Re: [9fans] Can't find CD-ROM

["Eris Discordia" <eris.discordia@gmail.com>]

On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 09:52:19 -0000, Chris Saunders
<evas@mountaincable.net> wrote:

> Tried    QEMU but it wouldn't run on my system.  I'm running Vista
> Ultimate
> 64-bit and perhaps QEMU doesn't run on a 64-bit system.
>

That should not be a problem, I guess. My platform is Windows XP x64
Edition, essentially Windows Server 2003 64-bit Edition, on a P4 with
EM64T (similar to AMD64). And the 32-bit QEMU binaries have posed no
problem. There have been problems "emulating" Vista on QEMU, but none
running QEMU on Vista.

Please note that setting up QEMU may take a little bit of effort. The
procedure I went through was like this:

1. Install the QEMU 32-bit binaries using this installer:
http://www.h6.dion.ne.jp/~kazuw/qemu-win/Qemu-0.9.0-install.exe, no need
to install KQEMU drivers as they will not work on 64-bit Windows.

2. QEMU adds itself to your PATH environment variable. To check this, run
cmd.exe and type "qemu" (without the quotes, of course). If all is OK,
QEMU will run and output a help message.

3. Create a directory to store all your Plan 9 tidbits, with a short name
preferably as you are going to type it quite a few times, "C:\Plan9" for
example. Make sure you have at least 1 GB of space on the partition you
have created the directory in. I will assume you keep both the Plan 9 ISO
image and your virtual hard disk image in that directory.

4. Run cmd.exe (the Command Shell) and navigate to the directory you just
created. There, create a virtual HD image like this: "qemu-img create -fmt
raw mydisk.img 3G" which tells QEMU to create a VHD image in raw format
with a size of 3 GBs (I tried larger numbers at first, but they would end
up in useless files for no apparent reason). Now you must have the file
"mydisk.img" in your current directory. Double check by doing "qemu-img
info -fmt raw mydisk.img" and reading the output carefully.

5. Type and execute this at your command line: "qemu -hda "mydisk.img"
-cdrom plan9.iso -L "c:\Program Files (x86)\Qemu\pc-bios" -boot d" which
will run QEMU with "mydisk.img" as your VHD and the Plan 9 ISO image
(plan9.iso) inserted in your virtual CD-ROM drive. It will boot from the
ISO image. I have assumed that your QEMU installation is in "C:\Program
Files (x86)\Qemu" in which exists the "pc-bios" directory containing the
BIOS image necessary for bootstrapping the QEMU virtual machine.

6. If no other problems emerge, you will get to the Plan 9 install/live
system and do as you already know. Installation may take up to an hour,
because QEMU's disk emulation is (for reasons I do not understand) very
slow. When Plan 9 installation is done and the installer tells you it is
safe to turn off your computer, press [ctrl]+[alt]+[2] to switch to QEMU's
virtual console and therein type "q" to stop its execution.

7. Now, you may run the installed system with this command line: "qemu
-hda "mydisk.img" -L "c:\Program Files (x86)\Qemu\pc-bios" -boot c" which
boots the VM from the Plan 9 installation on "mydisk.img" and hopefully
gives you a working system.

8. To ease the task of running your system, you may want to put the
command line in (7) in a batch file and run that instead. For information
on QEMU, read the pretaining documentation which tell you all the
important things in a very clear manner. Have two things in mind, however,
first not to "turn off" the VM without giving an fshalt command to Plan 9,
second that all the VM's settigns (barring the most fundamental ones) can
be controlled by pressing [ctrl]+[alt]+[2] and getting to QEMU's virtual
console, where you may type "help" to get some help (that was obvious,
nah?). Pressing [ctrl]+[alt]+[1] takes you back to your running system.

9. Good luck.

10. The commandments are ten.

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