How to install Plan 9 on Oracle VM VirtualBox

plan9virtualbox

I downloaded a Plan 9 (4th Edition) ISO from Bell Labs and gave the system twice the recommended memory and hard disk space. I followed the installation prompts, choosing the default options where possible. However, the installer warned that it ran out of space, despite completing the installation. When the machine tried to boot, it got multiple kernel panics and aborted.

How do I get Plan 9 installed and running on VirtualBox?

Best Answer

There is another wiki found from Google results:

Verbatim from source:

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, in xen, in xen 3.0.

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.

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.

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