[9fans] 9atom on Dell Inspiron Mini 9

[Alexander Shendi (Web.de)]

Hello 9fans,

I'm planning to install Plan 9 on a spare i386 machine, a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook.

I have googled a bit and my best bet seems to be the 9atom distribution. However
the netbook doesn't have a CDROM and I would habe to buy an USB-CDROM-Drive.
Thus my questions:
* Has anyone tried Plan 9 on this or similar hardware?
* Can Plan 9 boot of an USB-CDROM?

Many thanks in advance for your help.

Best Regards,

Alexander

[erik quanstrom]

Post by Alexander Shendi (Web.de)
I'm planning to install Plan 9 on a spare i386 machine, a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook.
I have googled a bit and my best bet seems to be the 9atom distribution. However
the netbook doesn't have a CDROM and I would habe to buy an USB-CDROM-Drive.
* Has anyone tried Plan 9 on this or similar hardware?
* Can Plan 9 boot of an USB-CDROM?

the 9atom installer is a little too dumb to boot from a usb-cdrom.
i think what you'd really want is a bootable usb key. does that sound
right?

i don't think that will be too hard to build, if you think that'll do the
trick.

- erik

[erik quanstrom]

Right, a bootable usb-key would be fantastic. Can the 9atom installer
boot from one? Can I use one of the Linux or Windows based tools
to make one?

the plan 9 installer would need just a small amount of help to be able to
do this, i think.

i'll try to take a look this evening. i'll have to go get some usb keys.

- erik

[c***@gmx.de]

we didnt modify the installer specially for usb keys. instead, we just
made the boot process able to use a .iso file stored on a usb key as
its root filesystem. that way, theres no need to maintain another
install media. all one needs todo to get a bootable usb key with 9front
is just copying the iso to the fat on the usb key and make they usb key
bootable by adding a kernel, 9bootfat, pbs and mbr to it. the usb key
prparation can be done from any operating system.

also note, that this is not limited to usb keys. you can use a iso (or
paq) file on *any* drive with a fat partition on it. like one might have
no removable media on a machine at all, but still can prepare a fat
partition on the internal harddrive using linux or whatever to get the
installation started.

the biggest challange with usb boot is the usb itself. over a long time,
many problems have been found and resolved:

- broken bios
- broken mp tables preventing usb interrupts to work
- broken hci bios handover causing system freezes as soon as we
touch the hci controller
- some usb cdrom drives freezing up if you send it scsi inquiry with
allocation length different from 36 byte

--
cinap

[Alexander Shendi (Web.de)]

Post by Alexander Shendi (Web.de)

Post by Alexander Shendi (Web.de)
I'm planning to install Plan 9 on a spare i386 machine, a Dell

Inspiron Mini 9 netbook.

Post by Alexander Shendi (Web.de)
I have googled a bit and my best bet seems to be the 9atom

distribution. However

Post by Alexander Shendi (Web.de)
the netbook doesn't have a CDROM and I would habe to buy an

USB-CDROM-Drive.

Post by Alexander Shendi (Web.de)
* Has anyone tried Plan 9 on this or similar hardware?
* Can Plan 9 boot of an USB-CDROM?

the 9atom installer is a little too dumb to boot from a usb-cdrom.
i think what you'd really want is a bootable usb key. does that sound
right?

Right, a bootable usb-key would be fantastic. Can the 9atom installer
boot from one? Can I use one of the Linux or Windows based tools
to make one?

Post by Alexander Shendi (Web.de)
i don't think that will be too hard to build, if you think that'll do the
trick.
- erik

Many thanks for your quick reply.

Alexander

[David du Colombier]

Right, a bootable usb-key would be fantastic. Can the 9atom installer
boot from one? Can I use one of the Linux or Windows based tools
to make one?

This is not 9atom, but a bootable Plan 9 USB image can be found here:

http://www.9legacy.org/download/plan9-usb.img.bz2

It doesn't contain the kernel with the installer, but you
might install Plan 9 manually by doing something like:

http://www.9legacy.org/9legacy/doc/fossil/disk

It shouldn't be hard to add the installation bzroot to
the kernel booting from USB, and you don't even need
the Fossil file system.

[Nicolas Bercher]

Post by Alexander Shendi (Web.de)
Hello 9fans,
I'm planning to install Plan 9 on a spare i386 machine, a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook.
I have googled a bit and my best bet seems to be the 9atom distribution. However
the netbook doesn't have a CDROM and I would habe to buy an USB-CDROM-Drive.
* Has anyone tried Plan 9 on this or similar hardware?
* Can Plan 9 boot of an USB-CDROM?
Many thanks in advance for your help.
Best Regards,
Alexander

Note that standard Plan 9 runs well on atom based machine (Atom D410,
N10/ICH 7) with no (apparent) problems.

Nicolas

[pmarin]

See the 9front wiki:
http://code.google.com/p/plan9front/wiki/usbboot
Probably it only works for the 9front version of Plan9

On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 6:20 PM, Alexander Shendi (Web.de)

Post by Alexander Shendi (Web.de)
Hello 9fans,
I'm planning to install Plan 9 on a spare i386 machine, a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook.
I have googled a bit and my best bet seems to be the 9atom distribution. However
the netbook doesn't have a CDROM and I would habe to buy an USB-CDROM-Drive.
* Has anyone tried Plan 9 on this or similar hardware?
* Can Plan 9 boot of an USB-CDROM?
Many thanks in advance for your help.
Best Regards,
Alexander
--
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