Re: [9front] Re: 9front Boots Into "No Config" -- The Most Bizarre Error; Bypassing The Bootloader

[Jacob Moody <moody@posixcafe.org>]

On 7/27/23 16:37, Jay F. Shachter wrote:
> 
> Centuries ago, Nostradamus predicted that Jacob Moody would write on Wed Jul 26 19:55:07 2023:
> 
>>
>> "no config" is the boot loader telling you that it can not find the
>> plan9.ini file on the 9fat partition. You must have some old
>> (corrupted?) 9fat partition sitting around.
>>
> 
> I do not have an old 9fat partition sitting around.  I did, however,
> figure out how to get the 9front bootloader to work.  And then I found
> another way to boot 9front which is even better, but not perfect, and
> I will be asking the readers of this mailing list for help in making it
> perfect.
> 
> There is a small FAT filesystem, about 100 megabytes in size, at the
> beginning of the 9front disk slice (which is slice #14).  And this
> small FAT filesystem did, indeed, have a file on it named plan9.ini.
> The 9front bootloader couldn't find it.  The 9front bootloader
> couldn't find anything on that filesystem.  If, in response to the >
> prompt, you told it "bootfile=/9pc64" and then "boot", it couldn't
> find it.
> 
> The way I made the bootloader able to find things on the 9fat
> filesystem was by removing the bootable flag on primary slice #1.
> This is totally bizarre and makes absolutely no sense, but it was the
> thing that worked.  9front is on slice #14, and is nowhere near
> primary slice #1, and the invocation of the 9front bootloeader did not
> travel thru, or near, primary slice #1, but when I cleared its
> bootable flag, the 9front bootloader was able to boot 9front.  What
> makes this even more bizarre is that the 9front bootloader had worked
> in the past when the boot flag on primary slice #1 had been turned
> on.  But now it needed to be turned off.
> 
> This was not, however, a satisfactory solution, because turning off
> the boot flag of primary slice #1 rendered my ReactOS system
> unbootable.  ReactOS, which occupies slice #15, is booted thru a
> program called freeldr.sys that must occupy a primary slice with the
> boot flag turned on.  Don't ask me why it does this.  After ReactOS
> installed itself on slice #15, it also installed freeldr.sys and its
> configuration file, freeldr.ini, on slice #1.  Freeldr.sys refuses to
> work unless it is on a primary slice marked as bootable, so turning
> off the bootable flag on slice #1 -- which is what the 9front
> bootloader required me to do -- made it impossible to boot ReactOS.
> It's possible that I could put something in freeldr.ini that would
> enable freeldr.sys to boot /9pc64 directly, bypassing the bootloader,
> and that would solve my problem.
> 
> I didn't have to solve my problem that way, though, because /9pc64
> complies with the multiboot specification (I don't know if that was
> true before I moved to the hjfs filesystem, I didn't test it), and so
> does GRUB, so I am able to use GRUB to bypass the non-working 9front
> bootloader, and to execute /9pc64 directly.  All I had to do was
> introduce a 2-line menuitem into my GRUB configuration file:
> 
>   set root=(hd0,14)
>   multiboot /9pc64 bootargs=local!/dev/sdE0/fs user=glenda mouseport=ps2
> 
> I actually like bypassing the bootloader better than going thru it.
> When you bypass the bootloader you see the graphical user interface
> immediately, before the startup messages and before you are asked to
> state or confirm the bootargs.  I think that looks nicer.
> 
> The one thing I have not yet been able to do is eliminate the bootargs
> prompt.  I want to invoke /9pc64 in such a way that it is told
> everything it needs to know in advance, and doesn't have to ask me
> anything.  As you can tell from the kernel arguments in my GRUB
> menuitem, I tried to do that with the bootargs= argument, but it's
> not working, it still asks me to tell it the bootargs.  How do I
> eliminate the bootargs prompt when I boot 9front?  Thank you in
> advance for any and all replies.
> 
>                         Jay F. Shachter
>                         6424 North Whipple Street
>                         Chicago IL  60645-4111
>                                 (1-773)7613784   landline
>                                 (1-410)9964737   GoogleVoice
>                                 jay@m5.chicago.il.us
>                                 http://m5.chicago.il.us
> 
>                         "Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur"
> 

I believe something is terribly wrong with your disk for 9boot to
not be able to locate the fat partition.

Are you using an EFI partition table or an MBR? I assume you must
be using EFI if you are dealing in more then 4 partitions on a disk.
But in your previous mails you mentioned installing 9front in MBR mode.

Can you give me an entire explanation of how your disk is configured?

Also again, I will suggest and ask that you attempt to reproduce these
pathological issues on a drive that you're not sharing with 13+
other operating systems.

Thank you,
moody