[9fans] Some benevolent user...

[Ruben Berenguel]

... can spare some bandwidth and post a Qemu image of Plan 9 (2-3 Gb, cow, raw, whatever, but compress it so I don't eat your bandwidth!) somewhere over the net? I could host it afterwards (provided it is not too big, I only have 15 GB/month in my VPS) to keep it available for other users.

Yesterday I fighted with qemu and the latest ISO, but to no avail. Hangs on copydist (waited ~20 minutes.) Tried with dma on, dma off, dma on for only CD and dma only for HDD, raw and qcow disk images (yes, I'm persistent. )Nothing. Nada. Sigh! It was easier to install in my old TravelMate (though no ethernet after doing it, should have checked before so not to be disappointed.)

I can boot perfectly the 9queen/9worker images recently posted related to the ANTS project, but I'm still too new to Plan9 to understand their need or use, so I'd rather have a normal image to play with (although having a 16mb working image is impressive, and works great with drawterm)

Thanks in advance,

Ruben

[m***@sphericalharmony.com]

Post by Ruben Berenguel
I can boot perfectly the 9queen/9worker images recently posted related
to the ANTS project, but I'm still too new to Plan9 to understand
their need or use, so I'd rather have a normal image to play with
(although having a 16mb working image is impressive, and works great
with drawterm)

I'm glad the images work for you, and I understand wanting a default
copy. However, if you boot 9queen and choose option "1" the boot
takes you to the standard environment and the system should behave in
the normal way. It is also possible to boot the original 9pcf kernel
instead of 9pcram. The 9queen image was made directly from the
current Bell Labs clean install from the .iso, and you can ignore the
ANTS-related software entirely if you wish. I'm sorry I can't offer
to upload a completely clean copy of the image but I believe you can
use the 9queen as a standard install without the added software
interfering. You would want to change/delete the default password of
"rootless" though by resetting the nvram.

I'm not sure what the issue with your install would be, because it
seems like if the Qemu images are booting and working for you, the
install should work ok too. If you boot a qemu image, are you able to
save files to the qemu disk normally, so read/write inside the VM
works normally, it is just that installation fails?

Ben Kidwell
"mycroftiv"

[Kurt H Maier]

Post by Ruben Berenguel
Hangs on copydist (waited ~20 minutes.)

I've seen copydist take longer than this on underpowered or incorrectly
configured systems. The way it performs the copy is an unmitigated seek
festival. On one of my machines it took a little over an hour; this is
why I'm grateful for cinap's virtio driver, which cut that time in half.

khm

[Rubén Berenguel]

Ben: Yup, I can write perfectly on your generated images, so it's not a
problem with qemu. I thought the correct boot option would be 5, but then
I'll use 9queen and then sooner or later I'll see if I can understand
everything else is there, Plan9 is relatively complex in its namespace
stuff (coming from a mostly Linux/Mac OS background) and ANTS is...
complex, although your use cases look very interesting & appealing :). And
also, if it works, why break it :)? I have a working image!

Kurt: My system is an old Macbook (Early 2008 IIRC, underpowered by today's
standards but it's relatively okay) but qemu in general works relatively
well, and once an image works and is booted works perfectly. So I'm
guessing it's some problem with my qemu build (1.4.0) tied with some way
Plan9 tries to write to disk. Or not, it's quite puzzling.

Thanks!

Ruben

Post by Kurt H Maier

Post by Ruben Berenguel
Hangs on copydist (waited ~20 minutes.)

I've seen copydist take longer than this on underpowered or incorrectly
configured systems. The way it performs the copy is an unmitigated seek
festival. On one of my machines it took a little over an hour; this is
why I'm grateful for cinap's virtio driver, which cut that time in half.
khm

[m***@sphericalharmony.com]

Post by Rubén Berenguel
Ben: Yup, I can write perfectly on your generated images, so it's not
a problem with qemu. I thought the correct boot option would be 5,
but then I'll use 9queen and then sooner or later I'll see if I can
understand everything else is there, Plan9 is relatively complex in
its namespace stuff (coming from a mostly Linux/Mac OS background) and
ANTS is... complex, although your use cases look very interesting &
appealing :). And also, if it works, why break it :)? I have a
working image!

Let me give you a little more info so you will know exactly how the
9queen was created from the standard install and can change anything
back to the original that you wish.

The 9queen was created by installing the default config from the
installer, then running two scripts from the ants directory. "build
isoinstall" installs the ANTS software, but doesn't change the config.
The config changes are done by the script cfg/stockmod - and it keeps
the old versions of what it changes at foo.old. So the old versions
of the changed files are at:

/usr/glenda/lib/profile.old
/rc/bin/termrc.old
/rc/bin/cpurc.old
/rc/bin/fshalt.old

The stockmod script also reduces the number of service listeners on
cpu servers and also tells the disk fossil server to listen on port
564. So, if you want, you can reverse all these minor changes and
restore the 9queen image to the original defaults. You are right also
about booting if you prefer to use the original Bell Labs kernel and
bootup - that is option 5 on the boot menu.

The 9queen image is intended to be completely compatible with
everything in the default Bell Labs distribution, so if you are using
the 9queen image and find anything that doesn't work, I would like to
hear about it so I can fix the bug. I hope you have an enjoyable
journey into the world of Plan 9!

Ben Kidwell
"mycroftiv"