Talk:DistOS-2011W Plan 9

From Soma-notes
Revision as of 02:44, 24 February 2011 by Nlessard (talk | contribs)

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.

Actual discussion and whatever else

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