9srv Express is intended to be the quickest way to get set up using 9srv — and possibly Plan 9. We provide a collection of disk images which you can install, boot, and get directly connected to 9srv. Our first targets platform will be the Raspberry Pi and VMware, then moving on to various other x86 virtual machines, then perhaps other native platforms (including the PC).
The current plan is to provide two images per platform: maxi and mini. The first (and suggested) will be right around 500MB (to reliably fit on the widest collection of USB sticks and SD cards) and will come with a pre-populated cfs(4) partition. The second, designed to be as small as possible for the quickest download, will have just the kernel and minimum configuration files needed to boot and connect to 9srv. We expect this later image to come in under 10MB on all platforms.
Please keep in mind that "Express" refers to the speed of getting up and running. It's designed to provide a quick and painless way to bootstrap a terminal or become familiar with the system. Running your root file system over the public internet is not likely to be particularly snappy. Long term, you will most likely want a local file server of some sort. We're considering ways to make that easier, too.
These are gzip'd tar files. Extracting them should give you a folder representing the VMware virtual machine, including a disk image. If you are using VMware Fusion on Mac OS X, this should show up as a "bundle" which you can double-click to get VMware to launch. If you're using VMware Workstation or Player on another platform, you may need to refer to the .vmx file within that directory, instead.
These were created using VMware Fusion 4.1.3, but are expected to work on Fusion, Workstation, and Player equally.