Re: [9fans] Hardware for Plan9
Hello, this isn't a complete list of supported ahci or marvell parts. i don't know about jmicron support. i tried to add it without having any hardware to test. i have always chosen other hardware over jmicron. it seems to benchmark poorly and be unnecessarly incompatable. i have not done systematic benchmarking of the various parts. however .. 1. unless one needs more ports than the motherboard offers, i would stick with on-board ports. That makes sense for me. Perhaps I could save money and use the onboard network chip too (most RELTEK)? Then I could invest more money in the board and the CPU. 2. note that the marvell 88sx card is pci-x but will function properly in a pci slot. the marvell 88se64* parts are a pci-e option. I saw that this cards are really expensive. As you said the onboard controller are a better choise. 3. if you set up a venti+fossil fileserver, you will have a quite seeky load and the performance of the controller should not be a big factor. but the performance of the disks will be. After reading many mails here I plan to run a fossil only fileserver. So far I understand the Ken dedicated fileserver has gone. So disks = 7200 u/min are ok? For network cards the intel gbe cards seems to be the best? yes. the 82563 and 8257[12456] are particularly good. I could get a 82574L (PCIe) (Desktop pro CT - EXPI9301CT) for 30$. Would this be a good buy? Regards, Wolfgang
Re: [9fans] Hardware for Plan9
I have an MSI G31TM-P21 + q8200 http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=proddescmaincat_no=1prod_no=183 Nice board. I could get it for 50$. So far I can see this board has the ICH7 chip. So AHCI is not working on this board? I am not sure if this is important. Thanks! Wolfgang
[9fans] Just one piece o' help.
Greets all. If I may please, i'm a plan9 newbie. Don't know a thing about writing code or programming, nor do I know anything about networking other than what dhcp does for me. Thusly, i'm just a user. I enjoy figuring out everything I can on my own when possible, having learnt alot from so many years of Slackware and FreeBSD. Truthfully, I just need help understanding how to do one thing. Installing other softwares. How do I take something (say from the sources index on the plan9 homesite) and install it? I can't find an equivalent to anything like pkg_add or the classic configure/make/make install type of thing. Thank you in advance for your help folks. Truly. I prefer minimalism in my interface and considering (what I see) to be the pure beauty of the plan9 interface and design, I hope I can someday make it my everyday OS. In short; nice to meet ya :) Hope I can become as proficient here as alot of you are. --Q
Re: [9fans] Just one piece o' help.
Welcome aboard!! I think you will need to compile the prgs you download from 'sources'... just type 'mk install' n the proper directory please do not hesitate to ask me more if you're in a problem,I 'm not a guru, but I have some 10 yrs. experience with plan 9 as my favourite os. greetings, ++pac tyapca7(_at_)gmail.com On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 11:03 AM, plan9 bitpusher2...@gmail.com wrote: Greets all. If I may please, i'm a plan9 newbie. Don't know a thing about writing code or programming, nor do I know anything about networking other than what dhcp does for me. Thusly, i'm just a user. I enjoy figuring out everything I can on my own when possible, having learnt alot from so many years of Slackware and FreeBSD. Truthfully, I just need help understanding how to do one thing. Installing other softwares. How do I take something (say from the sources index on the plan9 homesite) and install it? I can't find an equivalent to anything like pkg_add or the classic configure/make/make install type of thing. Thank you in advance for your help folks. Truly. I prefer minimalism in my interface and considering (what I see) to be the pure beauty of the plan9 interface and design, I hope I can someday make it my everyday OS. In short; nice to meet ya :) Hope I can become as proficient here as alot of you are. --Q -- = Petr A. Cejchan c...@gli.cas.cz, tyap...@gmail.com http://home.gli.cas.cz/cej/www/ http://www.facebook.com/cejchan work: +420-233 087 237 home/SMS: +420-720 121 721 ICQ: 583000501 =
Re: [9fans] Hardware for Plan9
Interessting idea. Do you use a fossil only configuration and mirroring with fs(3)? I use fossil and venti with everything mirrored with fs(3) - each partition. I have two 7500 RPM Enterprise grade disks (i.e. better than average reliability) from two different manufacturers, the idea is one will die first :-) I created three seperate fs config partitions on the disks so I can have full mirroring, only disk1 or only disk2 so when one disk dies I sould be able to carry on after just chosing a different option at bootup (from plan9.ini). Only are that there are only too two SATA ports. No space for extensions in the future. Thats correct, the newer cards have more sata slots but two is OK for me, one each for the disks and a PATA slot for my DVDRW for long term backups. I can give you the disk config info when you come to that stage, I was planning to write it up as it was a bit of a pain copying the venti arenas from my old server (it need a 50 line script rather than a single command). -Steve
Re: [9fans] Just one piece o' help.
I suggest you install Fede's contrib package (a sort of package managment system), 9fs sources /n/sources/contrib/fgb/root/rc/bin/contrib/install fgb/contrib now you can list packages and install them - see man contrib some stuff is not in contrib packages, it is too small or the author does not line contrib. These are usually downloaded as a tar file and can be built using mk(1) (the plan9 equivilent of make) - much as packages are installed with slackware (I beleive). -Steve
Re: [9fans] Hardware for Plan9
1. unless one needs more ports than the motherboard offers, i would stick with on-board ports. That makes sense for me. Perhaps I could save money and use the onboard network chip too (most RELTEK)? Then I could invest more money in the board and the CPU. some 8169 parts are pretty good. but there is a wide variation. some have pretty lackluster performance. 3. if you set up a venti+fossil fileserver, you will have a quite seeky load and the performance of the controller should not be a big factor. but the performance of the disks will be. After reading many mails here I plan to run a fossil only fileserver. So far I understand the Ken dedicated fileserver has gone. ken's fs works for me. So disks = 7200 u/min are ok? you may wish to spend a little extra money (or get a smaller disk) and get enterprise sata disks. For network cards the intel gbe cards seems to be the best? yes. the 82563 and 8257[12456] are particularly good. I could get a 82574L (PCIe) (Desktop pro CT - EXPI9301CT) for 30$. Would this be a good buy? that's a very good deal. - erik
Re: [9fans] Hardware for Plan9
http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=proddescmaincat_no=1prod_no=183 Nice board. I could get it for 50$. So far I can see this board has the ICH7 chip. So AHCI is not working on this board? i belive that page says ich6. ich6 is not ahci capable. the contrib version of the ahci driver should support all intel ahci. i haven't had a chance to test the nm10 tiger point southbridge yet, though. - erik
Re: [9fans] Hardware for Plan9
On Mon Jan 11 03:29:06 EST 2010, w...@hush.com wrote: I recently built a new server out of an Intel Dualcore Atom motherboard (D945GCLF2D), it needs some kernel patches from Erik to get everything to work cleanly but it is now great. I added two 500Gb SATA disks mirrored for storage. Interessting idea. Do you use a fossil only configuration and mirroring with fs(3)? Only are that there are only too two SATA ports. No space for extensions in the future. i hate to disagree, but i would not recommend that motherboard. perhaps i remember the pain of that motherboard more keenly. or perhaps i do not remember all the fixes. iirc, mp interrupts were broken, among other things. these products are *well* worth the extra cash. you get 2 pcie slots, 4 sata ports and a buch of other goodies for a few dollars more. also, if you can afford a few extra $, it makes sense to get a sata cdrom. mixing ide/ahci isn't much fun on ich7r. you can work around that with ftp://ftp.quanstro.net/other/9atom.iso.bz2. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENEDEPA=0Order=BESTMATCHDescription=supermicro+atomx=0y=0 - erik
Re: [9fans] Hardware for Plan9
On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 01:01:43PM +, Steve Simon wrote: Interessting idea. Do you use a fossil only configuration and mirroring with fs(3)? I use fossil and venti with everything mirrored with fs(3) - each partition. Hi! An alternate configuration, which takes more memory, but might offer a bit more in the way of survivability, would be to not use fs for venti. Instead, run one venti daemon per disk, with independent arenas/indexes. Insert a little Venti proxy between fossil and your daemons; it should try reads on each venti until one returns a block; it should issue writes to all of them. Good luck, -- vs
Re: [9fans] Just one piece o' help.
On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 8:06 AM, Steve Simon st...@quintile.net wrote: I suggest you install Fede's contrib package (a sort of package managment system), 9fs sources /n/sources/contrib/fgb/root/rc/bin/contrib/install fgb/contrib now you can list packages and install them - see man contrib some stuff is not in contrib packages, it is too small or the author does not line contrib. These are usually downloaded as a tar file and can be built using mk(1) (the plan9 equivilent of make) - much as packages are installed with slackware (I beleive). -Steve Scripts can also just be cp'd straight to $home/bin
Re: [9fans] Just one piece o' help.
Well, i'm certainly glad there are friendly folks here, thank you all. I guess the need for running configure first is gone here. I'm having trouble finding info on how to mount a thumb drive. My primary home machine is a laptop, with a Broadcom card, and since it is not detected, I have to download things from the source here (booted into FreeBSD). I promise not to bother you folks much further, but is there perhaps a simplified version you might give me of the device lettering system so I can figure out how to mount partitions/ devices? Truthfully, i'm attracted to plan9 like a super-magnet and I don't know why since this OS (I might presume) isn't geared toward the daily/ desktop @ home user. Instant messaging, burning CD/DVD things, not really there? All that aside though, i've got the feeling i'm going to work at every route possible to earn the admirable title of a 9fan. Maybe I just love the bunny :) I thought about installing the 9tools (including rio) right here in my home-sweet-home BSD land, but there's certainly nothing better than the real thing. Lol, I apologize for the rant. Take care all. Thank you. -Q
Re: [9fans] Hardware for Plan9
An alternate configuration, which takes more memory, but might offer a bit more in the way of survivability, would be to not use fs for venti. Instead, run one venti daemon per disk, with independent arenas/indexes. Insert a little Venti proxy between fossil and your daemons; it should try reads on each venti until one returns a block; it should issue writes to all of them. why would that be more survivable? - erik
Re: [9fans] Just one piece o' help.
I guess the need for running configure first is gone here. Most definitely. [Editorial comment on configure elided] I'm having trouble finding info on how to mount a thumb drive. If you are running usbd, it should detect when you insert the drive and run usb/disk for it. This will make the disk available in /dev/sdUn.m/ and the usbfat: script will mount a FAT partition on such a drive. See usb(4) and usbd(4) for more details. I don't know why since this OS (I might presume) isn't geared toward the daily/ desktop @ home user. Instant messaging, There is an IRC client or two floating around, and I'm pretty sure there's a tool to gateway some of the other IM services through it. (However, you might need Inferno for the latter part; my memory is a little hazy on that.) burning CD/DVD Plan 9 has a very elegant approach to burning CDs. See cdfs(4) and mk9660(8) for the details. Maybe I just love the bunny :) I thought about installing the 9tools (including rio) right here in my home-sweet-home BSD land, but there's certainly nothing better than the real thing. It can be quite useful to do both, and to throw 9vx in for good measure. For example, I run FreeBSD on my laptop and use p9p (9tools) to get a lot of what it has. Then I run 9vx on FreeBSD to give me what's pretty close to a real Plan 9 terminal. Using its -b option, I have it connect to my file server which is running Plan 9 directly. 9vx looks like a terminal talking to the file server and also has access to the FreeBSD name space. Conversely, using the p9p tools (and some experimental fs stuff I'm working on) FreeBSD can see what's on my file server. It's about as close as I've gotten so far to being the best of both worlds. BLS
Re: [9fans] Just one piece o' help.
I suggest you install Fede's contrib package (a sort of package managment system), 9fs sources /n/sources/contrib/fgb/root/rc/bin/contrib/install fgb/contrib now you can list packages and install them - see man contrib some stuff is not in contrib packages, it is too small or the author does not line contrib. These are usually downloaded as a tar file and can be built using mk(1) (the plan9 equivilent of make) - much as packages are installed with slackware (I beleive). -Steve Scripts can also just be cp'd straight to $home/bin steve's suggestion has the advantage that contrib itself can be managed with contrib. - erik
Re: [9fans] Hardware for Plan9
i hate to disagree, but i would not recommend that motherboard. Sorry, I have corrected myself privately but not here yet. The Intel D945GCLF2D looks like a nice board but I agree the broken MP tables are a deal breaker for plan9 (unless acpi support can sidestep the issue one day). I bought a SUPERMICRO X7SLA-H to replace it on Erik's reccomendation and it works very well. There are some newer mini-itx cards from supermicro which also look interesting but I have no experience of them: http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/ATOM Appologies for my bad memory. -Steve
Re: [9fans] Hardware for Plan9
On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 10:22:49AM -0500, erik quanstrom wrote: An alternate configuration, which takes more memory, but might offer a bit more in the way of survivability, would be to not use fs for venti. Instead, run one venti daemon per disk, with independent arenas/indexes. Insert a little Venti proxy between fossil and your daemons; it should try reads on each venti until one returns a block; it should issue writes to all of them. why would that be more survivable? When an fs mirror is out of sync, which mirror holds the right data? Fs has no way of knowing. Venti at least has the block hashes. Imagine cutting power after a first disk in a mirror has data written but subsequent ones don't? With fs, disaster. (well, sorta. devfs always reads from the first device in a mirror first, and writes to the devices in order as well. you might get lucky, but you wouldn't know about errors until you have to hit the second device. at which point its too late.) Venti deals with incompletely written blocks; the arenas and index structures are still workable. The situation is even recoverable - a proxy could notice that one of the backends failed to return a read, so it rewrite the data from an other copy (which it can verify) to the failed one. Also, the isolation granted by writing data to two venti daemons is nicer than scribbling blocks to both disks; you can bring down either back-end venti while the system is running. You can even move one of the pairs to a remote system. If disks are removable in your configuration, you can even grow the available space live. -- vs
Re: [9fans] Hardware for Plan9
Venti deals with incompletely written blocks; the arenas and index structures are still workable. The situation is even recoverable - a proxy could notice that one of the backends failed to return a read, so it rewrite the data from an other copy (which it can verify) to the failed one. what are you using as a venti proxy? or is this more theoretical? how do you protect against lossage in the fossil cache? - erik
Re: [9fans] Hardware for Plan9
There are some newer mini-itx cards from supermicro which also look interesting but I have no experience of them: http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/ATOM i'm trying to get one to test. fortunately, this thing has an 82574 nic. which should work just fine. - erik
Re: [9fans] Hardware for Plan9
On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 12:24 PM, erik quanstrom quans...@coraid.com wrote: Venti deals with incompletely written blocks; the arenas and index structures are still workable. The situation is even recoverable - a proxy could notice that one of the backends failed to return a read, so it rewrite the data from an other copy (which it can verify) to the failed one. what are you using as a venti proxy? or is this more theoretical? When I ran this on real h/w, I used Inferno's vcache, which works as-is. I have a binary (but have lost the source) for a Plan 9 equivalent, but cooking one up again should take only a few hours; its job is really simple. how do you protect against lossage in the fossil cache? I don't, any more than fossil+fs does. - erik -- vs
Re: [9fans] Hardware for Plan9
After reading many mails here I plan to run a fossil only fileserver. So far I understand the Ken dedicated fileserver has gone. ken's fs works for me. I am very interested in the old dedicated Ken fileserver. So far I understand you there are ways to run Ken fileserver today? When this is possible I would like to ask where I can find the sources of fs or a boot disk or so on? I found fs(4) and fs(8) in the manual. But there seems no fs in /sys/src/fs. There are kfs and fs(3) too. I hope I don't currently confound the different fileserver and filesystems. Regards, Wolfgang
Re: [9fans] Hardware for Plan9
Hello Wolfgang You might want to get in touch with user 'Capso' on the #pl...@irc.freenode.org channel. AFAIK he is running a Ken FS setup. Best regards, F. Caulier On 1/11/10, Wolfgang Kunz w...@hush.com wrote: After reading many mails here I plan to run a fossil only fileserver. So far I understand the Ken dedicated fileserver has gone. ken's fs works for me. I am very interested in the old dedicated Ken fileserver. So far I understand you there are ways to run Ken fileserver today? When this is possible I would like to ask where I can find the sources of fs or a boot disk or so on? I found fs(4) and fs(8) in the manual. But there seems no fs in /sys/src/fs. There are kfs and fs(3) too. I hope I don't currently confound the different fileserver and filesystems. Regards, Wolfgang
Re: [9fans] Hardware for Plan9
On Mon Jan 11 12:54:02 EST 2010, w...@hush.com wrote: After reading many mails here I plan to run a fossil only fileserver. So far I understand the Ken dedicated fileserver has gone. ken's fs works for me. I am very interested in the old dedicated Ken fileserver. So far I understand you there are ways to run Ken fileserver today? When this is possible I would like to ask where I can find the sources of fs or a boot disk or so on? I found fs(4) and fs(8) in the manual. But there seems no fs in /sys/src/fs. There are kfs and fs(3) too. I hope I don't currently confound the different fileserver and filesystems. fs was removed from the cd but there's a version in /n/sources/extra. kfs and fs(3) are different fileservers. you can also use the source in contrib quanstro/fs. i run 4 fileservers (plus one for testing) based on this. all but one use aoe for storage. but you can use ahci or ide disks as well. you will need to add il back into your kernel. (in the contrib package.) - erik
Re: [9fans] Hardware for Plan9
On Mon, 11 Jan 2010 19:14:19 +0100 erik quanstrom quans...@coraid.com wrote: fs was removed from the cd but there's a version in /n/sources/extra. kfs and fs(3) are different fileservers. you can also use the source in contrib quanstro/fs. i run 4 fileservers (plus one for testing) based on this. all but one use aoe for storage. but you can use ahci or ide disks as well. you will need to add il back into your kernel. (in the contrib package.) Many thanks for your help. I was able to compile the 9askafs kernel and make the 9askafs.iso. The cd boots on a notebook, loads the kernel and then I got: panic: no nvr cpu 0 exiting I think my plan9.ini is not correct (nvr= is missing). I have not changed anything in the mkfile. I just do the first steps and I am happy to come so far today. I found these too files for the kernel (il): il.c ip.il.h I hope these files are the right one for the kernel. Tomorrow I will look how I configure a kernel in Plan9. Many thanks for your help! Regards, Wolfgang
Re: [9fans] Hardware for Plan9
I don't care whether ahci works or not, I only cared if the system was Plan 9 capable and it is, the good thing is that everything except audio is well supported by Plan 9. On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 6:33 AM, Wolfgang Kunz w...@hush.com wrote: I have an MSI G31TM-P21 + q8200 http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=proddescmaincat_no=1prod_no=183 Nice board. I could get it for 50$. So far I can see this board has the ICH7 chip. So AHCI is not working on this board? I am not sure if this is important. Thanks! Wolfgang -- Federico G. Benavento
Re: [9fans] Just one piece o' help.
On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 11:17 AM, erik quanstrom quans...@quanstro.net wrote: I suggest you install Fede's contrib package (a sort of package managment system), 9fs sources /n/sources/contrib/fgb/root/rc/bin/contrib/install fgb/contrib now you can list packages and install them - see man contrib some stuff is not in contrib packages, it is too small or the author does not line contrib. These are usually downloaded as a tar file and can be built using mk(1) (the plan9 equivilent of make) - much as packages are installed with slackware (I beleive). -Steve Scripts can also just be cp'd straight to $home/bin steve's suggestion has the advantage that contrib itself can be managed with contrib. - erik Yes, my suggestion is only for scripts which can't be installed with contrib.
Re: [9fans] Hardware for Plan9
On Mon, 11 Jan 2010 19:14:19 +0100 erik quanstrom quans...@coraid.com wrote: fs was removed from the cd but there's a version in /n/sources/extra. kfs and fs(3) are different fileservers. you can also use the source in contrib quanstro/fs. i run 4 fileservers (plus one for testing) based on this. all but one use aoe for storage. but you can use ahci or ide disks as well. you will need to add il back into your kernel. (in the contrib package.) Many thanks for your help. I was able to compile the 9askafs kernel and make the 9askafs.iso. The cd boots on a notebook, loads the kernel and then I got: panic: no nvr cpu 0 exiting the fileserver can be a bit gruff if unconfigured. :-) you'll need an nvr file and plan9.ini entry like this nvr=ph09fat!fs.nvr (old style: nvr=hd!0!9fat!fs.nvr) — assuming that you have an ata disk with a 9fat partition with a fs.nvr file in it. you can create this with the plan 9 install cd. the fs can't create this for itself. - erik
Re: [9fans] Hardware for Plan9
On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 10:00 AM, Frederik Caulier aed...@gmail.com wrote: Hello Wolfgang You might want to get in touch with user 'Capso' on the #pl...@irc.freenode.org channel. AFAIK he is running a Ken FS setup. Best regards, F. Caulier That's just me. Feel free to drop me a mail or visit IRC. I'm running the traditional Ken FS, sans Erik's mods. kfs is very different from Ken FS and I also use that on a standalone computer outside of the home network, that's too old and slow to be usable with fossil hoggin' up all the resources. kfs does the job finely there. Best, ak
[9fans] mysterious auth
on a new network and standalone auth+fs (built from CD image of Jan 7th), auth is refusing to concur. i've used Russ' message from a while back [1] as a checklist. auth/debug reports: cannot decrypt ticket1 from auth server (bad t.num=0x...) auth server and you do not agree on key for boo...@bta.somedomainx.org factotum debug output says no key matches; factotum has the right key and i've zero'ed nvram a couple of times to be sure. it's interesting that reading /mnt/factotum/ctl also gives no key matches/failure no key matches message along with the key. key looks like this: key proto=p9sk1 dom=bta.somedomainx.org user=bootes !password? i've tried logging in from a term (pxeloaded from the same auth+fs) with similar results. in that case factotum debug says no key matches proto=p9sk1 role=server dom?. this last message looked a bit weird and when i check /dev/hostdomain, it is empty. any ideas? [1] http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.plan9/browse_thread/thread/797bce6a973b84e8/0941aa4593f9dc73?lnk=gstq=factotum+nvram#0941aa4593f9dc73
Re: [9fans] mysterious auth
with similar results. in that case factotum debug says no key matches proto=p9sk1 role=server dom?. this last message looked a bit weird and when i check /dev/hostdomain, it is empty. /dev/hostdomain empty here, too. - erik
Re: [9fans] mysterious auth
are you sure that the passwords in nvram and auth/changeuser do match for bootes? On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 8:22 PM, Skip Tavakkolian 9...@9netics.com wrote: on a new network and standalone auth+fs (built from CD image of Jan 7th), auth is refusing to concur. i've used Russ' message from a while back [1] as a checklist. auth/debug reports: cannot decrypt ticket1 from auth server (bad t.num=0x...) auth server and you do not agree on key for boo...@bta.somedomainx.org factotum debug output says no key matches; factotum has the right key and i've zero'ed nvram a couple of times to be sure. it's interesting that reading /mnt/factotum/ctl also gives no key matches/failure no key matches message along with the key. key looks like this: key proto=p9sk1 dom=bta.somedomainx.org user=bootes !password? i've tried logging in from a term (pxeloaded from the same auth+fs) with similar results. in that case factotum debug says no key matches proto=p9sk1 role=server dom?. this last message looked a bit weird and when i check /dev/hostdomain, it is empty. any ideas? [1] http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.plan9/browse_thread/thread/797bce6a973b84e8/0941aa4593f9dc73?lnk=gstq=factotum+nvram#0941aa4593f9dc73 -- Federico G. Benavento
Re: [9fans] mysterious auth
responding to feedback from multiple 9fans: Federico said: are you sure that the passwords in nvram and auth/changeuser do match for bootes? pretty sure. i've zero'ed the nvram and re-entered it. i went so far as stopping keyfs, zero'ing /adm/keys and /adm/keys.who and reinstalling bootes from scratch and restarting. it is very puzzling. Lucio said: Should you not add a role=server to whatever the chosen entry is? It will at minimum help with debugging. i did, but the result changed only slightly; trying to connect to auth from another system now results in the same behavior as auth/debug exhibits: no key matches.
