Dual booting bare machine and vmware D1099367633 Aglenda (66.183.189.46) #I run my Plan 9 terminal off of a second hard drive. The primary #drive holds my linux partitions. Much of the time I run Plan 9 from #a vmware virtual machine, but have occasion to boot straight to Plan #9 occasionally. My linux boot loader (grub) allows me to boot Plan 9 #from a menu selection, but usually defaults to linux. # #I started by booting my virtual machine the obvious way - expose #both drives to the VM, and select to boot Plan 9. Trouble comes up #when I miss the time-out though: it tries to boot linux again from #the same disk it's already running on - a risky proposition at the #best of times. # #The next fix to try was to use the secondary drive as the primary #drive of the VM, but this falls apart because fossil encodes the #partition identifier on the file system itself. # #The simple solution (thanks to Takeshi Yamanashi) was to build a #small virtual hard drive in VMWare, and to pre-load it with a master #boot record and 9fat file system; I have to remember to update #kernels in two places (there and on my secondary drive for cold- #bootin) but it works like a charm. # #To make such a file system, use VMWare to add a new (small! 0.1Gig #is plenty!) disk to a Plan 9 virtual machine that already boots. #Boot your vm, and check what the new drive is called: # #! prompt% ls -d /dev/sd?? #! /dev/sdC0 #! /dev/sdC1 #! /dev/sdD0 # #In my case the new drive was /dev/sdC1 - corresponding to ide0:1 in #my vmware machine. # #Now you have to give that partition a master boot record, fdisk it, #prep it, and format it. Before going any further, mount your dos #partition: # #! prompt% 9fat: # #or else you'll have to go digging for 9load, a kernel, and your #plan9.ini if you wait until you've built the 9fat we're going to put #together (you can mount the 9fat drive later, but the 9fat: script #fails when there is more than one 9fat partition available) # #Now we can start prepping the new virtual partition: # #WARNING: # #If you hit the wrong partition with these commands you *will* do #damage to your system. In my example I'm using sdC1 - that might not #be yours! # #So to start we give the new disk an MBR: # #! prompt% disk/mbr -m /386/pbs /dev/sdC1/data # #Then we fdisk it, making one large plan9 partition: # #! prompt% disk/fdisk -baw /dev/sdC1/data # #Next we prep it to make a 9fat sub-partition: # #! prompt% disk/prep -bw -a9fat /dev/sdC1/plan9 # #And finally we format the new partition, telling format to add the #9load, kernel, and plan9.ini files. I used the files from my working #boot partition; the order you specify these in matters - 9load has #to be first. See prep(8) for the other options: # #! prompt% disk/format -b /386/pbs -d -r 2 /dev/sdC1/9fat /n/9fat/9load /n/9fat/9pcf /n/9fat/plan9.ini # #You can, of course, use whatever kernel you want - 9pcf just happens #to come with the distribution. You can also add more files to the #list (including more kernels), although once the new 9fat fs is #built, you can just mount it and copy more files there. # #I hope this works for you as well as it did for me. # #Paul Lalonde (plal[nospam]onde@[noise]telus.net) - November 1, 2004