Greetings. I am trying to install plan9 on a Dell Latitude D610. The install went reasonably smoothly, but when I try to boot I find that I can't. I get lots of entertaining error messages. There is the traditional
ndb/dns: can't read my ip address and then the cryptic test: unexpected operator/operand /dev/sdC0/swap and then a lot of venti stuff of the general pattern archiveBlock 0x932b: not connected to venti server %vtSend: vtWrite block on 0xa failed: not connected to venti server archWalk 0xa failed; ptr is in 0x932b offset 0 on rebooting I get venti...err2: arena set has wrong magic number: 270030ff expected a9e4a5e7 err2: corrupted arena partition header Maybe I got that the first time too. It's hard to say since the messages scroll by pretty fast. In any case it's pretty obvious that something is wrong with my arenas so I get out the install disk and go back to the fmtventi stage, a bit reluctantly since it took a few hours last time. After confirming that I really do want to reformat them I get fatal venti/fmtarenas error: can't initialize /dev/sdC0/arenas, writing block 0 failed: can't write partition='/dev/sdC0/arenas': i/o error done with /dev/sdC0/arenas fatal venti/fmtisect error: can't initialize /dev/sdC0/isect, writing block 0 failed: can't write partition='/dev/sdC0/isect': i/o error done with /dev/sdC0/isect There were errors formatting the indices and arenas. --------------------------- Preparing menu...read: i/o error read: i/o error and then Task to do [partdisk]: I've already done that, but okay, why not? I get The following devices were found sdC0 - ST96023A sdD0 - TSScorpDVD+-RW TS-L532BDE0405/11/06 Disk to partition(sdC0, sdD0)[no default]: and select sdC0. Now I've seen a lot of error error messages in my day, but I have say that what comes next is one of the scariest: The disk you selected HAS NO master boot record on its first sector. (Perhaps it is a blank disk.) You need a master boot record to use the disk. Should we install a default master boot record? Install mbr (y,n)[no default]: I choose n and reboot into FreeBSD, which, much to my relief, is still there. Possibly relevant information: * DMA is turned OFF. * The plan9 partition is a secondary partition * FreeBSD shows the disk as ad0: 57231MB <Seagate ST96023A 8.01> at ata0-master UDMA100 * The plan9.ini left by the install had venti=/dev/sdC0/arenas Any light anyone can shed on this matter would be much appreciated. -- John Stalker School of Mathematics Trinity College Dublin tel +353 1 896 1983 fax +353 1 896 2282
