Booting the preinstalled image
At bootup, inside the VM, a customized menu is presented (setup in the plan9.ini file in the 9fat partition) with several options.
Option 1 boots in graphical terminal mode as Glenda, using the original Bell Labs configuration. This provides an experience almost identical to what you'd get right after booting a fresh install from the bell labs .iso.
Option 2 bootes as a customized user named Gridna who is configured somewhat similarly to glenda, but with the grid programs in /usr/grid/bin included in the namespace set up by the profile.
Option 3 is the default boot option, intended to be used in combination with Drawterm or 9vx or another plan 9 system. Option 3 boots as a cpu server named 'gridserver' providing many services: cpu, auth, 9fs, telnet, ftp, and http on port 8080. It boots to a hostowner text console, ready for external login via drawterm. All of these services save the webserver require authentication to connect to - the preinstalled accounts bootes, glenda, and gridna all use the password 'gridpass' initially. It is good to test functionality with these default accounts and information, then change the machine key and passwords to ones of your own choice before allowing access to the VM from the external internet. The confighelper utility can assist with some of this process.
Option 4 selects bootup as a fossil/auth server named fossil1. This machine is configured to run only the fossil's 9p server and auth. This configuration is primarily intended for tcp booting cpu servers from.
Option 5 uses a kernel with a simple customization to prompt the user for the venti dialstring and system name to be used. The purpose of this is to make it easy to bring up a node on a new, 'foriegn' system without advance customization and preparation.
Option 6 boots with name and venti server set, but no other options. The primary purpose of this is to provide a boot path for booting the terminal kernel as a user other than glenda or gridna, or to access other local customizations.
This is based on the original configuration of the primary gridserver base image - the precustomized fossil1 and cpu1 images extracted from the venti by gridlord have slightly altered bootups. Their default options have been changed to automatically work in combination with each other, if fossil1 is booted to a prompt first.