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Install 9front in vm-bhyve on FreeBSD

9front

9front (or plan9front) is a fork of the Plan 9 from Bell Labs operating system.

9front with Netsurf

9front with Mothra and Netsurf

vm-bhyve

FreeBSD vm-bhyve is a great tool to create, install and manage virtual machines.

vm-bhyve is designed to work with ZFS, which makes it very easy to create new vm's, and make ZFS snapshots of those.

Virtual machines can either run with or without a graphical desktop. For machines running without a graphical desktop we use SSH.

The FreeBSD bhyve hypervisor provides VNC access to the virtual machines that boot with UEFI. Expose the VNC port to the network to allow for remote management.

9front on bhyve using vm-bhyve

This is how I got 9front installed and booting after the install.

I have exactly zero experience with 9front or plan9. so maybe there are better ways.

Download install iso

An install iso can be downloaded from 9front.org.

I downloaded 9front-11321.amd64.iso.

Installation

We don't use the normal way to install an operating system on a VM with vm-bhyve (vm install vm-name iso-name). This is because vm-bhyve removes the CD-ROM from the VM at the first reboot after this command.

We follow a slightly different way:

Create a new virtual machine:

vm create -t dragonfly 9frontvm

We choose the dragonfly template because is comes with UEFI and VNC support.

Add lines for the CD-ROM

Add the following lines to the configuration of the VM (the file /bhyve/9frontvm/9frontvm.conf):

disk1_type="ahci-cd"
disk1_dev="custom"
disk1_name="/bhyve/.iso/9front-11321.amd64.iso"

Start the installation:

vm start 9frontvm

Now open your VNC viewer to the VM.

From here you can follow the installation guide. The installation window doesn't show a cursor. just trust that you are indeed typing at the prompt.

Just accept the default values.

  • At the bootargs just hit Enter.
  • After selecting 1024x768x16 for the vgasize (just hit Enter) I had to select vga as monitor.

After accepting the default for the mouse port a graphical desktop is started.

In the terminal, issue the command inst/start.

Again, accept the default values.

  • Disk to partition: sdE0.
  • Install mbr or gpt: gpt.
  • Use esp as 9fat: yes.

At the configuration of the network I did choose manual. This gives the option to enter ip address, netmask, gateway and DNS.

  • Distribution disk: /dev/sdF0/data.

The list with options for the timezone for Europe is smaller than usual.

Time Zone: CET.

After the reboot, use the bootargs local!/dev/sdE0/fscache.

Prepare for easy boot

Next, we are going to edit 9plan.ini in the 9front terminal.

9fs esp
cd /n/esp
ed plan9.ini

There are more options beside ed to edit the file, f.e., use the acme editor.

Change the bootargs line to:

nobootprompt=local!/dev/sdE0/fscache

And add a line:

user=glenda

Save the changes, and check with cat plan9.ini.

If all is well, reboot (see below).

Now it will boot without the need to hit Enter and it will directly go into Rio (the graphical desktop).

Shutdown

Shut down the virtual machine by issuing the command fshalt in a 9front terminal, or use fshalt -r to reboot..

Desktop resolution

As 1024x768 is quite cramped, I changed the resolution to 1200x720.

First, I changed the line in plan9.ini:

vgasize=1200x720x16

Next, I added a line to the configuration of the VM:

graphics_res="1200x720"

Resources

See also wiki.9front.org/freebsd-bhyve

Thanks

Thanks to Tom for the provided help, inspiration and useful links!

Have fun with 9front!

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