(I am slightly embarrassed to have made three conflicting posts in succession. The Google-group interface was, for some reason, not sending my posts through. So I kept trying over 12 hours, and every time I rewrote my post. Anyway, that's not important any more.)
Before I end I must mention that the problem with the 9atom installation still remains. I re-installed Linux and then Plan9. The partitions moved again, rendering them unusable. I restored linux again, and now boot into the 9atom installation from grub. Works, but very slow to boot. Two small corrections. Previously, I was getting stuck at [mountdist] because of read errors on the installation cd, and, 9front worked fine. Thanks for your help. I would like to close the thread here.
