‎

use 9front replace vps’s operating system

You can test this blog on local virtual machine

Need

out-of-band management console

Need a out-of-band management console to connect vps’s screen

kvm or bare metal

OpenVZ or other container technology not discussed here

Stage 0 boot a linux in RAM

Download iPXE image

MBR:

wget http://boot.salstar.sk/ipxe/ipxe.usb

Write iPXE image to disk

sync # ensure data is sync to disk
dd if=ipxe.usb of=/dev/vda conv=sync # write image to harddisk
reboot -f # restart now

use iPXE boot a linux in RAM

now please connect vps’s screen, use out-of-band management console

note: if vps privoder not have network autoconf, you may be need configure network manual

If it success, you now can seem a menu.

please select ’slackware’ to boot

if it failed:

booting from Hard Disk...
iPXE initialising devices...ok



iPXE 1.21.1+ (g081b3) -- Open Source Network Boot Firmware -- https://ipxe.org
Features: DNS FTP HTTP HTTPS iSCSI TFTP SRP VLAN AoE ELF MBOOT PXE bzImage Menu 
PXEXT

boot.salstar.sk - SAL's boot menu

Waiting for link-up on net0... ok
Configuring (net0 52:54:00:12:34:56)...... ok
IP: 10.0.2.15, netmask: 255.255.255.0, gateway: 10.0.2.2
Could not get time and date: Connection timed out (https://ipxe.org/4c496035)
https://boot.salstar.sk/by_mac/52:54:00:12:34:56... Network unreachable (https:/
/ipxe.org/280a6011)
https://boot.salstar.sk/by_ip/10.0.2.15... Network unreachable (https://ipxe.org
/280a6011)
https://boot.salstar.sk/menu.ipxe... Network unreachable (https://ipxe.org/280a6
011)
Press any key to enter failsafe menu ...

please press ENTER to start failsafe menu.

select ’Start iPXE shell’

iPXE shell:

iPXE>

you can boot ’slackware’ by:

kernel ftp://<ip addr or domain name>/slackware/slackware64-current/kernels/huge.s/bzImage
initrd ftp://<ip addr or domain name>/slackware/slackware64-current/isolinux/initrd.img
boot

note: if your dns not working, please use ip address instead domain name.

Stage 1 download 9front image and write to disk

Download 9front image

use root login, then:

dhcpcd eth0 # setup network
wget http://9front.org/iso/9front-<version>.amd64.iso.gz # download

write 9front image to disk

zcat 9front-<version>.amd64.iso.gz | dd bs=1M of=/dev/vda conv=sync # write
sync # ensure sync to disk
reboot # reboot

Stage 2 install 9front

now you can install 9front.

but have some notice:

configfs

if vps’s disk size is small , please use hjfs.

prepdisk

in prepdisk phases, you can’t remove installation image’s part.

safe method is create a new part in space outside the installation image

If there is enough room, a Plan 9 partition will be
suggested; you can probably just type 'w' and then 'q'.

cylinder = 1048576 bytes
   empty                 0 463          (463 cylinders, 463.00 MB)
   * p1                  463 464        (1 cylinders, 1.00 MB) ESP
  '  p2                  464 4560       (4096 cylinders, 4.00 GB) PLAN9 # this is new part , outside of installation image
>>> w
>>> q

All is done

after installation, all is done, reboot your vps and use 9front!

References

http://boot.salstar.sk/

http://9front.org/releases/