[9fans] Booting Plan9 after installation

[Russ Cox]

You should be able to boot your install floppy (the
same one you used to do the install, not a fresh one) and
the menu will be the same as it was at the end,
so you can make boot floppies, etc.

Is your Plan 9 partition more than 8GB into the disk?
Once you get booted from a boot floppy, you could try

disk/format -b /386/pbslba /dev/sdC0/9fat

to put in a PBS that can handle big disks. (This is supposed
to happen automatically when you install into a partition
that is far into the disk; I'm not sure why it doesn't.)

Russ

[Sascha Silbe]

On Mon, 14 Jan 2002 17:30:20 GMT, Russ Cox <r...@plan9.bell-labs.com> wrote:

> You should be able to boot your install floppy (the
> same one you used to do the install, not a fresh one)

The one I used to install refused to boot at all after the installation
(sorry, forgot to write down the error message, so I cannot give details).

> Is your Plan 9 partition more than 8GB into the disk?

The whole harddisk has only 4 GB. Here's the output of the Linux fdisk:

entropy:~# fdisk -l /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 132 heads, 63 sectors, 1018 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 8316 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 30 124708+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 * 31 271 1002078 39 Plan 9
/dev/sda3 272 1018 3106026 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 272 331 249448+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/sda6 332 399 282681 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 400 652 1051974 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 653 1018 1521796+ 83 Linux

> Once you get booted from a boot floppy, you could try

Seems like I have to start from scratch again. OK.

> disk/format -b /386/pbslba /dev/sdC0/9fat
I'll try that.
Thanks!

CU/Lnx Sascha

Registered Linux User #77587 (http://counter.li.org/)

[Joel Salomon]

Sascha Silbe <sascha-ne...@silbe.org> wrote in message news:<slrna46nis.kem.s...@cube.sascha.silbe.org>...

> On Mon, 14 Jan 2002 17:30:20 GMT, Russ Cox <r...@plan9.bell-labs.com> wrote:
>
> > You should be able to boot your install floppy (the
> > same one you used to do the install, not a fresh one)
> The one I used to install refused to boot at all after the installation
> (sorry, forgot to write down the error message, so I cannot give details).
>

> > Once you get booted from a boot floppy, you could try
> Seems like I have to start from scratch again. OK.
>
> > disk/format -b /386/pbslba /dev/sdC0/9fat
> I'll try that.
> Thanks!
>
> CU/Lnx Sascha

I have a very similar problem on my pc (trying to boot plan 9 from
grub). I have evaded the problem thus far by using the win98 boot
method, but I'd _really_ like to get grub to boot plan 9 directly.
This is to a large extent a grub problem - but - without using the
plan9 boot method (which wipes out the installed bootloader), the
9load , plan9.ini &ct. files are not on the 9fat partition at all!

I tried to use grub to _find_ my 9load on the windoze partition but
all i get is a "Inconsistent filesystem" error message from grub.

Has anyone managed to get plan 9 booted from grub?

Thanks,
Joel Salomon

[Russ Cox]

You can't finish the install without getting 9load
and plan9.ini on your 9fat partition. Grub should
keep its grubby hands off the 9fat partition anyway.

Make sure you've done the pbslba command I suggested
above, and then just tell grub to chainboot the partition.
It might work.

If it doesn't work, give up and use LILO, which is
known to work. In general, grub seems to need to know
too much about what it's booting.

Russ

[ni...@9fs.org]

What's more FreeBSD's booteasy will also boot Plan 9.

What is it that grub is unifying?

[Richard Miller]

> Has anyone managed to get plan 9 booted from grub?

Yes, I use grub to boot Plan 9 and Linux on a thinkpad.

The first sector of the 9fat partition contains /386/pbslba;
the 9fat fs contains 9load, plan9.ini and 9pcdisk.gz,
and /boot/grub/menu.lst (in the Linux partition) contains this entry:

title = brazil
root = (hd0,5)
chainloader = +1

-- Richard

[Russ Cox]

> What is it that grub is unifying?

Pain. More pain in one place.

[John Packer]

It seems to work fine on my machine (that is, not much more painful
than any other boot loader). Plan9 is on the first hard drive,
second partition. The settings are:

rootnoverify (hd0, 1)
chainloader --force +1
makeactive
boot

Joel Salomon wrote:
>
>
>
> Has anyone managed to get plan 9 booted from grub?
>

> Thanks,
> Joel Salomon

[Joel Salomon]

First of all, thanks to Russ and Richard. The disk/format command did
work except it also wanted a -x or -r 2. I'm now booting with grub's
chainloader, and it works. Grub's ability to find a particular linux
kernel image is the reason I'm using it, unified pain or no. ;)

Apparently, the 9load on the 9fat sub-partition is still not found. I
get PBS... Plan 9 from Bell Labs, a _long_ pause, then it finally
finds my 9load in /dev/sdC0/dos ( or some similar way of indicating
the fat32 partition, I'm conected via a different pc now ). mounting
the 9fat partition (on the /n/9fat provided- why isn't it mounted by
default like a fat32 partition?) and copying the 9load, plan9.ini and
9pcdisk.gz still won't cause the bot to happen from there. A minor
quibble, but still...

Thanks again,
Joel Salomon

[Fco.J.Ballesteros]

: Apparently, the 9load on the 9fat sub-partition is still not found. I

: get PBS... Plan 9 from Bell Labs, a _long_ pause, then it finally
: finds my 9load in /dev/sdC0/dos ( or some similar way of indicating

The long pause may be due to 9load looking at the fd device, at least
my 9load does so on certain fd devices. What I did on the machine
involved was to compile a changed 9load that does not look into the fd
device.