Talk:DistOS-2011W Plan 9

http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/

http://plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/installation_instructions/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs

http://plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/faq/index.html

http://lsub.org/who/nemo/9.intro.pdf

log

I'm going to log what I do here. Normally I'd do that in a text file and consult it after for my actual writing of a report, but this stuff is already on a wiki, so might as well get the whole process up here.

• Set up an old PC.
  • Celeron(R) CPU 240 GHz (Prescott ~~2004)
  • 224 MB DDR(1) RAM
  • 37.2 GB HDD
  • some kind of integrated graphics card I don't even know

• Test PC
  • It booted up to windows XP
  • Everything appears to work as it should.
  • Display, mouse, keyboard, CD drive, Ethernet port, etc.

• reboot
  • insert plan9 CD
  • shutdown
  • Computer makes horrible highpitched whine (probably 8 year old CRT)
  • reboot

• Failure
  • installation hangs within seconds
  • reboot again

• Success?
  • Plan9 startup
    • select install from this CD (confirm USB keyboard works and don't need to find PS/2 Keyboard)
  • Stuff flies by faster then I can see

• "USE DMA FOR IDE DRIVES [yes] ???
  • Google DMA
    • "Direct memory access"
  • Say Yes

• mouseport is (options):
  • Say PS2

• vgsize[640x480x8]:
  • 640x480x8
  • installer can't do graphical install
  • installation guide says to do in text mode, so doing that...

• installer asks to config File system
  • OPTIONS:
    • "Fossil - the new plan9 fileserver"
  • or
    • "Fossil+venti - Fossil + archival dump server
  • Going for the archival dump, because why not?

• Parting the disk
  • select the main (only) harddrive
  • can't do anything...no space
  • type ?
    • "d name - delete partition"
  • delete partition (Bye Windows)
  • select empty partition
  • partition it

• Prepdisk
  • "subdivide plan 9 partition"
  • The system plans out a "sensible layout"
  • 9fat 100MB // nvram 512 B // fossil 5.86 GB // arenas -29.33 GB / / isect 1.46 GB //swap 512 MB
  • looks good to me, confirm

• fmtfossil
  • "initialize disks on fossil server"
  • SYSTEM CRASHED

• restart...again
  • Turns out you can resume where you left off more or less.
  • redid everything up to telling it to go back into text only mode, went back to spot it froze

• fmtfossil
  • "initialize disks on fossil server"
  • select the fossil location
  • says done and goes back to main menu. Not sure what that was about.

• mountfs
  • Selected the file system
  • some directories are created.

• configDist or download
  • choose a source of the distribution archive or download a distribution archive
  • I haven't plugged in an ethernet cable so I do the former.
  • I tell it it's local and it goes back to the menu.

• mountdist
  • since I didn't download an Archive, I've gotta get one from the install disk
  • I'm fairly certain it's the CD's root, and the installation says it probably is so I select that.
  • The installer goes back to the menu

• fmtventi or copydist
  • initialize the archive server disks or copy distribution into file system
  • select fmtventi
  • select the already created area and index partitions.
  • it formats the archive, back to menu

• copydist
  • Starts copying distribution into file system.
  • A progress bar chugs along slowly
  • finishes in ~10 minutes. No idea what happened in that time, nothing other then progress bar shown.
  • back to menu

• bootsetup
  • "Create a boot floppy or configure hard disk to boot plan 9"
  • I THINK I have floppies somewhere, but no, lets configure the hard disk.
  • given a list of options to either integrate with a windows boot manage (oops overrode that)
  • or to boot from floppy or make plan9 the default.
  • choose plan9 as default.
  • it tells me it would rather use someone elses boot manager if it exists. Oh well it doesn't you'll have to install your own.
  • finishes instantly, reloads menu

• Finish
  • Only option in menu is to finish and reboot.
  • Installer says remove disk and manually turn off computer.
  • done install??

• first boot
  • more text flies by. Asks me to login. Default is none.

That gets me nowhere.

• • look at guide, says to log in as glenda. do so.
  • Still can't do much, going to have to follow guide
  • everything keeps Breaking no matter what I do.
  • Switching to a virtual machine. There better be a way to get virtual machines to talk to each other as I want a network.

• Redo everything again in a virtual machine
  • Thanks to virtual box I can overcome constant crashing and freezing. Process is the same as far as I can tell, but the graphical interface is working now if nothing else. Graphical interface appears to just be same text as before in a '90s era box.
  • windows can be moved around, 2 of the windows split the previously viewed text and another seems to show the system doing stuff.

• first boot in VM
  • log in as "Glenda" apparently the default login user
  • load into a fairly simple system of windows.
  • stuff for monitoring the system, a help window navigation window.

• new user
  • Followed the commands on the guide and I think I made a new user. will log in to it later.

• edit plan9.ini
  • edited plan9.ini to change screen resolution from 600*480 to 800*600
  • apparently that worked.

• tried to log in as new user instead of default user
  • sort of worked, can't get the windows back but I'm somewhere at least.
  • going to try to set up another box as a terminal to the main box.

• setting up a terminal
  • does not appear to be easy. at all. I'm not even sure if I'll get a terminal, but I'd be content if two machines could talk.