[9fans] Install Advice Requested.

[Terry Wendt]

tlaronde - Thank you for the abstract you sent. It sent me to the
manual pages, which is almost always a good thing. In the prep(8)
online manual page, I found the following listed as a bug:

"If prep –p doesn't find a Plan 9 partition table, it will emit
commands to delete all extant partitions. Similarly, fdisk –p will
delete all partitions, including data, if there are no partitions
defined in the MBR."

Could this be what has been whacking my extended partitions?

Anyway, I'm going to do a lot more reading before a third attempt at
installing. I want to make sure everything is ready before jumping in
again.

Thanks,
Terry.

[Erik Quanstrom]

The wording might not be what was intended. Prep -p emits commands to build the sd(3) partition table in memory. Nothing is written to disk.

- erik

Post by Terry Wendt
tlaronde - Thank you for the abstract you sent. It sent me to the
manual pages, which is almost always a good thing. In the prep(8)
"If prep –p doesn't find a Plan 9 partition table, it will emit
commands to delete all extant partitions. Similarly, fdisk –p will
delete all partitions, including data, if there are no partitions
defined in the MBR."
Could this be what has been whacking my extended partitions?
Anyway, I'm going to do a lot more reading before a third attempt at
installing. I want to make sure everything is ready before jumping in
again.
Thanks,

[t***@polynum.com]

Post by Erik Quanstrom
The wording might not be what was intended. Prep -p emits commands to build the sd(3) partition table in memory. Nothing is written to disk.

Nonetheless, if things haven't changed, Plan9 can not be installed on an
extended partition; and will probably not install on a disk split with
GPT (but in this case, if there are extended partitions, this is not
GPT).

It is wise to read the manpages before doing an install, and maybe
recommended to use another fdisk to allocate a Plan9 partition (slice)
and let, afterwards, Plan9 installation scripts organize the Plan9 slice
without touching other non Plan9 partitions or the MBR.

Once more: if things haven't changed since I wrote the howto---if
the fat partition is set in the Plan9 partition, the scripts assume
that the installation is done. This could lead, if the installation
is interrupted after this step is done but before the installation
completes, to the inability to proceed with the rest of the
installation. In this case (if nothing is really set in the Plan9
partition) erasing the first two blocks of the Plan9 partition
should allow the installation to complete.