Showing posts with label plan9. Show all posts
Showing posts with label plan9. Show all posts

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 !