3. Glenda, the Plan 9 Bunny
The logo above is scanned from the original drawing
of Glenda, the Plan 9 bunny, and appears on your
screen at roughly the size of the original
drawing. Renée French drew Glenda. When we
needed higher-resolution drawings, she made a
much larger drawing, which was
scanned, tweaked, and made into two versions, one
with a white background and one with a black
background.
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/glenda.html
4. DESCRIPTION
Plan 9 is a new computer operating system and associated utilities. It was
built by the Computing Science Research Center of Lucent Technologies
Bell Laboratories, the same group that developed Unix, C, and C++.
Plan 9 is a distributed system. In the most general configuration, it uses
three kinds of components: terminals that sit on users' desks, file servers
that store permanent data, and other servers that provide faster CPUs, user
authentication, and network gateways. These components are connected by
various kinds of networks, including Ethernet, specially-built fiber
networks, ordinary modem connections, and ISDN. In typical use, users
interact with applications that run either on their terminals or on CPU
servers, and the applications get their data from the file servers. The
design, however, is highly configurable; it escapes from specific models of
networked workstations and central machine service.
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/
5. History of Plan 9
Plan 9 from Bell Labs is a research system developed at Bell Labs
starting in the late 1980s. Its original designers and authors were
Ken Thompson, Rob Pike, Dave Presotto, and Phil Winterbottom.
They were joined by many others as development continued
throughout the 1990s to the present.
In 1992, Bell Labs provided the first public release of Plan9 to
universities. In 1995, a commercial second release version became
available to the general public. In the late 1990s, Lucent
Technologies, having inherited Bell Labs, dropped support for
commercial interests in the project. In 2000, a non-commercial
third release was distributed under an open source license. A fourth
release under a new free software license occurred in 2002.
Plan 9 was the first operating system with complete support for the
UTF-8 Unicode character set encoding.
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/about.html
http://pclosmag.com/html/Issues/201107/page09.html
6. FOUR MAJOR RELEASES OF PLAN 9
The first edition, released in 1992, was made available only to
universities. The first edition had most of the recognizable parts of Plan
9, including the kernel, ndb, sam, upas, alef, and full UTF-8 support.
Acme was present in an early form as help. The CPU servers were the
Sun Sparcstation, SGI Power, and SGI Magnum, with NeXTstations and
PCs as terminals. The locally built Gnot and Hobbit workstations were
also used as terminals.
The first edition was made available only for use by universities.
The second edition, released in 1995 in book-and-CD form, added
acme and a few smaller utilities. By the time of the second edition
release, the Plan 9 team was working on a reimplementation of the
system called Brazil. In 1999, in preparation for a third edition
release, Brazil’s name was changed back to Plan 9.
The second edition was made available to the general public at a cost of
$350 for the distribution, which included a license to use the software
throughout the organization.
7. FOUR MAJOR RELEASES OF PLAN 9
The anticipated third edition was released in June 2000, distributed for free over the Internet. It introduced
a new color graphics operator called draw and a new program connection mechanism called plumbing. The
distribution introduced a simple update manager called wrap to install packaged system updates.
Starting shortly after the third edition release, the Bell Labs team began a revision to the 9P protocol called
9P2000. Compared to the 9P used by earlier releases, 9P2000 removes some now-cumbersome restrictions
on name lengths, adds a ‘last modifier’ field to directory metadata, batches walk messages, and introduces
authentication files as a mechanism for moving the details of authentication protocols out of the 9P protocol
proper.
For the third edition, Lucent agreed to release Plan 9 for free via the Internet, under a new license, the Plan 9
License.
The fourth edition release, in 2002, introduced 9P2000 along with the associated security
agent factotum(4) and key store secstore(8). It also introduced the venti(8) block storage server. The venti-
based file serverfossil(4) made its debut in early 2003.
In addition to these programs, the fourth edition introduced a new mechanism for distributing updates to the
system. A public fossil file server, sources.cs.bell-labs.com, holds a current file tree which it serves to any
Internet-connected Plan 9 system. Changes to this fourth edition tree are made frequently, usually every day.
Clients run the replica(1) tools to keep their own systems in sync with sources. Nightly snapshots
ofsources, accessed via its dump file system, provide a convenient release history.
The fourth edition (the current one) is made available under the Lucent Public License version 1.02. Adopted
to address shortcomings in the Plan 9 License, the Lucent Public License 1.02 is identical the IBM Public
License 1.0 except that it does not require source code to be distributed with derived
works; it is non-viral.
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/about.html
8. Features Of Plan 9
Plan 9 has novel features such as
the 9P protocol for accessing local
remote resources as files
union mounts
an improved proc file system, and;
native unicode support throughout the system.
In Plan 9, all system interfaces, including those required
for networking and the user interface, are represented
through the file system rather than specialized interfaces.
9. Installation Instruction
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
These instructions are for a x86 based PC. See the Supported PC
hardware page.
Find an x86-based PC with:
>32MB of RAM
a hard disk with 300 MB of unpartitioned space and a free primary
partition slot
These are requirements for the installation procedure. A machine
with 16MB of memory and no free disk space at all will work fine as
a terminal net-booted but won't be able to run the installer.
If you wish to install from local media, you need a FAT file system
or a CD-ROM drive. If you wish to install over the internet, you
need a supported Ethernet card or a PPP dial-up account using a
modem.
10. Installation Instruction
SITE PLANNING
There is nothing magical about installing Plan 9. It's just a
matter of populating a Plan 9 file system (typically a fossil file
system) and arranging a bootstrap to eventually load a Plan 9
kernel that can use that file system as its root.
Once that initial file server is running, enabling authentication
and pxe booting (bootp and tftp) will allow all other local Plan
9 systems to load kernels from the file server and share its file
system.
If you find yourself reinstalling Plan 9 frequently, something
is wrong. This should not be necessary. In particular, there is
no need to give each Plan 9 system its own file system.
11. Installation Instruction
DOWNLOAD THE CD IMAGE
Download the ISO from plan9.bell-labs.com or from a local mirror. See
the download page.
BOOT THE INSTALLATION CD
(NOTE on vmware fusion for Mac OS X, you probably want to use SCSI
disks as the IDE emulation makes Plan 9 difficult to boot at this time. SCSI
on the other hand works VERY fast for booting and installtion)
Cold boot (power off, power on) your machine using your CD. You will be
given the choice of installing Plan 9 or just booting a full Plan 9 system
directly from the CD.
Booting the system directly lets you explore the system without installing
and also makes a good recovery CD.
The installer on the CD assumes that your CD-ROM is on the second IDE
master. If your CD-ROM is elsewhere, you will see the following error:
Unknown boot device: sdD0!cdboot!9pcflop.gz
Boot device: fd0
boot from:
12. Installation Instruction
IDE/ATAPI drives in Plan 9 are named like sdD0, where the capital letter is C for
the primary IDE interface and D for the second. The digit is 0 for the master and 1
for the slave. So if your CD-ROM is the primary slave, use sdC1:
boot from: sdC1!cdboot!9pcflop.gz
If you find yourself at a "boot from:" prompt or a "root is from:" prompt, it is likely
that the bootstrap program has not detected your floppy drive. See installation
troubleshooting.
You will be asked if DMA should be enabled for your ide drives, the default is
'yes', only answer 'no' if you had problems during the installation with DMA
enabled.
You will be prompted for a "mouseport"; if you have a USB mouse ignore this
prompt, you won't have mouse support during install, but that should be OK.
Last you will be asked for your vga settings, the default resolution is the safest
option and should be enough to run the installer, you can change this later once the
system is installed.
Note: If you know your videocard is not supported, answer "vesa" when prompted
for a monitor type.
13. Installation Instruction
BEGINNING THE INSTALLATION
If your video card and resolution is supported (or you selected vesa) the window system will
start.
Otherwise you will be dropped into a % prompt. To start the installer in text mode run:
% inst/textonly
The installer is the same in text and graphical mode, but graphical mode is a bit more friendly.
In graphical mode the window system (rio(1)) will display a grey screen with some windows.
The large upper window contains the install process itself. The window under it, is a running
log of what has happened. A statistics graph is in the bottom corner; the graph, from top to
bottom, shows system load, memory usage, interrupt rate, system call rate, context switch
rate, and ethernet packet rate.
Interaction with the installation program is textual and you don't need to interact with rio
during the install process. For systems with very small screens, you may find necessary to use
the keyboard's arrow keys to scroll the window up and down.
When you are prompted to provide information (e.g., an IP address) or asked to select from a
list of choices (e.g., the disk to use), the prompt will be of the form
Your choice (foo, bar, baz, quux)[quux]:
When there is a small list of possible answers, they will be listed in parentheses. If there is a
default choice, it will be given in square brackets and pressing enter will select this default.
14. Installation Instruction
The installation program is structured as a sequence
of tasks that must be performed; some tasks have
successful completion of others as prerequisites.
At each step, you will be shown the list of completed
tasks and the list of tasks that are ready to be done.
Task names appear in parentheses in the text that
follows. Typing <control-d> at any prompt will abort
the current task and return you to the main menu.
15. Installation Instruction
CHOOSE A FILESYSTEM
(Configfs) Fossil(4) is the Plan 9
fileserver. Venti(8) is an archival block storage
server. You may run fossil on its own or as a write
buffer backed by a Venti server. The primary value of
using Venti is to store daily snapshots of your
filesystem (see yesterday(1)).
Screen Shot
16. Installation Instruction
PARTITION YOUR HARD DISK
(Partdisk) First you need to setup a partition for Plan 9. If you want to boot Plan 9 directly or
via a boot loader like LILO or the Windows boot menu, you need to allocate a primary partition.
If you are content to boot from a floppy disk or from DOS via ld.com (see 9load(8)), you can use
a secondary partition.
The install process will scan your disk devices and give you a list of them, along with
manufacturer identification strings and the disks' partitions tables. For example:
The following disk devices were found.
sdC0 - WDC AC36400L
* p1 0 2709 (2709 cylinders, 19.53 GB) FAT32LBA
empty 2709 3266 (557 cylinders, 4.01 GB)
p3 3266 3807 (541 cylinders, 3.90 GB) BSD386
s4 3807 4367 (560 cylinders, 4.03 GB) LINUX
s5 4367 4368 (1 cylinders, 7.38 MB) LINUXSWAP
empty 4368 6201 (1833 cylinders, 13.21 GB) empty
sdD0 - IDE-CD ReWritable-2x2x63.014VO07982013140700210
Disk to partition (sdC0, sdD0)[no default]:
17. Installation Instruction
The Plan 9 names for storage devices have the form sdXX. The names sdC0 and
sdC1 are the master and slave on the primary ATA controller; sdD0 and sdD1 are on
the secondary, and sdE0, sdE1, sdF0, and sdF1 are on additional ATA cards. SCSI
devices are named sdNT, where N is the SCSI controller number and T is the SCSI
target number.
Once you have chosen the disk, you will need to create a Plan 9 partition. To do
this, the install process will run the Plan 9 fdisk program and let you partition the
disk. If the disk does not already have a Plan 9 partition, fdisk will suggest one by
creating (but not writing) a partition in the largest contiguous empty space it can
find. For example, you might see:
cylinder = 7741440 bytes
* p1 0 2709 (2709 cylinders, 19.53 GB) FAT32LBA
' p2 2709 3266 (557 cylinders, 4.01 GB) PLAN9
p3 3266 3807 (541 cylinders, 3.90 GB) BSD386
s4 3807 4367 (560 cylinders, 4.03 GB) LINUX
s5 4367 4368 (1 cylinders, 7.38 MB) LINUXSWAP
empty 4368 6201 (1833 cylinders, 13.21 GB) empty
>>>
18. Installation Instruction
Each line contains a partition name (p1, p2, p3, and p4 are the only valid primary names; s1, etc. are the only
valid secondary names).
Fdisk also shows the starting and ending cylinder, the size of the partition, and the type of partition. Note that
partitions include the starting cylinder but not the ending cylinder. >>> is the prompt. Typing h or ? at this
prompt will print the help message. In this example, the * next to p1 means that p1 is the active partition (i.e.
the one used when booting from the disk), and the single quote (') next to p2 means that the partition table
entry for p2 is different from what is on the disk; that is, changes have been made but not written. In this
example, fdisk has created p2 in what was previously unpartitioned space.
If you agree with fdisks' proposal, you need only type w to write the changes and then q to quit fdisk.
Otherwise, you can edit the table yourself, using the "a pN" and "d pN" commands to add and delete
partitions.
Create the Plan 9 partition and quit fdisk.
See prep(8) for more information on using fdisk.
PREPARE THE PLAN 9 PARTITION
(Prepdisk) Plan 9 partitions are further subdivided into named partitions. You need to use disk/prep to create
partitions named 9fat, fossil, swap and if you selected fossil+venti arenas and isect, disk/prep will suggest a
sensible layout.
Note that 9fat must be at the beginning of the Plan 9 partition in order to boot.
See prep(8) for more information on using prep.
FORMAT FOSSIL
(fmtfossil) You will be prompted for the fossil partition to format, which should have been created in the
previous step.
19. Installation Instruction
CHOOSE AND MOUNT THE FILE SYSTEM
TO INSTALL ON
(Mountfs) You will be prompted to choose a fossil
partition to install onto (and which will hold your
data). The default should be the partition you
formatted in the previous step.
20. Installation Instruction
CHOOSE HOW TO OBTAIN THE DISTRIBUTION ARCHIVE
(Configdist) Now you have to select where the distribution archive will be obtained from: local media or the
network. If you are installing from the CD select 'local' and skip ahead to the next section.
If you choose the network, you will be stepped through setting up an ethernet or PPP connection and then
downloading the archive.
If you are using Ethernet, you can enter your IP configuration manually or via DHCP. If you choose to enter
the configuration manually, be sure to have your IP address, network mask, and gateway IP address.
If you are using PPP, you will have to choose a serial device and connection method. You can choose to dial
and log yourself in or to have Plan 9 dial and use CHAP to log in (this is how the stock Windows PPP client
connects, for example).
If you choose to log yourself in, you will be dropped into a conversation with the modem. Dial, log in, and once
PPP has started, type <control-d>. You may need to type <control-m> rather than <enter> to get a response
from the modem.
If you use CHAP, the install process will prompt for a phone number (exactly as you would dial it
yourself, with any necessary prefixes; numbers only), user name, and password. It will then dial and initialize
the connection.
(Download) Once you have a network connection, run the download task to download the archive from
http://plan9.bell-labs.com to the file system mounted in the last step, in the directory /dist. If the download is
interrupted and you start it again, it will pick up where it left off. If you restart the installation program after
downloading the archive, you may need to tell mountdist where it is.
Once the download is complete, you may wish to run the task stopppp to hang up your PPP connection.
Similarly, stopether will deactivate your Ethernet connection
21. Installation Instruction
LOCATE AND MOUNT THE DISTRIBUTION ARCHIVE
(Mountdist) If you downloaded the archive, the install program has written it to /dist on your chosen
partition. The install program will run mountdist with this information for you, so you can skip to the next
step.
Otherwise, mountdist presents you with a list of FAT (DOS, Windows), ISO-9660 (CD-ROM), and Plan 9 file
systems that it can read. You must choose a file system and then point out the directory containing the archive.
The archive may be in one of three forms:
A bzipped CD image named plan9.iso.bz2. This is the file you obtain from the download page on the Bell Labs
server.
A CD image named plan9.iso. This is the result of uncompressing plan9.iso.bz2. If you store the uncompressed
image on a FAT file system beforehand, then the install program will not need to uncompress it, which will
save disk space on the file system.
The contents of the CD image, in a directory tree. This is the CD image itself, typically written to a CD.
When prompted for "Distribution disk" the usual value is /dev/sdD0/data (but your CD drive may be a
different sdXX).
Once you have chosen a file system, you need to point out the directory containing the archive. Type a slash-
separated path name relative to the root of the chosen file system. If you type ``browse'' instead of a directory
name, you will be dropped into a minimal shell that you can use to find the files. Specifically, the shell has
three commands: ``cd dir''; changes directories, ``lc''; prints a columnated list of files for the current
directory, and ``exit''. Once you are in the directory containing the archive (or if you give up the search), exit
the shell.
22. Installation Instruction
FORMAT VENTI (OPTIONAL)
(fmtventi) If you selected fossil+venti you will now be
prompted for the arenas and index (isect) partitions usually
created during the 'prepdisk' step, in that case the default
values should be all you need.
Note that this step can take a long time with slow disks or
qemu.
COPY THE ARCHIVE TO THE FILE SYSTEM
(Copydist) Once the archive has been located or
downloaded, selecting unpack will extract the distribution
archive to the newly created fossil file system. The log window
will display the name and size of each file as it is extracted.
This takes anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour depending
on the speed of your computer and disks.
23. Installation Instruction
CONFIGURE ONE OR MORE WAYS TO BOOT PLAN 9
(Bootsetup) The first time you run bootsetup, it initializes the 9fat configuration partition with the appropriate
bootstrap code as well as a modified version of your plan9.ini from the boot floppy or CD and a 9pcf kernel.
In order to boot into Plan 9, another bootstrap program must locate this partition, read plan9.ini, and boot the
kernel. There are a number of ways to make this happen, all selectable from the bootsetup menu. If you wish
to use more than one method, simply run bootsetup multiple times.
The boot methods are:
floppy. Create a boot floppy. In addition to a bootstrap program, the floppy will contain a kernel and a backup
of your plan9.ini file named plan9ini.bak, but will not use them. Instead, the floppy will load plan9.ini and the
kernel from your 9fat partition. To boot the kernel on the floppy (useful as a rescue mechanism if you trash
your 9fat partition), copy plan9ini.bak to plan9.ini and change the line bootfile=sdXX!9fat!9pcdisk to
bootfile=fd0!9pcdisk.gz.
plan9. Set the Plan 9 partition to be the active one (i.e. the partition booted by default). This is only useful if
you have installed Plan 9 on your first hard disk (for IDE systems, sdC0). You can always set another partition
active later by using disk/fdisk.
win9x. Edit the Windows startup menu to list Plan 9 as an option. Your c:config.sys and c:autoexec.bat files
will be saved as config.p9 and autoexec.p9, and then edited. A bootstrap program as well as plan9ini.bak and a
kernel will be copied to the directory c:plan9 (created if necessary). The procedure described above for rescue
works here too, but the bootfile should become sdC0!dos!plan9/9pcdisk. This may or may not work with
Windows Me. We have not tried it.
winnt. Edit the Windows NT/2000/XP boot menu to list Plan 9 as an option. This is only possible when your
``c:'' drive is a FAT partition, since the boot configuration must be accessible. Your c:boot.ini file will be
saved as boot.p9, and then edited. This will also create the file c:bootsect.p9, which the boot manager will use
to load Plan 9.
24. Installation Instruction
FINISH
(Finish) Choosing the finish task will halt the file system and print a
message saying it is safe to reboot your computer.
BOOT PLAN 9
Using whatever methods you configured in the bootsetup stage, boot Plan
9.
At the user prompt, type glenda. Logging in as glenda will bring up a
reasonable environment with some more descriptions of the system to get
you exploring. Once you've logged in and gotten used to the system to
create other accounts see adding a new user.
Note: if you have changed things so that your machine boots using a
plan9.ini on a FAT partition, rename it so that the new installation doesn't
get confused. The installation only edits the 9fat partition.
When you boot, look for the line
using sdXX!9fat!plan9.ini
It should say 9fat!plan9.ini; if it says dos!plan9.ini or
dos!plan9/plan9.ini, 9load is still finding your old plan9.ini and will be
confused.
25. Installation Instruction
FINISHING VENTI CONFIGURATION
If you have configured a fossil+venti system, you might now
get error messages like
ventiSend vtWrite block 0xa failed: not connected to
venti server
Your fossil does not know where to find venti. Make sure to
add the following line to your plan9.ini:
venti=/dev/sdC0/arenas
if you have configured your arenas on sdC0 - this should point
to where you have configured your arenas to be.
See plan9.ini(8) for details. To edit plan9.ini, run
9fat:
sam /n/9fat/plan9.ini
26. Installation Instruction
CHANGING THE SCREEN RESOLUTION
If you used the default screen resolution in the installation you will probably now want it
changed. The settings are contained in plan9.ini on the 9fat partition. To access it, run
9fat:
sam /n/9fat/plan9.ini
and modify the values for monitor and vgasize are desired. Monitor must be set to one of the
names defined in /lib/vgadb. Vgasize is of the form HRESxVRESxDEPTH. See Setting the right
monitor size and plan9.ini(8) for hints. If you make a mistake, boot Plan 9 off the installation
CD and edit plan9.ini as described above. Also note that many video devices are only supported
at a color depth of 8 bits or less.
SHUT DOWN
When you want to turn off your computer, you need to halt the file system(s) so that all
unwritten data is flushed to disk. (If you don't do this, the file system will perform a disk check
next time it boots and may or may not have kept the last few changes you made.) To do this type
fshalt
Then turn off the computer or type Ctl-Alt-Del or "^t ^t r" to reboot
Of course this is not needed for net-booted terminals, in that case it's safe to just turn off the
power.
27. Installation Instruction
SETTING UP CORRECT TIMEZONE
You might want to configure your system's timezone. Figure out in which timezone you are, and
then, assuming e.g. you are in the CET zone:
log in as user adm, then:
cp /adm/timezone/CET /adm/timezone/local
or you may need to create a new timezone information file e.g. /adm/timezone/India, by copying a relevant
file from the /adm/timezone files:
cp /adm/timezone/Japan /adm/timezone/India
sam /adm/timezone/India
After edititing, the above should show:
IST 19800 IST 19800
now you may:
cp /adm/timezone/India /adm/timezone/local
Last, but not the least, you may also want to edit/change the TIMESYNCARGS in your /rc/bin/termrc or
/rc/bin/cpurc; for example, to use an NTP service, set it to:
TIMESYNCARGS=(-n pool.ntp.org)
and reboot.
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/download/
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/installation_instructions/
28. Screen Shot
A multi-level MIME message containing a JPEG has just arrived; the structure of the message is visible in the Acme
mail directory on the right-hand side. The graphical programs displayed are: the mail announcerfaces(1), the system
statistics watcher stats(8), the text editor acme(1), the sky catalog scat(7), the image
viewer page(1) (showing glenda), and the window system rio(1). Acme is running Mail, which uses the mail file
system upas/fs(4). Acme is also editing the rules for plumber(4).
29. Screen Shot
The. After setting up the VirtualBox Plan9 VM, we begin by downloaded ISO image is a bzipped file that must be
uncompressed to get the resulting ISO CD imagebooting from the CD. You will see a plain text menu with the
option to install Plan9 or to run the OS from the CD. Choose the install option.
http://pclosmag.com/html/Issues/201107/page09.html
30. Screen Shot
The installation process will begin within a Plan9 GUI window as shown
below. Rather than show a screenshot for each step in the installation
process, I will summarize the messages given. The messages associated
with a step number are complete, along with the response that should be
given to complete that step.
31. Screen Shot
At this point, the installation will begin copying files to the
selected file system with a progress bar showing.
32. Screen Shot
Installation of Plan 9 from Bell Labs, GUI mode, 640x480x8 colour mode.
3 December 2011
own work, QEMU
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs_(Installation).p
ng
33. Screen Shot
Plan9 has entered a GUI environment, and we are
logged in as user glenda. The window at the front is a
set of help instructions.