[9fans] Plan 9 on ESX?

[David Leimbach]

Anyone doing this? I've had a crazy, no ZANY, notion of running ESX as my
host OS, then spinning up all the various windows, freebsd, or Plan 9's
that I need as necessary on my work workstation.

Dave

[c***@gmx.de]

not sure if one can compare esx and vmware player,
but vmware itself works just fine with plan9 as long
as you are not trying to call vesa bios. (works fine
with realemu)

--
cinap

[Adrian Tritschler]

I sort of half tried on one of the dev. ESX boxes at work -- probably
three or four year ago, got it as far as hanging part way through the
install CD boot sequence and then someone said "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
and I quickly pretended it was a work-oriented linux box and removed
it shortly afterwards.

Anyone doing this?  I've had a crazy, no ZANY, notion of running ESX as my
host OS, then spinning up all the various windows, freebsd, or Plan 9's that
I need as necessary on my work workstation.
Dave

[c***@gmx.de]

do you remember what actually hung? the file transfer?

--
cinap

[erik quanstrom]

Post by Adrian Tritschler
I sort of half tried on one of the dev. ESX boxes at work -- probably
three or four year ago, got it as far as hanging part way through the
install CD boot sequence and then someone said "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
and I quickly pretended it was a work-oriented linux box and removed
it shortly afterwards.

that sounds familiar. the ide interface had a bogus check for a bit
that's not valid in atapi.

- erik

[Skip Tavakkolian]

I have a Plan 9 VM on an ESX (it's currently dormant). With a Lab
Manager front end, it has to run as a template -- not a "published" VM
-- because Plan9 doesn't support the VMware tools. I didn't dig into
this to see if this is because of local administration policies (the
ESX is not managed by me), or if the guest tools are required by the
Lab Manager interface. I do recall that I had to change the disc type
(two different types were offered, if I recall) in order to install
it.

-Skip

On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 9:38 PM, erik quanstrom

Post by Adrian Tritschler
I sort of half tried on one of the dev. ESX boxes at work -- probably
three or four year ago, got it as far as hanging part way through the
install CD boot sequence and then someone said "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
and I quickly pretended it was a work-oriented linux box and removed
it shortly afterwards.

that sounds familiar.  the ide interface had a bogus check for a bit
that's not valid in atapi.
- erik

[Lucio De Re]

Post by Adrian Tritschler
I sort of half tried on one of the dev. ESX boxes at work -- probably
three or four year ago, got it as far as hanging part way through the
install CD boot sequence and then someone said "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
and I quickly pretended it was a work-oriented linux box and removed
it shortly afterwards.

Plan 9 fails if it thinks there's a CD-ROM in its VM. Something in
VMware confuses it and no one has looked deep enough to fix it. It
works extremely well in many other respects.

I know I can blow the NetBSD VM by feeding it too much FTP traffic
(I'm stuck in a NetBSD 3.1 time warp, so fixing it is just not about
to happen), I don't use the Plan 9 server frequently enough to know
how robust it is. So far there have been no problems.

++L

[Richard Miller]

Post by Lucio De Re
Plan 9 fails if it thinks there's a CD-ROM in its VM

Is this still the case? I just tried vmware fusion 3.13 and
Plan 9 boots OK, both with virtual cdrom and with real host
device.

[Richard Miller]

Post by Richard Miller
vmware fusion 3.13

sorry, 3.1.3

[Lucio De Re]

Post by c***@gmx.de
(works fine
with realemu)

Thanks, Cinap, that's very reassuring.

9front under ESX (VMware player in your case)?

++L

[Lucio De Re]

Post by erik quanstrom
that sounds familiar. the ide interface had a bogus check for a bit
that's not valid in atapi.

Is that now fixed in the release distribution? Or only in 9atom?

++L

[erik quanstrom]

Post by Lucio De Re

Post by erik quanstrom
that sounds familiar. the ide interface had a bogus check for a bit
that's not valid in atapi.

Is that now fixed in the release distribution? Or only in 9atom?

sadly, no it has not been fixed in the distribution. in 9pload sdata.c/^atapktio\(
after the first ata ready, comment out the || (as&Chk). that's bogus.

- erik

[c***@gmx.de]

huh?

i thought you ment that pktio waiting for Drdy to clear even tho:

"ATA Packet Commands can be issued regardless of the state of the DRDY Status Bit."

and why in 9load?

--
cinap

[c***@gmx.de]

s/clear/set/g

--
cinap

[erik quanstrom]

Post by c***@gmx.de
"ATA Packet Commands can be issued regardless of the state of the DRDY Status Bit."

good point. it was the Clr bit that was causing issues, though.

Post by c***@gmx.de
and why in 9load?

why wasn't it put into 9load? i guess it was a mistake, but i don't know.
i removed the Clr check from 9load here.

- erik

[Lucio De Re]

Post by David Leimbach
Anyone doing this? I've had a crazy, no ZANY, notion of running ESX as my
host OS, then spinning up all the various windows, freebsd, or Plan 9's
that I need as necessary on my work workstation.

I have an ESX based server at home, but it's too noisy (nothing to do
with ESX, of course) to run continuously, right now. I have plans to
fix that.

I have another ESX server running as a production server at a hosting
site.

Not a workstation, of course. And for some reason I can't run two
NetBSD instances on the home server where I tried it. Might be
something I don't understand. No Windows, that would be no good on a
server in my case.

I don't know, ESX seems really good, but it has its drawbacks.
Needing a Windows console to manage it might be the greatest of these
in a workstation situation.

++L

[erik quanstrom]

Post by Lucio De Re
I don't know, ESX seems really good, but it has its drawbacks.

like conceptually being a much bigger moving part than running
a server for the purpose. seriously, you can have an atom server
for less than the cost of an esx license.

having no other need for esx, of course.

- erik

[Skip Tavakkolian]

That was my conclusion too.

But it would be useful if it worked; ESX is somewhat common in larger
IT/corporate environments since most servers (not in the Plan 9 sense)
are usually idle.

Post by erik quanstrom

Post by Lucio De Re
I don't know, ESX seems really good, but it has its drawbacks.

like conceptually being a much bigger moving part than running
a server for the purpose.  seriously, you can have an atom server
for less than the cost of an esx license.
having no other need for esx, of course.
- erik

[Aram Hăvărneanu]

Post by erik quanstrom
seriously, you can have an atom server
for less than the cost of an esx license.

Less than free? ESXi is free.

[erik quanstrom]

Post by Aram Hăvărneanu

Post by erik quanstrom
seriously, you can have an atom server
for less than the cost of an esx license.

Less than free? ESXi is free.

esxi != esx. they're very different products. (and even esxi requires
more hardware for the same job.)

the attaction for many people to using esx is that many it departments
have it. they don't have esxi.

esxi is also close to the worst of both worlds. all the complications
of virtualization, without what i see as the real benefit—vmotion.
(live migration.)

- erik

[Aram Hăvărneanu]

esxi != esx.  they're very different products.  (and even esxi requires
more hardware for the same job.)
the attaction for many people to using esx is that many it departments
have it.  they don't have esxi.

You missed the news, ESX as it used to be is no more, 4.1 was the last
release. ESXi is the thing people use now. The "enterprise" feature os
ESX that were unavailable in ESXi are in a VMware Infrastructure
(VSphere/VMotion).

esxi is also close to the worst of both worlds.  all the complications
of virtualization, without what i see as the real benefit—vmotion.
(live migration.)

VMotion is now simply an add-on product to ESXi, but yes, I agree with
your point.

[Aram Hăvărneanu]

Post by Aram Hăvărneanu
You missed the news, ESX as it used to be is no more, 4.1 was the last
release. ESXi is the thing people use now. The "enterprise" feature os
ESX that were unavailable in ESXi are in a VMware Infrastructure
(VSphere/VMotion).

s/os/of/

Also: http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/esxi-and-esx/overview.html

VSphere 5 is only available for ESXi, not ESX.

[Steven Stallion]

Anyone doing this?  I've had a crazy, no ZANY, notion of running ESX as my
host OS, then spinning up all the various windows, freebsd, or Plan 9's that
I need as necessary on my work workstation.

Hi Dave,

Yes it's been done and it works fairly well, though you need to avoid
use of aux/vmware*. The biggest issue is that fossil tends to be
fairly unstable when mixed with sdmylex and use of more than one vcpu
results in some rather undesirable behavior of the spinning variety. I
have a kernel posted in contrib (contrib/stallion/386/9vmcpuf) for
exactly this purpose. The kernel is minimal, and supports etherigbe,
sdmylex, and a hacked up kfs to support longer filenames (NAMELEN is
56).

Installation is fairly straightforward if you're used to doing it
manually! If you're interested, let me know and I'll send out the
steps to install the current distribution onto kfs (same rules
generally apply for cwfs or any other file system). This might save
you a bit of time reverse engineering the installer.

I used this setup for about a year or so before finally cracking and
putting together an Atom system I keep racked in the closet. YMMV.

Cheers,

Steve

[Richard Miller]

Post by Steven Stallion
fossil tends to be
fairly unstable when mixed with sdmylex

Symptoms?

[erik quanstrom]

Post by Steven Stallion
Yes it's been done and it works fairly well, though you need to avoid
use of aux/vmware*. The biggest issue is that fossil tends to be
fairly unstable when mixed with sdmylex and use of more than one vcpu
results in some rather undesirable behavior of the spinning variety.

kfs certainly is a trusty warhorse. did you experiment with cwfs?

- erik

[Steven Stallion]

kfs certainly is a trusty warhorse.  did you experiment with cwfs?

Honestly I never found the time, but I remember it looked like a good
replacement.

Steve