how to do a (floppy) diskless plan 9 install
From: "Boyd Roberts" <boyd@fr.inter.net> Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2001 19:08:15 +0200 To: <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Subject: [9fans] [mw]e wise [USB floppy] magic in some fit of annoyance i pulled out old cd-rw backups (yeah, optical!) of my other viao [coma]. here is the message that russ sent me. i just re-installed plan9. qwerty typing on azerty is a bit sporty but i'm getting good at it. hats off to russ -- again! ---- From: "Russ Cox" <rsc@plan9.bell-labs.com> Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 01:15:00 -0500 To: <boyd@planete.net> Subject: how to do a (floppy) diskless plan 9 install Go to the web page, download a distribution floppy image. Write the distribution floppy to a disk [sic]. Copy the files off the disk into c:\, the root directory of your hard disk. (I apologize for the circuitous route; it's tremendously easier than any alternatives.) Edit c:\plan9.ini; add a line that says adisk=#S/sdC0/dos assuming you are using an IDE drive. If it's SCSI, use sd00 instead of sdC0. Similarly, change the line "bootfile=fd0!dos!9pcflop.gz" to "bootfile=sdC0!dos!9pcflop.gz". If the problem is that you have a USB floppy drive, you should be able to put the dist floppy in the drive and boot. It will load the boot loader from the floppy disk, but everything else from the hard disk. ---------------------------------------------------------------- ! at this point i had a dual boot system with '98, but read on ! ---------------------------------------------------------------- If the problem is that you have no floppy drive at all, download http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/ld.com and, from a DOS-only prompt (i.e., NOT a DOS window inside Windows, but when only DOS is running), type "ld sdC0!dos!9load". That should start the boot loader, which will load the kernel from your hard drive. Everything should proceed as normal from here. When you finish the installation, you will need to remove or rename c:\plan9.ini; otherwise the installation program will boot when you try to boot the newly installed system. If you run into trouble, let me know. Russ