Building a kernel-only 9front ISO
In situations where PXE booting is not possible it can be useful to have an ISO file containing just the 9front kernel for booting the machine and having it continue with TLS/TCP mount of the file server.
It is assumed that file and auth servers have already been set up.
Start with a plan9.ini
with parameters suitable for the target machine
and network.
/tmp/plan9.ini
cdboot=yes
bootfile=/amd64/9pc64
auth=192.168.1.6
fs=192.168.1.5
user=moody
bootargs=tls
#
mouseport=ps2
monitor=vesa
vgasize=1024x768x16
Create a proto(2)
file describing the resultant ISO file tree:
/tmp/9boottree
uid=sys
gid=sys
386 d775
9bootfat 664
9boothyb 664
9bootiso 664
mbr 664
pbs 664
cfg d775
plan9.ini 664
amd64 d775
9pc64 664
Populate the source file tree. This could be done by copying only the
needed files into a temporary directory, but it is easier to reuse the
root filesystem, replacing any files that need replacing — plan9.ini
in this case:
bind /tmp/plan9.ini /root/cfg/plan9.ini
Finally, build the ISO file with disk/mk9660(8)
:
disk/mk9660 -c9j \
-B /386/9bootiso \
-s /root -p /tmp/9boottree \
-v 'Plan 9' kern.iso
Burn the resulting kern.iso
to a suitable drive.