Luke T. Shumaker
I'm trying to boot #plan9 1e (1992). Using entirely #FreeSoftware.
It has a surprising number of ports, but for most of them the install process is a very non-trivial procedure that you run on the existing Unix. Figuring out how to run Solaris 2 sun4c or RISC/os binaries feels both out-of-scope and probably involves non-free software. Also they require multiple boxes.
But the 386/486 PC port has no install procedure; just boot this floppy!
Luke T. Shumaker
But remember how we used to have a bunch of bootloaders and kernels that were #MSDOS programs, so that #DOS could initialize the hardware for it (eg: syslinux)? That's the #Plan9 1e process; run `b.com` from DOS, and that will load the `9dos` kernel.
And unlike Solaris 2 or RISC/os or whatever, #FreeDOS is #FreeSoftware and is easy to get running in #Qemu.
Luke T. Shumaker
But depending on my `fdconfig.sys` I either get it in a boot-loop (IDK if from b.com or 9dos) or a kernel-panic from 9dos (at least it's getting out of b.com!).
Anyone have troubleshooting resources for adjusting #FreeDOS `fdconfig.sys` or #Qemu flags (or other emulators) for circa-1992 software?
I'm too young to remember config.sys, and my #RetroComputing hasn't involved much #DOS yet.
Luke T. Shumaker
It was known to work on the "AT&T Safari", "AT&T 6386", and "Gateway 486". That probably means MS-DOS 3.2 or 4.01.
Luke T. Shumaker
In the long-run, the easiest way to run #Plan9 1e (esp on non-PC platforms) will probably be to write a simple #GNULinux server program that serves BOOTP (pre-DHCP!) + TFTP for PXE boot, and #9P of the archive tarball. But 1e uses a much too old dialect of 9P for any existing software except for 1e itself to be able to serve it. And I don't want to try to write a server for it if I don't have a client to test with.
So getting `/sys/lib/pcdisk` to boot from FreeDOS is in the bootstrapping path.
Luke T. Shumaker
Actually, #Plan9 4e has a program for serving the old 2e/3e protocol (9P1). And so maybe 2e has a program for serving the old 1e protocol (which I call 9P0)?
So if I can't get the 1e stand-alone PC version working, maybe I get 4e serving PXE+9P1 to boot 2e, and then I get that serving 9P0 to boot 1e?
Keeping the boot quirks of multiple versions of Plan9 straight in my head at once doesn't seem fun tho.
Luke T. Shumaker
Actually, I think u9fs can serve both 9P2000 and 9P1. So I guess I could cut 4e out of that chain.
WAIT! 1e had /sys/src/cmd/unix/u9fs/ too! That'll serve 9P0! It'll probably take some minor modification to get it to build on a modern system, but that is another potential path.
Luke T. Shumaker
After spending some time in ghidra mapping addresses to lines of code:
The boot-loop is from the 9dos kernel, not from the b.com bootloader.
Luke T. Shumaker
... and it's after the scheduler has started :(
I was really expecting it to be in early initialization. That would have made debugging it a lot easier.
Luke T. Shumaker
And I'm evidently confused about how the memory map is set up. I seem to have (most of?) the code in the right place in ghidra, but global variables are clearly wack.
Luke T. Shumaker
"return 0 if OK, -1 if bullshit"
Luke T. Shumaker
So I figured out yesterday that `BOOT` is not defined (as in `#ifdef BOOT`). But I still had some assumptions about the memory map in my head that were based on assuming that #ifdef BOOT
Luke T. Shumaker
Besides the fact that I've mostly been dealing with ARM for the last few months:
Any hope of keeping x86 asm operand order straight has been annihilated by dealing with 3 different assembly syntaxes: whatever it is that GDB shows me (AT&T syntax), whatever it is that Ghidra shows me (Intel syntax), and Plan 9 assembler (which--despite being out of AT&T--superficially looks more like Intel syntax but with AT&T order).
Luke T. Shumaker
Why is #ghidra's memory map editor so difficult to use?
Luke T. Shumaker
So from the kernel's initialization, I have figured out exactly which region it considers to be BSS. And there's conspicuously a gap between data and BSS in the memory map.
I have data right after text. But looking back at the bootloader, isn't read into `text_addr+text_size`, it's read into `PGROUND(text_addr+text_size)`, so fingers crossed that moving that forward a bit makes things start making sense!
Luke T. Shumaker
The memory map now indeed makes sense in ghidra! And the gap between data and BSS went away.
Luke T. Shumaker
And I got to the login screen!
...
by trying to single-step to find the crash. I guess it's timing related where the kernel couldn't handle the CPU going that fast?
Luke T. Shumaker
But now it's hanging at "fs..."
Luke T. Shumaker
char Egreg[] = "it's a thermal problem";
Who is Greg? #Plan9
Luke T. Shumaker
Ugg, ret-sync is useless here. It relies on gdb `info proc mappings`, which doesn't work on remote targets. But I have already put the mappings in #Ghidra!
Luke T. Shumaker
@me_ 1e needs a MIPS Magnum 3000, a 4000 won't do.
I've got in my notes:
NeXT: Previous
MIPS: MAME
Sparc: MAME or TME
My concern with those is more the bootstrapping process with the existing UNIX that is assumed to be running on them, rather than the hardware emulation itself.
Michael Engel
@lukeshu There are a number of open source emulators available. qemu should be able to emulate the MIPS magnum (MIPS R4k-based) and I managed to run the 2nd edition NeXT port on Previous (https://sourceforge.net/projects/previous/), haven't tested 1e. A Sun 4c Sparcstation 2 is emulated by tme (https://people.csail.mit.edu/fredette/tme/index.html), but that's difficult to build. Working emulators for the Hobbit, Gnot, or Indigo are not available AFAIK. But yes, the PC port is probably the easiest way to run 1e.
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