Installing Plan 9 in a VirtualBox
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#NOTE: VirtualBox is not a very good choice. Behavior changes
#dramatically from release to release, with some working out of the
#box, some needing just the right settings, and some not working at
#all. You are highly encouraged to pick a different VM. VMware, qemu
#(with or without kqemu), kvm, and xen are all known to work better.
#
#See also: [installing plan 9 on qemu], [installing in xen],
#[installing in xen 3.0].
#
#Below are a few reports of an installation that worked. For people
#who are attached to VirtualBox for one reason or another, it might
#be useful to produce a table of "Plan 9 release date / VBox version
#/ host OS version" tuples with a brief description of the results or
#configuration needed. Submissions from users are hereby solicited.
#
#------------------------------------------------------ 
#From Richard Miller on 9fans, 2013-03-11:
#
#! Bell Labs Plan 9 and networking works well in virtualbox 3.1.8 using
#! Am79C973 virtual ethernet adapter in bridged mode, chipset PIIX3
#! selected and "Enable IO APIC" turned off.  (Maybe not the only usable
#! settings but these work for me.)
#------------------------------------------------------ 
#Under Virtual Box 3.0, selecting the ICH6 chipset rather than PIIX3
#or PIIX4, and deselecting all disks allows 9pccpu to run. AMD79C970
#Ethernet PXE boots reliably but the Intel Ethernet emulations don't.
#
#------------------------------------------------------ 
#I used a VirtualBox-4.1.10 for my installation on a Gentoo Linux
#host, to get a first look into plan9.
#
#The basic installation works out of the box, simply creating a
#VirtualBox System of type "Other", choosing a tiny splitter of
#memory (512M) and a little disk to hold the system (2G), which I
#decided to reside as a fixed size image.
#
#(Maybe I will do a video on howto setup that VirtualBox image,
#later).
#------------------------------------------------------ 
#
#ODDS AND ENDS
#
#Actually setting up a plan9 from the latest iso from the [Download |
#http://plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/download/] Page was quite
#simple.
#
# *	You have to choose an IDE Controller (which is the default) with
#	the VDI (VirtualBox Disk Image) as
#! IDE Controller
#!    IDE Primary Master:                  plan 9.vdi (Normal, 2,00 GB)
# *	And you use the unpacked and downloaded ISO Image as Secondary
#	Master
#!    IDE Secondary Master (CD/DVD):       plan9.iso (277,21 MB)
#
# *	I leave it to you to figure out and continue the installation
#	process, after booting the System and choosing to Install the Plan9
#	System, as most things just work as default or are documented
#	somewhere else ... until
#
# *	This one: It took me over a day of sweat, blood and tears to get
#	the network running. Actually the PCNet adapters don't seem to work
#	at all. I found just this one Network setting to be good:
#! Adapter 1: Intel PRO/1000 MT Server (Bridged adapter, eth0)
#
#where the `MT Server' version is absolutely essential, as the MT
#Desktop version does not work!
#
# *	After using ipconfig(8) the dhcp of my router box gave me a valid
#	IP in the local network and provided the plan9 client system with
#	valid DNS Servers in
#! cat /net/ndb
#! ip=192.168.122.6 ipmask=255.255.255.0 ipgw=192.168.122.254
#! 	sys=gnot
#! 	dns=192.168.1.3
#! 	dns=192.168.1.9
#
# *	I made that settings boot save by uncommenting the dedicated
#	(ip/ipconfig) lines in
#! /bin/termrc
#
#That's it folks. Let the games begin!
#
#------------------------------------------------------ 
#TO SETUP A CUSTOM VIDEO MODE
#
#VirtualBox provides a vesa display emulation to control video modes
#of the guest. You might observe, that your (modern) monitors
#resolution, i.e. 1680x1050x32 or 1920x1080x32, as in my case, are
#not supported.
#
#These are not originally vesa modes, which is a quite old standard.
#
#Luckily you are able to tune your host system to provide extended
#vesa modes for the guest. The method is described in the [VirtualBox
#manual | http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html], in the section
#“Custom Vesa Resolutions”.
#
#All you have to do is to set your custom modes as extradata options:
#
#! VirtualBox setextradata "VM name" "CustomVideoMode1" "1920x1080x32"
#! VirtualBox setextradata "VM name" "CustomVideoMode2" "1680x1050x32"
#! VirtualBox setextradata "VM name" "CustomVideoMode3" "960x1080x32"
#