Re: [9fans] a few Q's regarding cpu/auth server
> "/sys/log/cron: rc (cpurc): can't open: 'sys/log/cron' is a directory" > > ... not quite sure what to make of that. that's weird. it shouldn't be a directory, just an append-only file like most of the others in /sys/log. not sure how it got directoried. remove and replace. > * Could anyone explain or tell me where I can find more information > regarding what all is going on with the following: > > con -l /srv/fscons > prompt: uname bootes bootes > prompt: uname sys +bootes > prompt: uname adm +bootes > prompt: fsys main > main: create /active/cron/bootes bootes bootes d775 > main: create /active/sys/log/cron bootes bootes a664 > > ... I've read con(1), and I can fathom the obvious basic premise: > I'm creating a user and assigning it to groups. But what is '/srv/fscons', > and what is 'fsys main' doing, and where can I find what other commands > are available and what they do? /srv/fscons is the conventional location for you fossil console; see fossilcons(8) for more information, including what uname, fsys, and create do. > * At one point I created a new user with 'auth/changeuser' that I didn't > need/want. What's the suggested means of removing this user? see keyfs(4). remove the directory. > * Similarly to the question above, how should I delete a user created > with uname via fscons? you may or may not realize this, but it's sometimes non-obvious: users on the auth server are different from users on a file server, and they don't need to be the same (depending on what you want). changeuser and keyfs work on the auth server; anything done on fossil's console (/srv/fscons) is on the file server. again, see fossilcons(8). > * I hope I don't get beat up on this one (well, I hope I don't get too beat up > on _any_ of these questions...), but it seems strange that something as > important as a cpu/auth server would just go and boot up right into the > hostowner... apparently this a non issue - so what am I not understanding? philosophy. plan9, like research unix before it, recognizes that if you have physical access to the box, all bets are off anyway. security consists of locking your door. if you really, really need to get around that, you have a few options. the closest to "out of the box" is to install and run a screen locker; a few people have written those, although i'm not entirely certain any are current. more ambitiously, there was a 3rd edition patch to detach the console devices from the cpu server itself, asking for login and treating it as an attached terminal. those are assuredly out of date, but if you really need the functionality, that's where to start. alternately, just run something on the console that doesn't have a "quit" function. the console doesn't have interrupt functionality.
[9fans] only marginally topical: sig.c and comp.c?
This came up on #plan9: There's a set of programs, sig and comp, for detecting similarities between files, attributed to Rob Pike. I've found some "updated" versions, but I don't really like the updates as described and the are no notes of what the code changes were. I'd love to see the originals (with an eye towards porting them to Plan 9). 'd love to see the originals. Anyone know where (if?) they can be found?
Re: [9fans] just an idea (Splashtop like)
On Sun, Aug 2, 2009 at 14:17, erik quanstrom wrote: > assuming honest mtbf numbers, one would expect similar > ures for the same io workload on the same size data set > as mechanical disks. since flash drives are much smaller, > there would obviously be fewer ures per drive. but needing > 10x more drives, the mtbf would be worse per byte of storage > than enterprise sata drives. so you'd see more overall failures. this depends on usage, obviously. i think it misses the point that there's plenty of applications where the smaller storage (assuming a single unit) is perfectly adequate. i swapped out the HD in my laptop for a SD drive: the reduction in size is entirely workable, and the other benefits make the trade a big win. there're plenty of applications where i need relatively little raw storage: laptops, boot media for network terminals, embedded things. for large-scale storage, your analysis is much more appropriate. my file server remains based on spinning magnetic disks, and i expect that's likely to be the case for a long time.
Re: [9fans] About Plan9 on small systems
inferno's got lighter requirements in some ways, but has the same class of CPU requirements (more or less). if you have something lighter than that in mind, you might not get plan 9 but the ideas could still be useful. ask google about "styx on a brick" for an example of using styx (9p by another name) on a really small embedded device to export underlying capabilities.
Re: [9fans] Question about Plan9 project
Plan 9 is an open source project; as such, you get at least the same baseline "guarantees" about its longevity as every open source project enjoys: as long as someone's interested, work can continue. there are still Bell Labs staff who work on Plan 9, although i don't believe they're working on it for its own sake (at least not officially). i don't believe ALU has made any sort of corporate commitment to the OS, that's true. the "longevity" of any open source OS is based on the community surrounding it; this is as true for Plan 9 as it is for Linux and most of the BSDs (and various other things). our community is way smaller than those, but my sense is we're stronger in many ways than we've been for most of the OS's life (we've got less Bell Labs involvement than we did for the first half, but a broader range of contributors). Plan 9 ships in at least one commercial product, which wasn't true for most of its life (i can only think of those 2e-based video systems from earlier; anyone else?), and is used in some really large research projects by people outside the Labs. i, at least, would be interested to know more about what the specific concerns are. that is, is it about availability, future evolution, commercial support, or something else? anthony
Re: [9fans] plan9.bell-labs.com down
a few things: 1) note that when the web site is down, sources may still be up (someone in IRC made this mistake). i run an automated availability check of sources every 10 minutes and didn't see an outage. 2) Ethan, i'm not sure if you realize it or not, but your comment is entirely unhelpful and serves only to foster animosity all around. please stop. 3) nobody involved with running plan9.bell-labs.com spends any time on #plan9, so "reporting" it there is ineffective and serves only to fuel some of the less stable elements there. afaik, the correct reporting method is a *polite* mail to either this list (Adriano's original mail seemed fine), 9trou...@plan9, or webmas...@plan9 (the address given at the bottom of the page). anthony
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
i don't believe so. i've made a number of false starts and would like to return to it some day. there's some very simple interpreters out there (including one by ken[1] for old unix systems) that might be worth looking at if you want to work on a port and performance isn't critical. note that i haven't found a single APL interpretation that uses the unicode apl characters[2] - a version written with plan9 tools could have a very nice advantage there. there has also been a lot of discussion in the past 1-2 months about K, a successor to APL, in #plan9. you might ask there; i may have missed a more recent development. [1] everyone says the character set is very jarring working in APL. for me, what's worse is the fact that in that community, "ken", unadorned, refers to a father of the field, a luminary who's example many seek to follow, but it's a totally different person. here, i mean "our" ken. [2] i think A+, the APL-with-extensions from Morgan Stanley, could as an option, but trying it out on OS X gave poor results.
[9fans] recover cwfs
i've got a cwfs based on an old fs(4). it gets used infrequently; about a month and a haf ago it sufferend a power outage and i just left it off, since i'd not touched it for a few weeks before that. today i brought the thing back up, and the active fs is unhappy. on boot, it reports it can't read /adm/users, which makes mounts fail. running newuser complains about /adm/users but adds the user to the table in memor, so i can mount, just to get "phase error -- cannot happen" on any file access attempt. accessing the dump file system works just fine. i'm entirely happy to replace the file system with the last dump. i think "recover" from the configuration mode is the way to do this, but i can't find a description of it and it's been years since i had to do it. in particular, how do i determine the superblock of the last dump? also, this seems like the right oportunity to start using cwfs's -c. any notes on the performance differences?
Re: [9fans] Configuring NFS
for the "from anywhere" part, just use .+ as the host regexp. the "anyone" part also doesn't really apply: the files don't affect who can connect or read things, just what the mapping is done as (iirc, world readable is still world readable). if you just want to not bother with the passwd and group files and don't care about getting nice names in, i think (but it's been a few years) you can just point those at empty files.
Re: [9fans] Configuring NFS
map between the numeric IDs reported by nfs and strings plan9 uses for uids.
Re: [9fans] Configuring NFS
"none" does not (normally) give you read-only access; if something is
world-writable, none will be able to write it. but getting read-only
is pretty easy; see exportfs(4) and the files which use it in
/rc/bin/service. from emory, i'd say "exec /bin/exportfs -Rr
/lib/music" would do what you want.
i've used nfsserver to provide access to a bunch of different types of
unix hosts, but it has been a while. i just spent a few minutes right
now trying with OS X and a remote plan9 server with no joy, but i'm
not convinced i don't have a nat being disruptive.
as far as the examples in nfsserver(8) go:
"ivy" is a machine which responds to 9fs and exports a namespace
containing /etc/passwd and /etc/group; it is most likely a unix system
running u9fs or similar. /lib/ndb/nfs contains a 9fs command to mount
ivy, so you can look at the live passwd and group files. if you'd
rather not, or are unable to, get u9fs working on some authoritative
unix system, you can copy or create a representative set locally (say,
/lib/ndb/unix.passwd) and change the last two file names in the
/lib/ndb/nfs example to point to those.
"edith" and "yoshimi" are just 9p servers, most likely plan9 machines.
passing them in the -a argument to nfsserver means that nfs clients
attempting to mount the machines will have those two "shares" to pick
from.
i believe the example becomes inconsistent here; i think edith/yoshimi
should match bootes/fornax. so if you had run the example as given
here, you'd want to run "/etc/mount -o soft,intr eduardo:ivy /n/ivy"
on your unix system. i forget whether the "share" ("ivy") needs to
match the exact string given to -a ("tcp!ivy") or if just the hostname
is okay.
Re: [9fans] acme: dirty state after 1-2, 1-3 click in a tag line
2.i: the topmost tag will add the name of any external program you run. you'll see the same thing if you run Mail or Wiki. this is often useful with a 2-1 chord on Kill. 2.ii: it's storing the current tag, and then adding the name of the external command (win) when it gets run. a bug, but i'm not sure how to correct it. you might be able to get by having the dump routine strip the names of any external commands that're running, stopping when it finds something that isn't an external command. that'd be imperfect, since the command name doesn't reliably match what gets stuck in the tag (try "upasname=foo Mail"). more complete but more invasive is have acme maintain a mark for where in the tag the "external command" part ends, and have the dump routine exclude text before that mark. it all seems more trouble than it's worth. issue 1 seems like it ought to be more easily fixable without new mechanisms.
[9fans] cdfs(4) multi-track DVDs
cdfs(4) contains a paragraph in BUGS that reads:
Closing a just-written DVD-R track can take minutes while
the drive burns the unused part of the track reservation
(for the whole disc). Thus only a single DVD-R track can be
written on a DVD-R disc; use other media if you need more
than one track per disc.
i know the array of media is confusing, but should i read this to imply that
DVD+R media are expected to support multi-track writes? i just did
something more or less like:
for (i in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7)
{venti/rdarena /dev/fs/arenas arenas0.$i > /mnt/cd/wd/$i}
the results were not what i had expected: i got d000, which looked
correct, and d001 which, upon cursory examination, looked like the
concatenation of arenas 1-7. am i just SOL with multi-track DVDs?
i hate this optical format nonsense.
Re: [9fans] command output on acme
the solution for you depends, i guess, on how often you're doing this and what the workflow really is, but if a bit of manual intervention is okay, you have a ready-made solution: run command 1, change the tag on the resulting window, run command 2. acme just looks for an existing window with the expected tag to stick its output in, creating one if it doesn't exist. this also makes saving sessions really easy: change the tag to the filename you'd like it to have, type Put, execute. you can do that trick for 'win' windows for session saving, too. handy. no info on your kill problem, sorry.
Re: [9fans] problems with redirection in rc
// ];/home/sykora/CALC/doing/tests/10_r/-xeon4 10_r ... i think these are escape sequences generated by a defined 'cd' function containing awd. do "fn cd" before you run this to undefine the function and this should go away. what's surprising is that this behavior changed based on *only* changing the > to a >>. you're sure you didn't change placement as well? i'd have expected your output file in the > case to match the results for the last _r label from the output file in the >> case.
Re: [9fans] New to the list and looking for an old plan9 book/cd
all that information is for the second edition. the third edition involved a pretty substantial set of internal changes. things were improved in almost every way, but one casualty was much of the platform support in the cpu/terminal kernel. in particular, we don't run on the NeXT boxes any more. we still have the relevant compiler, but i'm afraid getting the kernel working there would involve some pretty substantial kernel programming. the fourth (current) edition is updated regularly and is available for download from the web site. Vita Nuova sells CDs and printed manuals.
[9fans] Contrib index, snip
Folks: The contrib index on the wiki [1] hadn't been updated in a long time; I'm now automatically regenerating it nightly. I've made some minor changes to the script that does the updates; the most significant is that INDEX files can now describe files and directories arbitrarily deep in the tree, as opposed to only in their own level. More info on the wiki's contrib page [2]. Unrelated, about a month ago I put together "snip", [3] a little pastebin-like service for sharing snippets of code (or whatever). Details on the snip's contrib page [4], but basic usage is "snip /some/file" to paste a snippet (/dev/snarf is a useful /some/file), which will return a path to the new snippet, or "snip" unadorned, which will list currently-available snippets. Snip's gotten decent use in IRC. I was originally planning on embellishing the server side a bit, but it's not really worth it. I'll move it from ramfs to disk on next reboot, and that'll be that. [1] http://plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/Contrib_index/ [2] http://plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/contrib/ [3] /n/sources/contrib/anothy/bin/rc/snip [4] http://plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/snip/
Re: [9fans] exporting a namespace
On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 07:17, Mathieu Lonjaret wrote: // Running 9vx is not exactly the same as running a cpu/file server... This is certainly true, but isn't really relevant here. If you're looking to do ad hoc sharing, the easiest way is probably with listen1, exportfs, and import. I just tested this in two 9vx instances on the same machine (which already had my normal one running): 9vx 1: :; 9fs wiki post... :; ls /mnt/wiki | wc 235 2356413 :; aux/listen1 -tv 'tcp!*!12345' /bin/exportfs (the -v isn't really needed there) 9vx 2: :; ls /mnt/wiki :; import -A tcp!localhost!12345 /mnt/wiki :; ls /mnt/wiki | wc 235 2356413 aux/listen1 grabs a network port (tcp port 12345 on all interfaces, in this invocation) and when a new connection comes in, runs /bin/exportfs, which has a little protocol to negotiate what namespace to export and then exports it. on the other host, import dials the exportfs listener started above and mounts the /mnt/wiki exported there on its own namespace. that's my understanding of what you're after, anyway. if there's something else you're looking for, just drop a note.
Re: [9fans] Adventures of a home user
$home/lib/profile is run on login; you can stick arbitrary commands in there. note rio's -i option. take a look at glenda's lib/profile and bin/rc/riostart for examples. running "c:" has a good chance of finding and mounting a FAT partition; see dossrv(4). note that c: and dosmnt, like many other things in plan9, are simple shell scripts. just cat them to see what they're doing. you won't find a method to log in as a different user (as a "normal" login session) without rebooting. fgb's a person, not a thing you install. contrib packages are organized under the name of the package's author. running "contrib/install fgb/abaco" installs fgb's abaco package. anthony
Re: [9fans] Adventures of a home user
Jim Habegger wrote: // Adding a new user: that's not a 9vx issue; either you're misreading the documentation or it's incorrectly written (i'm not sure which bit you're reading for that). those commands are intended to be given to the file server, fossil, after connecting to the console posted in /srv. You'd get exactly the same response under qemu or on real hardware. it's worth noting, however, that 9vx is a bit different here in that, unlike most plan9 installations, it doesn't use fossil as its root file system (by default). instead of taking a large array of bits and turning it into a file system itself (as fossil does, typically using a disk partition as that array of bits, sometimes a regular file), 9vx uses the underlying host OS file system (via the #Z kernel device). there's no reason to "add users" in this sense because #Z doesn't offer connection authentication and doesn't regulate user access in the same way. issues around swapping out the root file server are where most of 9vx's differences come from (and, in my experience, reduced stability, but i'm not sure how widespread that is). things like replica often misbehave, as well. it'd be worth putting together a diff guide of sorts.
Re: [9fans] NAT implementation
i think it's a *great* idea, but it doesn't give you the same things nat does and isn't useful in the same cases. but i'd love to be able to import my plan9 /net from my OS X box.
Re: [9fans] NAT implementation
the idea is interesting, but it's a compliment, not a replacement. there's plenty of situations where installing something on all your hosts is either impractical or undesirable; centralizing the work in network infrastructure is often a big win. doing what you describe hits a different set of use cases.
[9fans] GSoC status
Folks: GSoC progresses well. We have a preliminary slot allocation which should be finalized on wednesday. The list of accepted student proposals comes out a week from today. We're having a mentors meeting tomorrow to resolve any internal conflicts, and there's a GSoC-wide meeting for admins to resolve any issues there. We have the happy problem of more good applications than slots, but with our slot count and mentor set, I think we're in a really good position to ensure that all our students have a positive experience. Students, ensure you've gotten any last-minute comments in. Mentors, ensure you're up to date on the mailing list and evaluating applications. Everyone else: stay tuned, the big news comes a week from today. Anthony
Re: [9fans] extensions of "interest"
> right on schedule! > > http://9fans.net/archive/2001/05/482 (may 31 2001) > http://9fans.net/archive/2005/05/69 (may 7 2005) okay, that timing's just freaky.
[9fans] setting 9vx's sysname
is there any particular reason 9vx doesn't set sysname to the host's sysname if it can? is the current behavior depended upon anywhere? also, on my system, $terminal is set to "vx32 9vx" at boot, but i can't find that declaration. what'm i missing?
Re: [9fans] extensions of "interest"
from the man pages^W^Wpdf: // FUTURE DIRECTIONS // // None. we should be so lucky.
[9fans] GSoC: 3 days left for student applications
Folks: There's just over 3 days left for student applications. We've got a few very nice applications in so far, but would love to see plenty more. If you're considering submitting an application, I'd encourage you to do so. If you're unsure about some aspect, come hang out in #plan9-gsoc on irc.freenode.net and we can help you refine your idea and application. We've also got a lot of folks on the list connected to various universities. If you know any talented students with an interest in Plan 9 or related technologies, encourage them to apply! There's plenty of things on the Ideas page (http://gsoc.cat-v.org/ideas/) that haven't been addressed yet, and I'm sure there are students out there with great ideas we haven't thought of yet. Student applications must be in by April 3, 19:00 UTC. Decisions on those applications are made by April 15. Anthony
Re: [9fans] GSOC: Drawterm for the iPhone
to ron's latest point: seeing it on the G1 would be great, too. but we have a student with an iPhone who's said he'd like to do it, and at least a handful of people here have said they'd like to see it, and have the device. if the same conditions get met for the G1, i see no reason we wouldn't entertain applications from students for that port, too (although it seems likely we'd end up picking one or the other). on the unrelated 9p-on-darwin idea: no, there's no theoretical reason it couldn't be done. getting a Darwin kernel module would also be of broader use than the iPhone, obviously. i'd be pretty worried about that being a summer project unless the student already had intimate knowledge of the Darwin filesystem hooks.
Re: [9fans] GSOC: Drawterm for the iPhone
i think the drawterm port would be interesting, but how to deal with
the mismatch between the touch and 3-button-mouse interfaces seems
like a big issue. i don't yet have an iPhone or iPod Touch, but for
me, drawterm would push me over for the later.
for André (or anyone with similar interests), i'd second eric's
suggestion of considering the Omero client using native widgets. you
could do this with either ("real") OS X or the iPhone, which makes it
a bit more accessible. i'm not sure anything other than the inferno
interface exists today, and it'd be a neat proof-of-concept, and a
useful project using some of the existing skills you're talking about.
Re: [9fans] gsoc linuxemu project help
it seems like a reasonable start to me, at least, but i don't know as much as i could about the internals of linuxemu (i haven't really looked inside since russ's initial version). the current maintainer is frequently found in #plan9 on irc.freenode.net; i'd encourage you to pop in there and see if you can catch him to ask.
Re: [9fans] GSoC 2009: Plan 9 is in!
There's a GSoC-specific google group for tossing ideas around in, and later for student discussion and ongoing work. You're encouraged to propose project ideas and whatnot there. join plan9-gsoc. If you decide you want to mentor, specifically, contact me directly.
[9fans] twitter
I've started using Twitter. There, I said it. I actually signed up for twitter to follow a few 9fans, which seems sort of weirdly ironic to me. Now with a bunch of GSoC related news flying around on it, I've actually started using it (lightly), much to my surprise (and occasional dismay). Going to the web site to poll for updates is irritating, but there's enough other tools out there that finding something that presents a more reasonable usage actually isn't too hard. I wanted something on Plan 9 that worked simply. Testing has been cursory only, but /n/sources/contrib/anothy/rc/bin/tweet seems to work. Usage is pretty much as you'd expect, "tweet some message here" or "fortune | tweet" will do pretty much what you expect. It's a pretty dead simple wrapper around hget. I even got to give up on authentication, since hget will ask factotum. Side note: as I said, this uses hget. I first tried doing it with webfs, but had problems with the user:p...@domain syntax. Is anyone using that with webfs? Anthony (sigh: @anothy)
Re: [9fans] I can not remember if I sent this or not: MIPS-64 (sort of) notebook
i was looking at this a week or two ago, trying to find an ARM or MIPS laptop to play with. my first question was whether the "missing" parts of the MIPS instruction set are things that our compilers currently generate; SoC (oh, and my day job) ramped up before i could find the list of missing instructions. any idea? getting quotes or delivery in the US seemed tricky, too.
[9fans] GSoC 2009: Plan 9 is in!
Folks: Short version: we made the cut. Join the plan9-gsoc Google group (and/or come hang out in #plan9-gsoc on Freenode) if you want more info. Longer version: Google has accepted just over 1/3 of applying organizations: 150 of 395. The program admin says the application quality was the best she's seen so far, and many projects that've worked with them before got rejected. I think this speaks well of our ability to address some of Google's bigger concerns from 2008 (largely based on our 2007 participation), and generally of progress we've made over the last two years towards making things a bit more friendly for students. Thanks to everyone who's contributed ideas for students or agreed to mentor so far. Thanks to the community generally, and the folks at Bell Labs, of course. Thanks in particular to Noah and Uriel for helping with the application and understanding our previous issues, and to Uriel for the work that's gone into cat-v.org, which helped a lot in practical terms. The next tasks are ensuring our info is tidy for the pending rush of students, getting mentors to stick their names on particular projects, and agreeing on the set of projects we want to do (we're asking for far fewer this year; quality of quantity). Once things are fully underway, I'll be making regular reports here on progress of the GSoC participation generally, and you'll be hearing project-specific things from students and mentors. Most of the ongoing discussion specific to GSoC will be taking place in the plan9-gsoc Google group, or on #plan9-gsoc on freenode. Anthony Sorace
Re: [9fans] THnX status?
Tiny Core Linux looks interesting. Played around a bit in a VM tonight and will be trying it on the ThinkPad tomorrow. I'm curious about your setup. I assume you're using 9vx directly for graphics, no more drawterm? You run within X? My attempt tomorrow is going to be giving a GB or two to Linux and the rest to fossil, trying to integrate the localfs and native ethernet patches to 9vx, and booting off that. The combination does look like a very nice starting point.
[9fans] THnX status?
I recently got a relatively modern ThinkPad. I figured it might be a good chance to play with something new, and THnX has always looked interesting. I have Ron's stuff from August or so; is that still the latest? Is there a better way to run Plan 9 in lguest, with as minimal a Linux underneath as practical? The README is specific to running off a USB stick; is there another set of instructions somewhere for running off the HD?
[9fans] GSoC 2009 application in
Our application for Google Summer of Code 2009 has been submitted. Over the next week, Google will be selecting about 150 projects from the 395 that applied, and will announce the list on March 18th.
Re: [9fans] new toy - gmap
did you stick your key in /lib/gmapkey? does /lib/sky/here have a sensible value?
Re: [9fans] venti conf
// //But I have no idea if you can run fossil in p9p. // I think you can't. not currently, but it'd be nice. i'd like to be able to serve a fossil fs from my laptop to 9vx instances. maybe a rainy weekend project.
Re: [9fans] vac flattens trees?
that seems a little awkward. erik's suggestion is what i think i'd really like. rog's would be okay, although still somewhatawkward, were i on plan 9; since i'm not, i think i have russ's option. so with -x, say i had a tree: /dog /cat /fish/guppie /fish/clown /pig and i wanted /dog, /cat, and /fish/clown. would three includes be sufficent there, or do i need it include /fish and then exclude /fish/guppie, to get the heirarchy? i do wish more tools used proto. the format is so nice.
Re: [9fans] MMIXWare Plan 9
i'm not sure whether the MMIX stuff was a fresh effort or an extension of the MIX code, but it might be worth noting that someone (Charles, i think) ported MIX years ago. perhaps a useful starting point. On 2009-03-09, Paweł Lasek wrote: > On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 14:35, xiantingmanbu wrote: >> How to port MMIXWare into Plan 9? Has anyone done it? >> > Porting wouldn't be hard. I don't remember the code right now (will > look into it when I get home) but probably the only thing you would > have to change would be mmap() to segattach(), or even simple > malloc()-style allocation. Knuth is rather old fashioned, so it might > actually work out of the box with APE, and with little changes with > native libs. > -- > Paweł Lasek > On #l...@freenode.net > " But the systems seem so darned complicated. I see the wife > unit here sitting around with winXP and it seems very complicated." > >
[9fans] vac flattens trees?
given a list of files like "/fish /dog /snake/asp /snake/python", the results of a vac (as interpreted by vacfs) seem to be "/fish /dog /asp /python". is this intentional? it seems unexpected, and makes doing selective backups using vac a bit awkward. this is vac on p9p and vacfs on plan9, if that matters.
Re: [9fans] Google Summer of code 2009
uriel, remain calm. he said the discussion was among the people who ran last year's application. that's fine: they can have whatever conversations they like, wherever they like. if they've decided their time is better spent elsewhere, that's their decision. on the specific actions suggest, too, i'm all for them. it sounds like they're thinking about some very directed actions that could get good results. and those sorts of actions also, in my estimation, match with the sorts of "community" considerations Google uses for evaluation. there's certainly no conflict there. for myself, i still think a GSoC application is worth the time, and I still intend to do one.
[9fans] GSoC 2009
So, the web site's up, program is announced, and so on. Was anyone planning on doing a Plan 9 application? I'm willing to help, if anyone was planning on it, or lead, if not. In the later case, I'd appreciate help (any of advice, materials, or labor) from people who were involved in our last two applications. Anthony
Re: [9fans] 8c, 8l, and empty files
i could see this going either way, but from my perspective the linker did what you told it. it didn't see anything it couldn't recognize, and didn't find any symbols it wasn't able to resolve. it's a weird case, certainly, but it doesn't strike me as wrong. if i were inclined to submit a patch, it'd be to add a note to the BUGS section of the man page.
Re: [9fans] command repetition in sam/acme
i agree complaining about the formats is pointless. and hey, at least it's text. last plain text format with slightly awkward lines i had to play with, they went and changed the next version to be ASN.1. but i don't think the suggestions here for how to make it play well with Acme are all that bad. personally, i'd go rog's route of writing a little program to pop out the address, as having things jump around when changing tabs for newlines and back would be kind jarring. Acme's not ideally suited to the task at hand, but it's not an awful fit, either, and has many other nice benefits that likely make up for the disconnect (or would for me, anyway). and, as they say, if you want vim you know where to find it. oh, wait, maybe you don't: :; contrib/list stefanha/vim stefanha/vim: Vim: enhanced vi editor never used it myself, but it exists. i find vi(1) more fun, myself. anthony
Re: [9fans] Acme huge bar
do you do that by executing Font in each window? IIRC, acme tries to move the tag bar a line at a time, but does so using the sizes of your tag bar font (-f). you'll see this behavior occurs because the different heights on the fonts mean you can't satisfy both of them with whole-row-only moves. acme won't ever display part of a line of text. doesn't address whether the gap should be black or not, but that's why it exists.
Re: [9fans] spreding the word
correction: i think nonet was out of the official distribution by 2e. still neat.
Re: [9fans] (no subject)
fgb has ported 4th; it's in his contrib dir, both as a tar file and a contrib package. i thought i remembered seeing another, but it's not on the contrib index page.
Re: [9fans] spreding the word
erik wrote: // i can't think of any advantages of 2e over 4e. perhaps others disagree. not "advantages", no, but there are bits and pieces that were interesting ideas, even if they didn't pan out, that are overlooked. the whole streams idea is really educational. nonet was neat. having datakit code in there made the network transparency feel a bit more real (different world, i know). i often wish GraphicsMagick or ImageMagick were as easy to use as the fb tools. oh, and since there's some people on this list at a company that makes a map program: 2e's 'roads' was great. being able to specify a particular road or roads and have only those displayed was super useful. i'd love to see that in a certain map-like program. still, you'd give up a lot to go back in time. better to identify any bits worth the effort and bring them forward.
[9fans] rc for loop exiting from emu on Plan 9
Trying to help diagnose a race condition in emu, I did this:
for (i in `{seq 1 100}) {echo BEGIN RUN $i ; emu sh -c
/usr/a/bin/sh/emuerr; echo END RUN $i ; echo}
where emuerr is a sh.dis script that raises an exception. on OS X,
using p9p's rc, i get a bunch of stanzas that look like:
BEGIN RUN 4
start
end
start2
OOPS: fail:some error
END RUN 4
except for the run number. running exactly the same command with the
same script on Plan 9, rc gives up after the "OOPS" line. same
behavior on native plan9 and 9vx. i'd expect the behavior seen on OS
X. it's not the exception, either; i get the same behavior if i
replace the entire rc for clause with {emu sh -c date}.
what is rc confused about?
Re: [9fans] create user with password
the model around users and passwords can be one of the most confusing things for someone coming from other systems. the very short, oversimplified version is that plan9 doesn't really carae about such things if all you're doing is local access; you'll need a real user/passwd when you start trying to access remote resources. when you boot a plan9 kernel, it has a cocept of "hostowner" (sometimes refered to as 'eve'). conventially, for terminals right after installation, this is "glenda", but it can be almost anything you like. nino, glenda, adm, or iamnotreallyauser should all work. hostowner wil be set to that, and hostowner will own all the kernel resources and all the initial processes (except, perhaps, a few started as "none"). if you'd like to reboot your box as 'adm' or 'glenda' and scribble all over important system files, nothing will stop you. as soon as you try to access some remote resource, however, you're going to be asked to present credentials demonstrating you are who you say you are. an "auth server" will get involved, and then the process with the auth/* files will be necessary. you're entirely able to set this up on your local terminal to get a sense of how it all fits together (read the man pages and wiki entries on setting up an auth server), but keep in mind the local permisiveness remains. this can be disconcerting to somone used to the illusion of security provided by a local password. if your data is that important, you ought to be encrypting it if there's some chance an untrusted party will physically get their hands on it. once someone has their hands on your disk, all bets are off.
Re: [9fans] Android / G1
in the US, CDMA operators (notably Verizon) typically do restrict unblessed devices (where, in many cases, those include supported devices simply not sold by them). this is improving, but remains common. the situation for GSM operators is somewhat better. the GSMA regulations (the industry association every notable global operator is a member of) provide at least some protections for users to ensure device portability. the GSMA allows north american operators more latitude than most, and the GSMA-NA is permitted to, essentially, override many portions of the regulations. i'm not sure if they've done so on this point. certainly from the point of view of a user in north america, the GSM operators are perceived as open whereas the CDMA operators are (up until about a year ago, when this started to soften) perceived as very closed.
Re: [9fans] 'cd' into non-existent directory?
9fs, for example. i can do '9fs arbitrary-machine', and not have to worry about whether /n/arbitrary-machine has been created ahead of time or now. that's the most common use. without it, you'd have to create mount points in advance of knowing what sets of things you'd want to mount. it has downsides, like your "phantom cd", which is why it's only used where it makes sense.
Re: [9fans] why sources and the plan 9 web server have been up and down lately
and thank god for that.
Re: [9fans] 9vx and native networking
Devon got this working for him about a month and a half ago; see this message: http://9fans.net/archive/2008/12/501 I've still not made it work for me (on OS X), but i think the issues are actually in changes outside the ethernet stuff. I haven't had much time to dig in.
Re: [9fans] Web interface to '/n/sources/contrib' gone??
i've updated the mirrors page; right now, it's only got 9grid.es right now. i've also removed the explicit mention of specific mirrors from the "sources repository" page, where i think you were seeing what you were seeing. i've changed it to reference the mirrors page. i only saw 9grid.de on the contrib index page; i've removed that. that page is automatically generated, although that hasn't run in a while. i'm reworking that script a bit; the new version will refer to the wiki page on mirrors. i expect to be running that more regularly by the end of the week.
Re: [9fans] Plan9's Price?
Plan 9 can be downloaded free of charge from: http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9 If you're after nice printed manuals and a pressed CD, see: http://www.vitanuova.com/cgi-bin/order.pl?PRODUCTSET=PLAN9 The listed price is £38, €45.42, or $75.00. You used to be able to get just the CD or just the books, but I didn't see such an option now.
[9fans] Handling of other Dir.mode bits
Dir.mode has several bits that don't seem to be defined. Should the protocol be read that optimally conforming clients and servers should pass through the bits, or set them to 0? Aside from the obvious risk of future collisions, is there anything that makes using these bits unsafe? No, this isn't for DMEVIL.
Re: [9fans] [plan9mod] Query regarding venti scores
the score is the hash of the data in the block. the same block on two servers will have the same score (important for replication). different blocks have the same odds of having this same score (that is, astronomically low) regardless of whether they're on one or multiple servers. that doesn't directly address their suitability as UUIDs. it seems like an odd choice to me (certainly it's an expensive way of generating them), although i guess it depends what your application is.
Re: [9fans] Sources Gone?
erik wrote: > i'm not sure i understand. either you have the key (score) > and you can decrypt the whole cyphertext (read the file tree > below), or you don't. assuming of course that scores are too > hard to guess. so the solution is: don't give out the root score. my read on the utility of rog's proposal is that you could then pre-exchange the crypto key via secure channel (real live handoff or whatnot) and then send root scores around freely over things like email. unauthorized parties reading your email then don't get your venti data. the scheme has the advantage of being minimally intrusive, but it does seem to be like putting the fix in the wrong place. i'd rather see an authenticated connection mechanism, which would likely require more changes (how do you store accounts and credentials? how do you feed them to things like a fossil at boot?), but would have the same benefits and more (i'd like to provide some clients read-only access, for example).
Re: [9fans] Pegasus 2.6 is released
you, um... never mind. what can i say? http://www.gnu.org/manual/gawk/html_node/Special-Network.html#Special-Network
Re: [9fans] Pegasus 2.6 is released
erik wrote: > it's interesting to compare this with the sleezy not-paths > that e.g. gnome programs can take, like uris. great as long > as long as you don't care to use anything but gnome tools. i had that debate with a kde-loving linux admin. i had been explaining why plan 9 was interesting or significant, and he countered with the kde example. i was marginally impressed by the number of protocols they handled, but when i asked how you'd use it with cat and friends, he said "no, just use kate". i reeled, stuttered, tried to get out something that sounded like "layering violation", and ran away. it wasn't even a cost/benefit argument; there wasn't any recognition of the costs.
Re: [9fans] Small program "PlanKey" (paraphrase of DOSKey)
On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 3:49 AM, wrote: > How about turning acme to universal UI, in the style of old Oberon? Acme very deeply believes that everything's just text. It would be substantial effort to get it to be any more universal than that. I'm aware of at least two independent efforts by very smart people who stalled at about the same place. >From a UI design perspective, it's not clear what it ought to look like. More strongly, I'm not really convinced there *is* a good way for a UI like that to work. You'd have all the problems the X11 tiled window managers have, and if you don't separately provide for either "floating" windows (as some of them do) or horribly throw tiles around, things like viewing large postscript documents is going to be hella disruptive. I love acme, but I think rio's the right starting place for GUI things. Maybe just move the menu into a pre-populated tag, similar to Acme's.
Re: [9fans] Small program "PlanKey" (paraphrase of DOSKey)
Roman wrote: // 2. Has something like that ever made it into rio propper? // Or was the feature deemed to obscure to bother? years ago, someone put "Look" in the rio button two menu. the objection (at least the one i was told) was that it made the menu too long, which i think was true. some time later (perhaps punctuated by the change in rio's resize behavior? or the 8½ → rio transition?) i found the patch and updated it. that was also years (7-ish) ago, and my code is gone. anyway, the point is it's been done, wasn't too hard, and could be done again. every once in a while i think about doing it again, but it's too low on the priority list. personally, i agree it makes the button 2 menu too long. i'd remove cut, paste, and probably snarf, since i almost always do them by chording anyway.
Re: [9fans] cheap, low-resolution terminal
i'd say "short read reading ", apparently.
[9fans] sources' venti gone again?
:; pwd /n/sources/contrib/anothy :; cat README cat: error reading README: venti i/o error or wrong score, block 31ac0ab07a37238f6257ecdddcd13c913122718c
Re: [9fans] plan9port openbsd 4.4
if you want to work on it some, this message talks about getting inferno working on OpenBSD using the rthreads library (the pending replacement for the userland threads russ talked about): http://www.xs4all.nl/~mechiel/inferno/openbsd43-old.html you could likely follow a similar path for p9p if you're so inclined. inferno has since gained an explicit OpenBSD port (for those directions, remove "-old" from the above URL), but i'm not sure whether that involves working around the userland thread model or explicitly relying on rthreads.
[9fans] sick cpu server; 9load hates my SATA controller
About a month ago, the motherboard in my CPU server went bad (visibly bulging capacitors!). I finally got the replacement part on RMA from the manufacturer and tried getting things going again yesterday. No joy, and the problems are strange. The symptoms differ depending on whether I have drives on sdE[0,1,3] (as was the case before) or sdE[0,1,2]. When I have drives on sdE[0,1,3], 9load starts, and proceeds normally until half-way through probing my SATA drives. The lines are: sb600: sata-II with 4 ports sdiahci: drive 0 in state ready after 0 resets sdiahci: drive 1 in state ready after 0 resets sdiahci: drive 2 in state missing after 0 resets sdiahci: drive 3 in state ready after 0 resets sdE3: i/o error 50 @0 sdE3: i/o error 50 @1 but (as best I can tell) after "state missing" line all I/O becomes dog slow. Characters print at what looks like maybe 300 baud, newlines take a few seconds to redraw the screen. Despite the extreme slowness of printing, it prints the 9load menu I had set up and responds to the menu entry and loads the kernel. It prints the "cpu0:" and "apm" lines as expected (but, again, very slowly), and then "sdE3" i/o error 50 @0" three times. It then finds the kernel, I get the expected ".886899." and so on, with the .'s printing very slowly (less than 1/sec, suggesting that there's a more general I/O problem, not just printing). Once the kernel has finished loading, it prints "entry: 0xf0100020" and becomes totally unresponsive (no ^t^tp, random typing produces no characters). I've disabled what peripherals I can in BIOS, different BIOS settings for the SATA mode (although I'm sure it was running AHCI before), and tried with different kernels in my boot menu; no substantial change (loading a gzip'd kernel seems to print the "..." faster per dot, but hangs after the "=>"). I've tried booting of an ISO downloaded about two weeks ago, and get similar results: things seem okay until it probes the SATA controller, when it reports "sb600: sata-II with 4 ports" and then hangs (although this does respond to ^p). Note that the part is indeed a 4-port sb600 and there are indeed three disks attached (although the BIOS and 9load disagree on whether the second or third are missing). If I have drives on sdE[0,1,2], the case for the CD is the same, but the on-disk kernel gets through asking where root is from, and then yields "panic: fault: 0x11c" as it probes the drives. All the on-disk kernels perform the same way.
[9fans] anyone tried fossil on p9p?
Has anyone gotten fossil (with or without venti) working on p9p, or tried and failed? I've been playing around with a variety of 9vx configurations and want to try booting it off a p9p-hosted fossil (on the same physical box). That's the next project.
Re: [9fans] vmware fusion - plan9 snarf issue
to be clear, this behavior is while running the old plan 9 vmware tool, right? without that, i'd expect the snarf buffer to work properly within the guest environment, but you won't have any way to get things out.
Re: [9fans] Changelogs & Patches?
depends what you mean by "extra". if that means "outside 9vx", then yes; if it means "besides what 9vx uses by default", no. yesterday(1) relies on having dump-style snapshots. 9vx, as shipped, gets its root file system from #Z, which doesn't have snapshots. erik offered some suggestions for hosting various bits of things outside 9vx and connecting to that in order to get the dumps. those options are valid, but you can just as well host the entire thing within 9vx. it's not the default configuration, but i believe instructions are out there (9fans or the wiki). using fossil for your root, instead of #Z, will obviously cost you the benefits of #Z - namely, the pass-through transparency. if your primary interest is for replica/*, though, you might consider the direction i've been headed: root from fossil, but import $home or /usr from #Z.
[9fans] OT: phonet?
Mostly off-topic, but the newly released linux 2.6.28 talks about the "Nokia phonet protocol". Google "helpfully" returns all sorts of things with "phone" in it as a match to "phonet", making it a bit hard to find more detailed protocol documentation. Anyone have a pointer to anything more definitive than the phonet.txt in the linux kernel tree?
Re: [9fans] Getting qlock errors when trying to install
this is what i've got in the motherboard i'm trying to get running in my unwell cpu server. using your 9pccd.gz (just trying to get root from *anywhere*, so i can see the disks), i get two of these: panic: ilockdepth 1, last lock 0x0 at 0x0, sched called from 0xf0108802 right after i say root from tcp.
Re: [9fans] 9pfuse and O_APPEND
> client by definition knows more than the server. i assume you mean "knows less"? the server knows where EOF is and which files to enforce append-only on. your #1 seems to only exist because the client doesn't have that info.
Re: [9fans] Motherboard recommendations?
i've look through the changes and am not clear on how the sb700 will be handled. it sounded like you were saying all the sb[67]xx chips are handled the same, but the did is different (439D). it it just a matter of adding it to the big switch(p->vid) statement?
Re: [9fans] How can I boot plan9 on my Compaq AlphaServer DS10L?
> i think that would be great, too but i can't think of any > arm platforms that are competitive. any suggestions? it depends in large part what "competitive" means, of course. most of the ARM stuff i'm aware of is handheld or embedded, where intel architectures have a really hard time being "competitive" in terms of heat and space. handheld devices are a bit tricky because they have more churn in parts between models, but there's plenty of interesting ones to pick from. i like nokia's line, and would love to see a port of Plan 9 (or Inferno) to the 770 or N800 (there's an even newer one, but i forget the model off hand and don't own one of those).
Re: [9fans] Motherboard recommendations?
does "sb600 or greater" really mean just by number? sb700 and sb750 seem common, but i'd assumed (probably foolishly) that 6xx was different (enough) from 7xx.
Re: [9fans] Motherboard recommendations?
perhaps more particularly, anyone know of or working on support for the RealTek RTL8111/8168B ethernet controller? I've found two boards with match except for having an 8111 controller, which we don't list as supported. i have no idea how close realtek's parts are to each other.
[9fans] Motherboard recommendations?
The motherboard in my main server went belly-up yesterday. No POST, no nothing. Well, the fans spin. Joy. That particular motherboard isn't carried anywhere any more, despite being a whopping one year old. I'm looking for a replacement, but having a hard time finding one with both a supported SATA controller and supported gigabit ethernet with an AMD CPU and DDR2 RAM (so I don't have to replace that, too). Anyone have any recommendations? Bonus points for one that I can get shipped overnight.
[9fans] 9vx.OSX bug: resize on second display causes window to go wrong
I have a 10.5 MacBook with an external display attached. When I start 9vx, things look normal. I can resize the window on the main display. If I move it to the second display and resize, the window goes from "good" to "bad": http://strand1.com/who/anthony/bug/good.png http://strand1.com/who/anthony/bug/bad.png Resizing the window back to the original geometry makes the window "good" again. Note that this is "just" a display issue. Things within 9vx continue to run just fine, and can update the display (although that becomes unreliable, especially in the portion of rio windows to the left of where they should be). Dragging my mouse over where the rio window border should be causes the cursor to turn into the "resize" cursor, and resizing works fine, dragging the still-slanted window around. This happens independent of what's running within 9vx: I see the same thing even with no rio. Anthony
