Monday, October 25, 2021

Booting the plan9 installer in libvirt

After dealing with Unix and Linux systems for so many years, I wanted to have to have a look at Plan9, the post-unix operating system. I am using the 9front variant, which is the most active Plan9 variant. Booting an iso in libvirt is as simple as every Linux or BSD distribution as Plan9 supports the virtio-net and virtio-scsi virtual devices.

virt-install \  
--connect qemu:///session \
--name 9front \
--ram 512 \
--vcpus 2 \
--disk path=$PWD/9front.qcow2,size=4,bus=scsi,format=qcow2 \
--controller type=scsi,model=virtio-scsi \
--cdrom=9front.iso \
--virt-type kvm \
--os-variant generic \
--boot uefi  

Once the CD boots, just press enter to accept the detected defaults, which should work fine, expect for the screen detection: you have to choose vga or lcd otherwise the installer hangs trying to detect vesa modes.

On the iso is booted you land up in a live cd environment where you can install the OS. The environment looks at the same time similar and very different from Unix, which is where the challenge is !

No comments: