Has anyone [*] actually gotten this to work?

[Joe Schmoe]

[*] Except for the original developer/porter, of course.

I'm curious, because I've tried Plan9 a couple of times now on the Pi. It boots fine, so I'm 90% sure I did everything right in terms of writing the image to the SD card, but neither keyboard nor mouse works (so I end up having to pull the power plug to shut it down). The screen looks fine (and piques my interest!). One of the windows on the screen shows USB errors - and everytime I plug or unplug a keyboard or mouse from the USB port, messages (i.e., more errors) show up in this window. I've also tried another keyboard, but no change in results.

I assume the problem is (are) the usual USB/power issues. But note that I am using the same power/keyboard/mouse combination that I've used all along - and which works fine with the usual Linux distros and also works fine with RISCOS, so I'm reasonably sure that it (the power/keyboard/mouse combo) is reasonably good (for use with the Pi). But there is something about Plan9 that just doesn't like it.

Note: Image was downloaded from the site yesterday - so should be current.

Any suggestions of things to try? Or, as I suspect, is it just not ready for anyone other than the developers?

[ghans]

Does Plan 9 have USB at all ( i mean on the Pi) ?


ghans

[Joe Schmoe]

Does Plan 9 have USB at all ( i mean on the Pi)

1) Yes - else how else would you interact with it on a Pi (Hint: There are no PS/2 ports on the Pi)

2) Yes - it is a very mouse-intensive OS.

[ghans]

Hmm.
I remember the head of the porting effort posting debugging tips -
i'm not sure where they are now though.

Perhaps you have to join them at their community forums.

ghans

[Joe Schmoe]

I shall repeat the question posted as the thread title.

Has anyone actually gotten this to work???
If so, I'd like to hear from them.

[jojopi]

I flashed the plan9 image to a spare card when it was first released, 2012-12-02 I believe, but have only just now got around to booting it.

The only mouse and keyboard that I have yet tried appear to be fine. I was able to edit, compile, and run a simple C program. There was no output in the console window except when hot-plugging.

[Joe Schmoe]

OK - that's good. That's one data point (outside of the original developer). Thanks.

Was there anything special about the mouse, keyboard, or power supply setup that you used?

[9pi]

I'm sorry Plan 9 is still having trouble with your mouse and keyboard. When you asked for advice in an earlier thread, I made the suggestion below. Would you like to try that now, and report back what result you get?

I suggest editing your cmdline.txt file to remove the parameter 'user=glenda' and add the parameter 'kbargs=-d'. The first will prevent auto-starting of the rio desktop, and the second will give some debugging information about the keyboard + mouse driver.

[Nige C]

I have had Plan9 running successfully since first announced for the Pi. My no name cheap keyboard and mouse work fine.

[Joe Schmoe]

I have had Plan9 running successfully since first announced for the Pi. My no name cheap keyboard and mouse work fine.

Good. That's another data point. Thank you.

[skywalker]

Plan9 is working fine for me too - again, generic keyboard without a USB hub and a Logitech mouse.

The only problem I had is I needed the 'kbargs=-b' to be set in order to have the Logitech mouse work (though I believe this is fixed in the latest build).

The status lights on my keyboard don't operate as expected (Caps, Num lock etc.) but otherwise the keyboard if working fine.

[Joe Schmoe]

Plan9 is working fine for me too - again, generic keyboard without a USB hub and a Logitech mouse.

The only problem I had is I needed the 'kbargs=-b' to be set in order to have the Logitech mouse work (though I believe this is fixed in the latest build).

The status lights on my keyboard don't operate as expected (Caps, Num lock etc.) but otherwise the keyboard if working fine.

Very interesting. Thank you for your report.

I wonder what this all means...

[johnculpin]

Works okay for me too. I am using a Microsoft Basic Optical mouse and a very cheap USB keyboard. Both connected to a powered USB hub.

[BikerGeek]

Hi all,

My problem is far more fundamental: I can't get the 9pi image to flash to or boot from the SD card.

Here's what I've done:

I've flashed the "starter" wheezy Linux image to an SD card and successfully booted it. I have two SD cards and successfully booted wheezy from each of them.

I've tried flashing the Plan 9 image to both cards. I've done so on an IntHell Mac with the Mac visual client, as well as the basic Unix commands (which I understand quite well, with a long history in Unix).

After the wheezy install to SD, I can see files in the FAT partition on either SD card. The 9pi install gives no such experience.

Am I missing something, or is there a different install for 9pi? Thanks -- Ian

[colin B]

Hi all,



I've tried flashing the Plan 9 image to both cards. I've done so on an IntHell Mac with the Mac visual client, as well as the basic Unix commands (which I understand quite well, with a long history in Unix).

Thanks -- Ian

Not much help here as I use Win32DiskImager in Windows, however I do nothing different in flashing Plan 9 using this to other distributions.

Have you redownloaded the image in case it is corrupted?

[BikerGeek]

Yes, I tried re-downloading. Still no-go.

[johnculpin]

BikerGeek,

What command do you use when tried to set this up from the command line?

[johnculpin]

Not sure if this is of any use, but here is the md5sum for the unzipped 9pi.img file:
6ce2a475020e6914524d88ba851639e5

Does that match your version?

[BikerGeek]

BikerGeek,

What command do you use when tried to set this up from the command line?

Per the online docs,

sudo dd bs=1m if=[image name and path] of=/dev/disk1s1

The dd command completes and generates no error messages. As I mentioned, I also tried the graphical tool someone made, which I note just runs the above command.

[BikerGeek]

OK, details matter. I was trying to dd the image to /dev/disk1, and the correct destination is /dev/rdisk1. That makes sense, but it's mystifying to me that the Linux installation went fine without this detail.... Anyway, the correct command line (on a Mac OS X laptop) was:

sudo dd bs=1m if=[image file name and path] of=/dev/rdisk1

Now I have to fight the keyboard battle, but Plan 9 does boot.

[MichaelPi]

Not much action on this thread since January, but I'll post anyway. After initial failure to boot, I have now gotten Plan9 up and running on my Raspberry Pi. I initially got nothing when I powered up the Pi. I gave up after several tries. I then got re-interested in Plan9 and thought I'd try again. I reformatted my SD card in a Windows XP machine, and re- copied the .img file I saved on my Slackware box (same .img I used before). I used the dd command, only this time after the write was done I issued the sync command. After that the SD card has booted the Pi into Plan9 every time. Maybe the sync is what made it go or maybe not, I'm just sharing my experience.. Pulling out the SD card without syncing seemed not to work. YMMV

BTW, I'm using a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse with no trouble. Actually, Plan9 doesn't give me as much keyboard trouble as Raspbian does. Raspbian transposes a couple of characters. If I remember correctly the @ key produces a " character and vice versa.