What should I download?

We provide the qemu images in several forms to match the needs of users of different operating systems or levels of interest. Our recommended primary form is the linux package called gridtools.tgz, to be used in combination with drawterm and plan9port, available from swtch.com. For those who want an 'all in one' download without installing all of plan9port, we provide gridtoolsplus.tgz, which contains the venti-related plan9port binaries and drawterm. The compatibility of the precompiled plan9port binaries is probably not universal, 64-bit users will need the ia32libs, and if you receive errors from the venti or vac binaries, please build from the swtch.com source and use the gridtools.tgz version. We have had overall good results with this build of the binaries on multiple distros and hardware, though, so dont be scared to try it.

For windows users, or linux users who wish to use only qemu with no use of plan9port venti, we provide a standalone version ventigridserver.qcow2.img.tgz of the image, and an optional 2nd hdd qventidata.qcow2.img.tgz of the same venti data that the linux p9p-assisted version uses. The standalone image is truly standalone - it needs no venti server or other external support, so just qemu and a copy of it is the 'minimum' setup in any OS. This hdd imagefile is called ventigridserver.qcow2.img but the reason for this is that it can be used to provide venti service optionally. It is not inherently venti dependent and does not provide venti service without the use of the optional 2nd disk image.

If you wish to experience the full distributed plan9 architecture using just qemu, this is perfectly possible. The qventidata.qcow2.img file can be used as the second hdd for ventigridserver.qcow2.img, which if you start up the venti, can then act as the backing venti for additional qemu VMs, such as the base venti-backed image g9.qcow2.img. It is perfectly possible (and supported via confighelper) to clone g9.qcow2.img and then modify it and have a TCP booting cpu server VM boot from a separate fossil file server VM backed by a separate venti server VM. This configuration can be set up on a single machine or on separate machines. On a single windows machine with ample ram and cores:

qemu -L . -hda ventigridserver.qcow2.img -hdb qventidata.qcow2.img -redir tcp:17034::17034 -m 896

(default boot option inside the VM is fine - after waiting a moment for the machine to settle, just type venti/venti to start serving)

qemu -L . -hda g9copy1.qcow2.img -redir tcp:564::564 -redir tcp:567::567 -m 256

(choose option 4 inside the VM to start it as fossil file server fossil1)

qemu -L . -hda g9copy2.qcow2.img -redir tcp:17010::17010

(choose option 3 in the VM, then choose to TCP boot the machine and enter 127.0.0.1 as the ip for both fileserver and auth server)

then feel free to drawterm in as usual:

drawterm -a localhost -c localhost