioning. can we add the code > as needed to avoid manual work? i don't think the boundary matters. > - the floppy disk based installation seems to support only fossil (no > venti). is it because the code needed doesnt fit into the floppy disk? yes. > - after i started plan9, i just did "fsys main snap" in fossil console. i= t > went on for many hours (btw, i havent used fossil before). then i gave th= e > same command again (thinking this time it is going to just come back > saying "done"). but it is going on and on. what is strange, i even > rebooted the machine. still 'stats' says system is busy. i am wondering > what it is doing. any idea? it's probably saving the file system to venti. this can take a while, as we discussed on 9fans last month (look for a post by vester thacker). russ