# 9vx

9vx is an implementation of the simple x86 virtual machine vx32 specifically designed for running real Plan9 on other host systems.

## Installation

A minimal recent build of 9vx can be found in the AUR.

## A short tutorial

After installing 9vx:

- Extract a Plan9 root file system (ISOs from official plan9, 9atom or 9front all should work) into your directory of choice "/path/to/plan9" (9vx defaults to the directory /usr/local/plan9vx)
- make sure that /opt/vx32/bin is in your PATH
- invoke "9vx -r /path/to/plan9 -u glenda" to start as user Glenda, a local system administrator user account which can be used for installing programs and changing system settings. If you run the official Plan9 root file system, you will here also get a small tutorial about how to use rio and acme.
- invoke "9vx -r /path/to/plan9" to start as your user (at first run, write /sys/lib/newuser at the rc prompt to set up your environment).

## Problems

Running Plan9 from a directory can be very handy, especially since you easily can move files into your virtual system from your host system. It does however come with a cost, which is related to user permissions. You will most likely run into issues where directories can not be created since the virtual Plan9 system lacks write permissions.

### Installing Plan9 on a disk image

One alternative to overcome this is to install a Plan9 according to these instructions.

### Putting the Plan9 root file system in an insecure directory

A simpler but less secure way to solve the issue can be to utilize

    chmod -R 777 /path/to/plan9/root/

This way, both user and glenda will be able to write to the plan9 root system and add directories.

## Alternatives

Recent advances in 9front and possibly 9atom makes those distributions possible to install and boot under virtualbox. Things that may be needed to make them work:

     * Use the PIIX3 IDE controller
     * install support for USB v2.

Also, for the CWFS of 9front, you need to make a disk image of at least 12 GiB.

Category:

- Emulators