Re: [9fans] acme without a heavy grid (SFW)
On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 7:25 PM, Jason Catena wrote: > A quick edit frees acme from its "heavy grid prison", a la Tufte. If you look in Envisioning Information, he recommends no borders for all windows, except the focused one, which is yellow. Sam does this (with a different shade that isn't as loud) > https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/502901/acmenogrid.jpg > > Jason Catena > >
Re: [9fans] linux stats in last year from linuxcon
On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 9:12 PM, andrey mirtchovski wrote: > it's on slashdot, it must be true: > > "During a roundtable discussion at LinuxCon in Portland, Oregon this > afternoon, moderator and Novell distinguished engineer James Bottomley > asked Tovalds whether Linux kernel features were being released too > fast, before the kernel is stabilized. > > Citing an internal Intel study that tracked kernel releases, Bottomley > said Linux performance had dropped about two per centage points at > every release, for a cumulative drop of about 12 per cent over the > last ten releases. "Is this a problem?" he asked. > > "We're getting bloated and huge. Yes, it's a problem," said Torvalds." And instead of revising the design, I think we're going to see them go for the 2-percent speedups here and there. Another thing they won't consider is having separate versions for high-end servers and PCs. I don't understand why Torvalds thinks Linux has to be all things to all people. > > well, not really slashdot: > http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/22/linus_torvalds_linux_bloated_huge/ > > Ron, did you throw anything at Linus while you were there? :) > >
Re: [9fans] nice quote
On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 2:03 PM, Rob Pike wrote: >> Are you implying Doug McIlroy hadn't been taught about (and inevitably >> occupied by) Church-Turing Thesis or even before that Ackermann function and >> had to wait to be inspired by a comment in passing about FORTRAN to realize >> the importance of recursion?! This was a rhetorical question, of course. > > Doug loves that story. In the version he told me, he was a (math) grad > student at MIT in 1956 (before FORTRAN) and the discussion in the lab > was about computer subroutines - in assembly or machine language of > course. Someone mused about what might happen if a subroutine called > itself. Everyone looked bemused. The next day they all returned and > declared that they knew how to implement a subroutine that could call > itself although they had no idea what use it would be. "Recursion" > was not a word in computing. Hell, "computing" wasn't even much of a > word in math. It's nice to know that it's a bit of lore that changes with each telling. > > Don't be Whiggish in your understanding of history. Its participants > did not know their way. > > -rob > >
Re: [9fans] nice quote
On Sat, Sep 5, 2009 at 2:26 PM, erik quanstrom wrote: > i'm not a lisp fan. but it's discouraging to see > such lack of substance as the following (collected > from a few posts): > >> Oh, yay, a Xah Lee quote, he's surely a trusted source on all things >> Lisp. Didja read his page about hiring a prostitute in Las Vegas? Or >> the one about how he lives in a car in the Bay Area because he's too >> crazy to get hired? > > surely an ad hominum attack like this neither furthers an > argument nor informs anyone. > >> I forgot this: Graham basically accuses programmers who don't find LISP as >> attractive (or powerful, as he puts it) as he does of living on lower >> planes of existence from which the "heavens above" of functional (or only >> LISP) programming seem incomprehensible. He writes/speaks persuasively, >> he's a successful businessman, but is he also an honest debater? > > and here i don't see an argument at all. > >> I just read in Wikipedia that, "Lisp's original conditional operator, cond, >> is the precursor to later if-then-else structures," without any citations. >> Assuming that to be true conditional branching is a fundamental element of >> control flow and it has existed in machine languages ever since early days. >> There's really very little to brag about it. > > i'd love to argue this factually, but my knowledge isn't > that extensive. i think you'll find in the wiki entry for > Computer that much of what we take for granted today > was not obvious at the time. stored program computers > with branching didn't come along until about 1948 > (einiac). i hope someone will fill in the gaps here. > i think it's worth appreciating how great these early > discoveries were. There's a talk Doug McIllroy gave where he joked about how he basically invented (or rather, discovered) recursion because someone said ``Hey, what would happen if we made a FORTRAN routine call itself?'' IIRC he had to tinker with the compiler to get it to accept the idea, and at first, no one realized what it would be good for. > > in the same vein, i don't know anything much about file > systems that i didn't steal from ken thompson. > > - erik > >
Re: [9fans] 9P on android
On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 4:20 AM, Enrico Weigelt wrote: > > Hi folks, > > > I just purchased an G2-Touch phone (running Android) - a really > cool toy, but it lacks 9P support ;-o I don't know how open Android is, but if you could cross-compile the v9fs modules (or compile them on the phone, if they let you get the toolchain on it), you'd be in business. Otherwise, there's always one of the userspace solutions, such as 9pfuse. > > Maybe someone's already working on this issue ? > > > cu > -- > -- > Enrico Weigelt, metux IT service -- http://www.metux.de/ > > phone: +49 36207 519931 email: weig...@metux.de > mobile: +49 174 7066481 icq: 210169427 skype: nekrad666 > -- > Embedded-Linux / Portierung / Opensource-QM / Verteilte Systeme > -- > >
Re: [9fans] Possible bug in p9p venti?
On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 8:08 PM, erik quanstrom wrote: >> >> Any chance this is related to the issues we discussed on #plan9? >> > > since not everyone who reads the list does irc, why > don't you fill us in on the issues discussed on #plan9? > > - erik > > Sorry, forgot to crossreference my thread on plan9port-dev: http://groups.google.com/group/plan9port-dev/browse_thread/thread/54dde001eab50ad9#
Re: [9fans] Possible bug in p9p venti?
On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 11:10 AM, Venkatesh Srinivas wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I think I've found a bug in p9p's Venti, if anyone were to take a look
> at this code or tell me if I'm on the right track, it'd be pretty
> neat.
>
> When trying to start Venti on a FreeBSD 8-BETA2 system and a ZFS
> filesystem, we got this error:
> 2009/0822 23:12:30 venti: conf...
> 2009/0822 23:12:30 err 4: read arena0 offset 0x6 count 65536 buf
> 803f2 returned 65536: No such file or directory
> 2009/0822 23:12:30 err 4: can't read arena0: read arena0 offset
> 0x6 count 65536 buf 803f2 returned 65536: No such file or
> directory
> venti: can't init server: can't initialize venti: arena0: can't read
> arena0: read arena0 offset 0x6 count 65536 buf 803f2 returned
> 65536: No such
>
> In venti/srv/part.c:325, opsize is clamped at MaxIo, which is 64KB by
> default. Later, on :329, we issue a pread for opsize bytes from our
> partition, but check that the read returned some multiple of
> blocksize. (Blocksize comes from part->fsblocksize, which is gotten by
> fstatfs()'s .f_bsize on unix.) This is a problem when MaxIo <
> blocksize ; on ZFS on FreeBSD, f_bsize = 128K.
>
> A workaround is to clamp fsblocksize at MaxIo as well:
> --- part.c.orig 2009-08-23 11:07:56.0 -0400
> +++ part.c 2009-08-23 11:06:46.0 -0400
> @@ -166,6 +166,9 @@
> part->fsblocksize = sfs.f_bsize;
> }
> #endif
> +
> + part->fsblocksize = min(part->fsblocksize, MaxIo);
> +
> if(subname && findsubpart(part, subname) < 0){
> werrstr("cannot find subpartition %s", subname);
> freepart(part);
>
> Thanks,
> -- vs
>
>
Any chance this is related to the issues we discussed on #plan9?
Re: [9fans] Recursive structural expressions?
On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 9:14 PM, Charles Forsyth wrote: > qed allowed naming of regular expressions using `e' and their recursive > invocation > using \E, with results suggested earlier. > > http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/qedman.html > http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/qedman.pdf > > ``It should be noted that the ability to define regular expressions > recursively makes the term "regular expression" a misnomer: it is not hard to > see that expressions can be constructed to match exactly the members of any > given context-free language.'' > > I guess I missed this when I last read that paper. Do you know how qed dealt with infinite recursion or ambiguous CF expressions?
Re: [9fans] Recursive structural expressions?
On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 5:26 PM, erik quanstrom wrote:
>> No, I know you can apply them `recursively', I mean something more
>> like an expression in a CFG or yacc.
>>
>> >
>> > can you outline somehow what you're thinking of?
>>
>> Basically, if you could take a bracketed expression in sam and then
>> name it, and then call it recursively.
>>
>> All the problems with CFGs (shift/reduce problems, ambiguities, etc)
>> would possibly apply.
>
> could you give an example in your proposed language?
> i don't see how greedy regular expressions wouldn't kill you.
> example. let's say you have a SRE that breaks text into lines,
> you couldn't apply that recursively. in fact i think you'd have
> the same problem with any SRE, since they are greedy and
> can't count.
>
> maybe i'm just confused because 'x' goes from a blob of text
> to a stream of tokens. where as grammars go from a stream
> of tokens to productions. maybe you mean to replace the
> traditional tokenizer with named SREs?
Here's an example. Let's make the syntax extra pukey: @#, where # is
1-9, defines a `named procedure', which is the same thing as putting
something in braces in Sam.
x/.*\n/ @1{ ( @1 ) | @1 ( @1 ) ( ) | }
Spaces have been added to reduce ugliness, but in the ``real'' syntax,
the spaces would have to be left out. The last pipe followed by a
space represents the null string. The entire expression should,
despite me being really rusty at CS Theory, match balanced strings of
parentheses.
The problems that would arise with this scheme include:
0) Infinite recursion
1) Shift/reduce errors
2) Ambiguities
I'm not sure if this is as powerful as CFGs, but it is at least more
powerful than regular expressions. Again, I'm not great at theory and
it's been a while since I did any. If we call this syntax S, I have
proven (hopefully correctly) only this:
L(Reg) < L(S) <= L(CFG)
Newsham was thinking about it more lucidly than I was on the IRC
channel about what it's really equivalent to.
Hopefully this makes it clear.
>
> - erik
>
>
Re: [9fans] Recursive structural expressions?
On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 4:39 PM, erik quanstrom wrote: >> > i'm sure i've done them. this is a lame example, since i can't remember >> > where i've used these techniques off the top of my head >> > >> > ,x:.*: g/#pragma/ x:[^ ]+[ ]: g/print/p >> >> How is this recursive? > > in the sense that 'x' is recursively applied to the output of 'x'. > i have no idea what you would mean by applying the same 'x' > expression to the output of said 'x' expression, as regular expressions > are greedy and can't count. wouldn't they all loop forever? No, I know you can apply them `recursively', I mean something more like an expression in a CFG or yacc. > > can you outline somehow what you're thinking of? Basically, if you could take a bracketed expression in sam and then name it, and then call it recursively. All the problems with CFGs (shift/reduce problems, ambiguities, etc) would possibly apply. > > - erik > >
Re: [9fans] Recursive structural expressions?
On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 3:53 PM, erik quanstrom wrote: > On Thu Aug 20 13:54:35 EDT 2009, jrm8...@gmail.com wrote: >> Has anyone given thought to recursive structural regular expressions? > > i'm sure i've done them. this is a lame example, since i can't remember > where i've used these techniques off the top of my head > > ,x:.*: g/#pragma/ x:[^ ]+[ ]: g/print/p How is this recursive? > > - erik > >
[9fans] Recursive structural expressions?
Has anyone given thought to recursive structural regular expressions? I didn't see a way to do recursion from reading the paper and experimenting. The reason for recursion would be that instead of having hopped-up regexes, we'd now have context-free expressions. Yacc needing tokens makes doing CF things a pain, but I think if grep, sed, sam, etc understood a simple CF expression language, we'd have something that was (mathematically) more powerful. One (perhaps silly) example is that you could see if your source code had balanced parens/braces/brackets/tags in a jiffy, but other examples include searching through records with complex structure. I suppose it would likely be too slow, but would it cost anything when it's not used?
Re: [9fans] make slides in plan 9
On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 12:27 PM, Charles Forsyth wrote: > i use html, then any browser will do, even ie6 for most things. > i use an rc script and awk to take an outline format such as > - burble > - more burble > - even more burble > with some other conventions to allow embedded code fragments. > it's obviously easy to link to other things to allow diversions > and connect to expanded information on the rare instances that > anyone is awake enough to ask about them. the same script can generate > a summary of the slides in troff as handouts. > > since there are drawbacks to the powerpoint approach, even without cruft More people need to read Edward Tufte. Slideshows generally just detract from what you're doing. Use a projector for things like images, tables, etc. > like clip art and transitions, i often simply > write ordinary troff (-ms or -mpm), and then i can > use pic, grap, eqn, tbl as needed. > >
Re: [9fans] HP: Printing with the Illiterate
On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 10:12 PM, Akshat Kumar wrote: > gs(1) compiled fine with ijs driver - I hope it doesn't > need to be updated as well. Thanks for the information, > Russ. > > I found Prof. Okamoto's page on HPIJS 1.5 > port: http://basalt.cias.osakafu-u.ac.jp/plan9/s54.html > (binaries linked). > > I'll look into the degree of changes made for the port. > If it's just a mkfile, I'll try the same with newer versions. > Otherwise, well, that means quite a bit of work. > > >> there are some quite nice looking printers from >> other manufactuers that accept pdf directly at >> a pricepoint 1/2 to 2/3 that of a comparable hp printer. >> >> pdf is a spec. thus no shim required. Erik: I've long believed HP was a ripoff; you're exactly right about PDF printers. > > Suggestions (model, company, etc.) welcome. > Although, this thing can do photoscanning, copying, > and faxing. I make great use of the former two, > along with printing (of course). > > > ak I have bought 2 printers from Brother. Apparently, despite being `cheap' Brother makes high-quality products (including sewing machines and, long ago, typewriters). I have an HL 2040 which is a B&W laser printer. It's low-profile (6-8 inches tall), USB/serial only with no duplex. You should be able to pick one up for about 100 USD. The toner cartridges are pretty cheap and last a long time. It's relatively fast (20-30ppm); basically, it's the perfect thing if you need to run off a lot of papers, perhaps with diagrams or pictures that still make sense in grayscale. Fairly recently I got a Brother HL4070 CDW -- it's a bit pricey and it's really made for a business, but it is the best printer I've ever had. Color laser, duplex, wireless and wired networking, LCD and web control panels, and a USB port for direct printing PDF, PS, and image files from flash drives and cameras. It understands PDF/PS and can emulate PCL (not that I would ever think of doing that). The wireless part is the best -- no more fretting about where to put the printer. This one is a more serious investment, though: 350-450 USD, and 4 toner cartridges to replace instead of 1. When shopping for the 4070, I saw a Brother that also did scanning and faxing, cheaper than the 4070, but almost certainly with fewer features, and possibly ink instead of laser, which totally turned me off. Perhaps that might be a solution for you, though. Good luck!
Re: [9fans] HP: Printing with the Illiterate
On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 9:06 PM, Russ Cox wrote: > On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 5:37 PM, J.R. Mauro wrote: >> IJS is probably it; that's the PCL driver for the home-office class printers. > > IJS is not PCL. > > IJS is a custom protocol that is spoken between a bitmap-producing > program like Ghostscript and a bitmap-printing program like /usr/bin/hpijs > http://svn.ghostscript.com/ghostscript/branches/mtrender/ijs/ijs_spec.pdf > > /usr/bin/hpijs speaks IJS to Ghostscript (or whatever is on standard > input/output) and speaks a new HP protocol called LIDIL to the printer > on the other end. Rather than commit to a full specification of LIDIL > and have to worry about backwards compatibility in the future, > HP chose to use IJS as a shim protocol and distribute a binary > that talks to the printer (source is available but it's still a binary). > > PCL is not in the picture. Getting PCL out of the picture is exactly > the reason that IJS and LIDIL were introduced, because LIDIL is > basically "here is a bitmap" whereas PCL is a real language that > requires actual memory and computing power inside the printer. > LIDIL moves the memory and computing requirements out of > the printer into the computer proper. > > Russ > > I thought IJS was also used to turn a raster into PCL, since IIRC some non-business-class HP printers come with a stripped-down PCL 5e or some such. I'm probably wrong again, though. I try to not think about the HP PDLs too much. Probably it's not IJS I'm thinking of and some other cruft from HP -- it's been a long time.
Re: [9fans] HP: Printing with the Illiterate
IJS is probably it; that's the PCL driver for the home-office class printers. Akshat: PCL is proprietary but not closed; you can find references to it online. I would highly recommend never looking at PCL since it will make your eyes bleed. Hopefully the Ghostscript drivers will work for you. On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 1:15 PM, Russ Cox wrote: > If there is a Ghostscript output device for a printer, > then you just need to edit /sys/lib/lp/devices to add > an appropriate line giving the output device name and > the file where the output goes. > > ; grep 'gs!' devices > hpdeskjet - - /dev/lpt1data - gs!cdj670+nohead generic nospool - - - - > canonbjc240l - - /dev/lpt1data - gs!bjc600+nohead generic nospool - - - - > ; > > Those two are writing to /dev/lpt1data using the cdj670 > and bjc600 drivers. However, I think you need the ijs > driver, which is not built by default (it probably should be). > To enable it, edit /sys/src/cmd/gs/mkfile to add ijs to the > device list and then rebuild using the instructions in the > mkfile. > > Then you'll have to compile hpijs and add a line to your > /sys/lib/lp/devices that says gsijs!model+number instead > of gs!dev. See /sys/lib/lp/process/gspipeijs for the > exact syntax and how it interacts with the hpijs program. > Also http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/doc/cvs/Devices.htm#IJS > > I don't know how/where you get the hpijs program. > Perhaps someone else who is using it could speak up. > It was originally ported in 2004 by Kenji Okamoto but > I expect you'll need a newer one than that. > > Russ > >
Re: [9fans] ttf2subf and plan9ports
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 4:46 AM, Aaron W. Hsu wrote: > need to run, but this isn't the case, because apparently objtype isn't > defined, and then when it is, it doesn't know what to do about things. :-/ You should be able to rewrite the mkfile using any of the p9p mkfiles in $PLAN9/src/ as a guide -- they are slightly different from plan9 ones.
Re: [9fans] sam as editor for mutt/pine
On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 5:13 AM, plus 852 wrote: > Is it possible to use sam as an external editor for the mail programs > mutt or pine? If so, is anyone doing this? What does one add to a mutt > or pine config file to get this working? > > You definitely want to use E. If you look hard enough, you can actually get Acme Mail to (mostly) work in p9p
Re: [9fans] An excerpt from Syllable's description
On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 3:29 PM, pmarin wrote: > I wonder if is possible that underground operating systems like Haiku, > Aros or Plan9 should share some kind of knowledge database (not only > the source code) about drivers implementation and don't try to > reinvent the wheel. Haiku seems to do a great job, for example their > network drivers are taken from Freebsd, the sound drivers from OSS4, > etc. I have wondered this, too. I think it would be especially hard for Plan 9 to benefit given the way it handles controlling devices. > > On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 6:09 PM, John Floren wrote: >> Why do we have to care about every self-righteous pronouncement from >> every minor project out there? Why should we have to put everything >> into a "Plan 9 context"? >> >> If you want to relate Plan 9 to Syllable, look at their forums--it >> seems to have the same sort of problems as Plan 9. Lacking in drivers >> (a quick look showed that they don't have PCMCIA, WLAN, or PPP >> support), new users coming in expecting it to be like other operating >> systems (I'm looking at you, Balwinder) or trolls calling it dead, and >> in general an apparent lack of people writing programs for it. >> Syllable looks to be POSIX-compliant (I think) which is probably how >> they have Quake most of the other ported programs. >> >> John >> >> On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 2:13 AM, Balwinder S >> Dheeman wrote: >>> Computer scientists will tell you that their operating systems and tools >>> are fine, because they like them to be complex. Companies will tell you >>> that their machines or devices are fine, because they like to control >>> them by hiding requisite device specifications and, or applications >>> notes, even though you own them. Yet, some people remember a few >>> machines from decades ago that were different. They got run over in the >>> gold rush, but they proved that it is possible to build much more >>> helpful machines. And if it was possible then, it is certainly possible >>> now, because the hardware that computers are built from has become much >>> more powerful. It's the software that is often not working in the >>> interest of the owner. In the /Syllable/ project, we are using this >>> power to help the owner instead of the scientists and the big companies. >>> >>> Please comment the above in a Plan 9 context. >>> -- >>> Balwinder S "bdheeman" Dheeman Registered Linux User: #229709 >>> Anu'z li...@home (Unix Shoppe) Machines: #168573, 170593, 259192 >>> Chandigarh, UT, 160062, India Plan9, T2, Arch/Debian/FreeBSD/XP >>> Home: http://werc.homelinux.net/ Visit: http://counter.li.org/ >>> >>> >> >> >> >> -- >> "Object-oriented design is the roman numerals of computing" -- Rob Pike >> >> > >
Re: [9fans] just an idea (Splashtop like)
On Sat, Aug 1, 2009 at 10:55 PM, John DeGood wrote: > J.R. Mauro wrote: >> Doesn't ASUS burn the Linux distro into a chip, though? Maybe there >> are utilities to flash it with something else. > > I believe new ASUS motherboards typically boot Splashtop from hard disk, > not from flash. Thanks for setting that straight -- my reference was a couple of old articles with wording that Asus was going to put Splashtop on their computers in flash. Obviously the articles I remember are long obsolete.
Re: [9fans] just an idea (Splashtop like)
On Sat, Aug 1, 2009 at 11:49 AM, ron minnich wrote: > btw the sata FLASH parts are surprisingly fast. Not at all like USB > sticks, if that is what you are used to. > ron > > Ron, have you researched any long-term wear studies on these flash drives? I've heard a lot of good things, but I'm really put off by terms like "wear levelling", filesystems optimized to work around flash's delicateness, etc. I'm really interested in any numbers anyone has.
Re: [9fans] just an idea (Splashtop like)
On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 1:50 PM, David Leimbach wrote: > A buddy of mine just got this: asus p5ql/epu motherboard. It came with > Splashtop: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splashtop > ... which is a linux distribution that boots in like 5 seconds or so. > Complete with BlackBox for a window manager, Skype, an instant messager > client and firefox. > I wonder if it could be changed to be a plan 9 terminal, or if one could at > least get 9vx on it. > Dave Doesn't ASUS burn the Linux distro into a chip, though? Maybe there are utilities to flash it with something else.
Re: [9fans] Someone let the domain go
On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 1:30 PM, Uriel wrote: > It might be worth trying to get control back, I think you can do that > for domain squatters that violate trademarks, as is clearly the case > here. I think that's only if the trademark owner pursues it, and the US may have other draconian clauses to the effect of "use it or lose it", at least I know there's a statute of limitations on some things about trademark infringement. Worth a look, though, if someone cares. > > uriel > > On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 10:58 AM, maht wrote: >> Uriel wrote: >>> >>> Likely Google juice, there are still plenty of high-rank links >>> pointing there lying around the net. >>> >> >> That's how I found it, someone asked about InfernoSpaces and I ended up here >> http://ai.ijs.si/mezi/agents/agents.html >> >> >> >> > >
Re: [9fans] Unix Weenie Newsreader
On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 7:52 PM, Corey wrote: > On Tuesday 28 July 2009 11:19:08 John Floren wrote: >> Ever wish you had more GUI programs on Plan 9 to show off to your >> friends? Do you think Mothra represents the very pinnacle of UI >> design? Then have I got a program for you... >> >> I've spent the last day or so whipping up a quick libpanel application >> to read USENET via nntpfs. You can read newsgroups (not threaded, yet) >> and post messages (no followups yet), all from the comfort of a >> program that wouldn't look too out of place in any fashionable UNIX >> establishment. Screenshots at >> http://csplan9.rit.edu/users/john/uwn.png >> >> The source is available in /n/sources/contrib/john/uwn.tgz >> > > > Whoah - buttons and widgets? On Plan 9? > > This is unacceptable! This is madness. > > > ... I jest. > > > ( maybe unix will re-subscribe to 9fans now ) > > > >
Re: [9fans] Using Acme as an external Editor
On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 2:55 AM, sqweek wrote: > 2009/7/28 J.R. Mauro : >> One caveat about E: if you're paranoid like I am and save your file >> many times while editing, E will not be terribly friendly until you >> train yourself to save only when finished. (This is not a criticism of >> E, it is merely a warning to people with my kind of idiosyncrasies) > > Heh, I do this too. Ended up writing > http://sqweek.dnsdojo.org/plan9/acmeedit which also adds a Cancel > option so you can end the editing session with a non-zero exit (used > by some callers to abort the operation). > -sqweek > > You are a lifesaver.
Re: [9fans] Using Acme as an external Editor
On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 2:22 PM, Russ Cox wrote: > On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 11:06 AM, Tim Newsham wrote: >>> Is there some idiom or method for using Acme as an external editor to some >>> other program? Say I want to use it as the editor that is spawned when I do >>> a CVS commit to a system; how would I do this, or can this even be done? I'm >>> using plan9ports, but I don't know how much of this question relates to >>> what. >> >> I was playing with this exact problem recently. There's an easy way to send >> a file to acme for editing -- the plumber. There's a downside, it doesn't >> wait for the editor to save or complete. So.. you could plumb the file and >> then wait for a save to happen, somehow, or you can write another program >> that forces a new acme window with the contents of the file and waits for it >> to either Put or Del. I wrote a small program to do this recently (see the >> thread: http://9fans.net/archive/2009/06/290) which was a bit hacky, but >> worked. I solicited some feedback on some questions and got some good >> advice from Russ (http://9fans.net/archive/2009/06/292) but havent yet gone >> back and applied it. > > I don't think you need to be that fancy. > Lorenzo Bolla already pointed out E in this thread, > and it exists exactly for this purpose. > > http://swtch.com/plan9port/man/man1/sam.html > (description of E is at the end) > > Russ > > One caveat about E: if you're paranoid like I am and save your file many times while editing, E will not be terribly friendly until you train yourself to save only when finished. (This is not a criticism of E, it is merely a warning to people with my kind of idiosyncrasies)
Re: [9fans] unsuscribe
On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 4:32 PM, David Leimbach wrote: > > > On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 1:15 PM, Jason Catena > wrote: >> >> On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 14:36, root wrote: >>> >>> unsuscribe >>> >> >> I guess Unix isn't interested in Plan 9 anymore. >> Jason Catena >> > > It doesn't understand these youngins... It's jealous because Plan 9 is slimmer and prettier.
Re: [9fans] Question about Plan9 project
On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 3:50 PM, Eric Van Hensbergen wrote: > On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 2:37 PM, Corey wrote: >> On Saturday 18 July 2009 12:29:29 Eric Van Hensbergen wrote: >>> The secret plan 9 super secret >>> society fork is yet another evolution, actually primarily motivated by >>> bitter, disruptive, and ultimately destructive community members. >>> >> >> Curiosity has just got the best of me. >> >> Can you shed a little more light on this super secret fork? >> > > No. > > :) > -eric > > Well, I'm sure you can, but if you told us, you'd have to kill us.
Re: [9fans] Question about Plan9 project
On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 2:35 PM, dorin bumbu wrote: > There are thousands of devices shipped with Microsoft Windows CE prior > to version 4 (.NET). For these devices MS never offered patches even > if these versions had lots of bugs, nor even standard C libraries > (thank God there is wcecompat). And there are lot of projects that > reached 10+ years (with workarounds, of course), and still in > production. I don't think the risk of using Plan 9 is greather than > the risk assumend by those who developed with WCE prior to 4. I was going to say something to that effect -- Plan 9 is by and large pretty stable, and on the same hardware, even no updates would leave you with a fairly reliable system. > > Dorin > > On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 4:10 PM, Adriano Verardo wrote: >> Hi all, >> >> As a professional user I think that Plan9 could be better than *nix for a >> large class of industrial - not time critical - applications but in Italy >> nobody >> use it, except of no more than a dozen of fans. The University doesn't know >> it at all. >> Of course, this is what I see. I would be happy if the picture were >> different. >> >> Speaking with my clients I see that almost all appreciate Plan9. But, even >> if some >> of them defined it "fascinating", the common sense is that, without >> guarantees about >> its longevity, it could be a wrong choice. >> >> How can I reply to this objection ? >> >> Reading the thread about plan9.bell-lab.com I understand that Bell Labs >> are no more directly committed in the project. Is it correct ? >> >> Adriano >> >> > >
Re: [9fans] channels across machines
On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 1:20 PM, Skip Tavakkolian<9...@9netics.com> wrote: >> Or is there a better idea? This certainly seems preferable >> to RPC or plain byte pipes for communicating structured >> values. > > i have some incomplete ideas that are tangentially related to this -- > more for handling interfaces. > > it seems one could write a compiler that translates an interface > definition (e.g. IDL) into a server and a client library; 9p(2) and > ioproc(2) can be readily used in the generated code to do the tricky > stuff. the main part then becomes how to translate the calls across. > > conventionally the server for an interface with an ID of X (e.g. > GUID) is posted to /srv/X. > > for a given method bar in interface foo, writing to /n/foo/bar ( > /srv/X mounted on /n/foo) would invoke foo:bar wherever it is. > obviously when the reader/writer are generated, the types and sizes of > parameters are known. Reminds me of the http interface to venti, which has things like /set/variable and /plot/variable
Re: [9fans] channels across machines
On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 4:38 AM, Akshat Kumar wrote: > The idea seems inviting at first, but have you > given a thought to using plumber(4) for > "interprocess messaging" (which is what you > want, from what I understand)? This seems > more appropriate for communication amongst > processes alien to one another than something > so code-level like a chan extension. Acme does this. > > > at least, in terms of Plan 9 > ak > >
Re: [9fans] plan9.bell-labs.com down
On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 2:36 PM, Anthony Sorace wrote: > 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. Seriously, we're lucky to have sources /at all/. Instead of complaining, maybe the most concerned people should volunteer their time to help maintain sources, or put up mirrors of their own. > > 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] building plan9port: arch spec, arm vs armv5tel
On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 8:06 PM, Russ Cox wrote: >> Should we put patches here, too? > > Yes. I'd like plan9port-dev to have all > the discussion of plan9port development > and problems. > > There's a different story for patches that > is still not quite complete, but it's a start. > Look for upload.py in > http://groups.google.com/group/plan9port-dev/t/a1b7f0123e261012 > > Russ > > Ok, I sent the patch to the mailing list -- I have a lot of local modifications that shouldn't be published, I don't know if upload.py would try to send them.
Re: [9fans] building plan9port: arch spec, arm vs armv5tel
On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 9:55 PM, Russ Cox wrote: > +plan9port-dev > bcc: 9fans > > I have just created a mailing list for these questions. > It is not documented anywhere yet - yours is the first. > I would have called the mailing list plan9port-help > but apparently -help is not a valid mailing list suffix. > plan9port-...@googlegroups.com Should we put patches here, too? > > There is also an issue tracker at > http://bitbucket.org/rsc/plan9port/issues. > There may be a nicer URL in a few days. > > Russ > > On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 6:43 PM, Ethan Grammatikidis > wrote: >> Building plan9port on an arm box I get this message several times: >> >> sh: cd: 4: can't cd to armv5tel >> >> >> At the end of the build the only binary in plan9/bin is mk: >> >> $ file bin/* | grep ELF >> bin/mk: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, version 1 (SYSV), for >> GNU/Linux 2.6.14, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), not stripped >> >> >> In src/lib9 I symlinked getcallerpc-arm.c to getcallerpc-armv5tel.c; this >> made lib9 build but it's not enough to build the executables. How do I >> specify the architecture to the build system? I guess the setarch command >> may work, but I'd need to compile it too and I'd ideally like to work >> without that particular hack. >> > >
Re: [9fans] v9fs question
On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 8:08 PM, ron minnich wrote: > you need to find the niche and provide programs, which people can just > use. Or you need to find the niche that lets other people write > programs, and we're not where we need to be on that score. It's still > too hard for people to write servers and there's no clear answer on > which library to use. FUSE has done a great job in this area. > > ron > > Unfortunately, the only niches being filled are by other 9fans :P We've got some cool stuff by sqweek and Kris Maglione that are linux-specific, but the world at large is mostly ignorant of it. I'm sure adding things like /net will turn the tide.
Re: [9fans] v9fs question
On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 8:01 PM, Eric Van Hensbergen wrote: > On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 6:41 PM, J.R. Mauro wrote: >> On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 7:16 PM, ron minnich wrote: >>> On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 3:18 PM, J.R. Mauro wrote: >>> >>>> We hope to. One of the reasons it would actually be unwise to let >>>> anyone mount anything now is that no one uses per-process namespaces. >>>> That's probably fine on your desktop, but not on a server where 20 >>>> people try to mount something under /mnt/foo or whatnot. >>> >>> Could we solve this by making private mounts the default (or only >>> allowed) behavior? >> >> It would be nice to fix up mounts so that you didn't need to be root >> and all that crap, and then make it the default, but I doubt Linus >> would let it fly. I get the feeling that private namespaces are viewed >> like chroots: a security feature no one but pros needs. Unfortunately >> not many linux devs seem to care about plan 9, and that has a negative >> impact on how much stuff can happen. Hopefully we'll gradually wear >> them down, or keep a minifork/patchset. >> > > When things get further along we can do a coordinated assault :) Indeed :) > We've got bits of mindshare spread out over different places including > a couple of the major distributions, if things can be made optional We've got Greg KH and Christoph on our side. I'm sure viro would also be a voice in our favor, and he has some pull with Linus > they'll make it into mainline and then we just need to focus on > education by presenting demos at places like OLS, Plumbers, and LCA -- > and maybe get some good video podcast tutorials up on YouTube to get > people wanting and using the features. Of course the main thing is > finding a niche that needs the features and selling them on it. The > focus on cloud computing and other cluster type solutions in > mainstream computing may be helpful there. Yes, showing people the benefits of /net and how simple clustering is will be the path to victory. People will be amazed when they see how easy it is to make 5 computers pretend to be one. > > -eric > >
Re: [9fans] v9fs question
On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 7:50 PM, erik quanstrom wrote: >> It would be nice to fix up mounts so that you didn't need to be root >> and all that crap, and then make it the default, but I doubt Linus >> would let it fly. I get the feeling that private namespaces are viewed >> like chroots: a security feature no one but pros needs. Unfortunately >> not many linux devs seem to care about plan 9, and that has a negative >> impact on how much stuff can happen. Hopefully we'll gradually wear >> them down, or keep a minifork/patchset. > > i think if the linux folks really appreciated what one > could do with namespaces, a number of the > container bolt-on things could be implemented in terms > of namespace. So much cruft would go right out the window if only it were accessible. > > (then again, i have a feeling the same could be said of > plan 9.) Of course, everything has cruft. But Plan 9 is decent to imitate since it is less crufty. > > it's quite interesting to see how taking the seemingly- > conservative approach at every turn can take you > much further from v7 than even pretty radical breaks > like plan 9. > > - erik > Agreed.
Re: [9fans] v9fs question
On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 7:16 PM, ron minnich wrote: > On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 3:18 PM, J.R. Mauro wrote: > >> We hope to. One of the reasons it would actually be unwise to let >> anyone mount anything now is that no one uses per-process namespaces. >> That's probably fine on your desktop, but not on a server where 20 >> people try to mount something under /mnt/foo or whatnot. > > Could we solve this by making private mounts the default (or only > allowed) behavior? It would be nice to fix up mounts so that you didn't need to be root and all that crap, and then make it the default, but I doubt Linus would let it fly. I get the feeling that private namespaces are viewed like chroots: a security feature no one but pros needs. Unfortunately not many linux devs seem to care about plan 9, and that has a negative impact on how much stuff can happen. Hopefully we'll gradually wear them down, or keep a minifork/patchset. > > That's how I did it long ago: it took real effort to make a mount non-private. > > ron > >
Re: [9fans] v9fs question
On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 6:05 PM, Eric Van Hensbergen wrote: > On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 4:45 PM, hiro<23h...@googlemail.com> wrote: >> When I need remote access I nowadays use v9fs+ssh. >> Multi-user auth in kernel like you propose sounds nice and consistent, >> but too complicated. It doesn't fit linux, and thus an additional >> deamon would mean one more place of security relevant code prone to >> bugs. >> > > While I agree with that being the state of things today, it doesn't mean > we shouldn't push for better. Maybe the Glendix folks will make things > consistent (and bug free). We hope to. One of the reasons it would actually be unwise to let anyone mount anything now is that no one uses per-process namespaces. That's probably fine on your desktop, but not on a server where 20 people try to mount something under /mnt/foo or whatnot. On the security side, I helped get the plan9-style authentication device in the mainline kernel. It's in staging. I guess the PAM module is 90% done, but they need some help if anyone is interested. > >> >> From a security (and perhaps simplicity) point of view userspace >> authentication sounds more reasonable to me, p9p together with >> something like fuse (even together with the new userspace hackery) or >> perhaps a single-user v9fs combined with inferno for doing the >> auth/crypt work seems a lot more reasonable to me than additional >> clever hackery from the plan9 side. Not sure if somebody has something >> like this working already... >> > > I have a variant using Inferno right now, mounting the file system directly > from the stdin/stdout of the emu. Combined with private namespaces it > provides a seemingly secure mechanism for accessing remote resources > as well as providing local resources to remote cpu services. > > -eric > >
Re: [9fans] v9fs question
On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 at 3:03 PM, Tim Newsham wrote: > On Sat, 11 Jul 2009, Eric Van Hensbergen wrote: >> >> Hmmm, that's really new behavior-- never used to fail without mount >> helper. Can you give the exact error message? > > # strace -o trace.txt mount -t 9p thenewsh.com /mnt Linux doesn't do resolution for you, you have to give raw ip addresses. Maybe not the problem, but worth pointing out. > mount: Protocol not supported > > Trace.txt is attached with full details. > > I've tried several variants, such as thenewsh.com:/path > with similar results. > >> On Jul 11, 2009, at 1:46 PM, Tim Newsham wrote: >> >>> The documentation in the linux kernel says you merely >>> >>> mount -t 9p ipaddress /mntpoint >>> >>> this fails on my system since /sbin/mount tries to execute /sbin/mount.9p >>> and fails. Am I supposed to have an /sbin/mount.9p? (Anyone know which >>> ubunutu package should have this? If not, where I might find sources? >>> Ironic since Ubuntu came with the 9p kernel module) Or should I be using a >>> different mount program for the purpose? >>> >>> The linux Documentation/filesystems/9p.txt should probably be updated >>> with more details, either way. >>> >>> Tim Newsham >>> http://www.thenewsh.com/~newsham/ >>> >> > > Tim Newsham > http://www.thenewsh.com/~newsham/
Re: [9fans] Plan9 as an everyday OS
On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 5:35 PM, Devon H. O'Dell wrote: > 2009/7/10 J.R. Mauro : >> On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 1:46 PM, wrote: >>> >>> I'm tired of the perpetual September, after several years of being >>> polite and pointing people to the wiki and the archives. >> >> You could filter instead of bitching and contributing to the noise. > > Spoken like a true hypocrite ;) Oh, no, I carefully just said `you'. I intend to not filter, bitch, contribute to noise, and possibly other horrible things. Like spam the list with your picture of the sexy plumber. > > --dho > >
Re: [9fans] Plan9 as an everyday OS
On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 1:46 PM, wrote: > > I'm tired of the perpetual September, after several years of being > polite and pointing people to the wiki and the archives. You could filter instead of bitching and contributing to the noise. > > Even Ghandi would have eventually gotten sick of people asking, "So, > hey, what's up with this thing you're doing here, and how are the > British involved?" > > Resuming operation as a human Google proxy in 3... 2... 1... > > I use Plan 9 as my desktop for development. I keep a Linux laptop > beside the desktop for running a browser, although I've been fiddling > with linuxemu so I can potentially use just the Plan 9 box. When I'm > at home, I use a Linux box for watching movies and everything else, > although I could do basically everything except web browsing and movie > watching from within Plan 9 there too. > > It's really a pretty good time to start using Plan 9, if you're > willing to put in a little work. fgb's contrib(1) scripts make it > easy to install software, some of which is very useful in migrating > from Linux or interoperating with Linux; I'm using openssh on a daily > basis, I've been using X11 as I experiment with linuxemu, and I just > installed TeX which I'll probably try next time I have to write a > paper. It also feels like the number of users is growing, despite my > increasingly curmudgeonly sentiments (durn kids git orf mah lawn). > We're also gaining recognition in the general OS world and especially > in supercomputing, thanks to the FastOS work. > > I probably said a lot of this last time somebody posted one of these > threads. I'll probably say it again the next time. > > > > > John > >> Thanks for saying what I didn't have the words to say. May I quote you >> forever? >> -joe >> >> On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 1:07 PM, Noah Evans wrote: >> >>> There's nothing wrong with being new. There's nothing wrong with being >>> polite either. >>> >>> Sent from my iPhone >>> >>> >>> On Jul 10, 2009, at 6:52 PM, John Floren wrote: >>> >>> At least once a month it happens. We can't escape. We're forever doomed to get a "Can I use Plan 9 as my desktop OS for web browsing and watching movies and stuff?" thread every couple weeks, because people are only willing to spend jst enough effort to find the Plan 9 web page and subscribe to 9fans. John On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 9:30 AM, André Günther wrote: > there's a thing called mailing list archives. > and you know..heh..there's this funny thing..dunno, it's called google or > something. > what you do is: type some words and then hit return...and wooha it > searches > like the whole web. it's magic. > > On Jul 10, 2009, at 6:05 PM, Lorenzo Bolla wrote: > > Hi all, >> I've just installed (with few difficulties, I must admit) a fresh Plan9 >> on >> my Dell Inspiron laptop. >> I played with it and I'd really like to study it and get used to it. >> Ideally, I would like to make it my "everyday OS", to do all the nice >> stuff you can do with a computer (a part from work and study), like >> browsing >> the web, watching movies and so on... >> Is anyone using it for such things? >> Is there, for example, a decent browser for Plan9 (I haven't found any)? >> Or a music/movie player? >> >> Thanks in advance, >> Lorenzo. >> > > > > -- "I've tried programming Ruby on Rails, following TechCrunch in my RSS reader, and drinking absinthe. It doesn't work. I'm going back to C, Hunter S. Thompson, and cheap whiskey." -- Ted Dziuba >>> > > >
Re: [9fans] Fonts
On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 5:51 PM, erik quanstrom wrote: >> Yes, but with all the work in Acme and Sam, I've become quite >> accustomed to having ` look nice. It just makes the browser look out >> of place. It's not just the tick either, I'd like the browser font to >> generally look the same. > > that's hard. i haven't found one yet that looks good in > both a browser and in plan 9. i use code2000. but i would > buy a "better" font, if there were one available. > > i use the vera fonts in abaco (the fonts are also available > for linux) but the coverage is very poor. π is the only > greek letter available. > > - erik > > There are no ttf/Xft/$format versions of the Bigelow and Holmes lucida fonts? The Ludica typefaces available on Linux are definitely not the same -- much poorer quality.
Re: [9fans] Fonts
On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 5:47 PM, erik quanstrom wrote: >> > The enlightened use ' and " for all kinds of single and double quotes, >> > because you can copy/paste them anywhere and everybody sees them >> > properly. Also, few things in the world look worse than seeing a quote >> > done ``like this'' in a monospace font. >> > >> >> Pff, I'm not a heather, I'm a TeX user. Dumb quotes are just that. > > my terminal doesn't do \TeX. does yours?\p > \vskip 1em > --- erik > \bye > > Nah, I just parse it in my head.
Re: [9fans] Fonts
On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 4:44 PM, erik quanstrom wrote: >> Speaking of that, is there a way to do the reverse, to get plan 9 >> Bigelow fonts that Linux can use? I'm sick of my browser not knowing >> that the character left of the 1 on my keyboard is an open-quote. > > maybe this is your problem: > > ; unicode '`' > 0060 > ; look 0060 /lib/unicode > 0060 grave accent > > unicode says it's a grave accent, not an open quote. > but i always called that a "tick". > > perhaps this is what you mean? > > ; grep '(left|right) single quot' /lib/unicode > 2018 left single quotation mark > 2019 right single quotation mark > > - erik > > Yes, but with all the work in Acme and Sam, I've become quite accustomed to having ` look nice. It just makes the browser look out of place. It's not just the tick either, I'd like the browser font to generally look the same.
Re: [9fans] Fonts
On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 4:50 PM, John Floren wrote: > Remember, only heathens use ` to begin a quote. > > The enlightened use ' and " for all kinds of single and double quotes, > because you can copy/paste them anywhere and everybody sees them > properly. Also, few things in the world look worse than seeing a quote > done ``like this'' in a monospace font. > Pff, I'm not a heather, I'm a TeX user. Dumb quotes are just that.
Re: [9fans] my ts7200 port
On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 7:37 PM, ron minnich wrote: > I just ported the linux driver I'm interested in how hard this is, and how it might be made easier.
Re: [9fans] Guide to using Acme effectively?
On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 4:33 PM, Ethan Grammatikidis wrote: > On Mon, 6 Jul 2009 20:57:19 +0200 > cinap_len...@gmx.de wrote: > >> yeah... connecting terminals to warp energy plasma conduits >> seems to be a bad idea. > > Yeah, it's also a deeply wierd thing to do unless the terminals require at > least several megawatts. O.o Each... And apprently they forgot how to make fuses by the late 2200s, because the consoles all explode when overloaded. > I can't think of any reason for that. The displays may be print-quality > (2000dpi) and the touch layer supposedly able to read fingerprints, but > that's not far beyond current tech. Superluminal signalling signalling seems > not to require much power as the tiny com badges feature delay-free > communication at least as far as lunar orbit. Yes I've done this before. :) > > How far off topic are we now? Can we get away with carrying on? :) > > -- > Ethan Grammatikidis > > Those who are slower at parsing information must > necessarily be faster at problem-solving. > >
Re: [9fans] Guide to using Acme effectively?
On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 4:56 AM, Aaron W. Hsu wrote: > > Does anyone have any suggestions? > Perhaps only tangential to what you are after, but there are little scripts like ind, unind, quote, and powerful things like fmt, awk, etc. that you can process your text with. Simply type a pipe char and then the command in a tag (e.g. |ind ), select some text, select the command, and middle click. I've been writing a bunch of little rc scripts to help with my day-to-day formatting needs. This is also tons of fun in Sam.
Re: [9fans] Scrolling for plan9port sam
Here is a less drunk and better working version of the patch.
Scrolling seems to be working perfectly. I hope gmail doesn't eat this
patch.
=
Add scrollwheel support to sam
diff -r 5f1b36ecd9db src/cmd/samterm/main.c
--- a/src/cmd/samterm/main.cTue Jun 09 09:26:13 2009 -0700
+++ b/src/cmd/samterm/main.cWed Jul 01 20:01:37 2009 -0400
@@ -142,6 +142,10 @@
scroll(which, 3);
else
menu3hit();
+ } else if((mousep->buttons&8)) {
+ scroll(nwhich, 1);
+ } else if((mousep->buttons&16)) {
+ scroll(nwhich, 3);
}
mouseunblock();
}
diff -r 5f1b36ecd9db src/cmd/samterm/scroll.c
--- a/src/cmd/samterm/scroll.c Tue Jun 09 09:26:13 2009 -0700
+++ b/src/cmd/samterm/scroll.c Wed Jul 01 20:01:37 2009 -0400
@@ -100,7 +100,7 @@
void
scroll(Flayer *l, int but)
{
- int in = 0, oin;
+ int in = 0, oin, scw = 0;
long tot = scrtotal(l);
Rectangle scr, r, s, rt;
int x, y, my, oy, h;
@@ -116,18 +116,21 @@
do{
oin = in;
in = abs(x-mousep->xy.x)<=FLSCROLLWID/2;
+ scw = ((mousep->buttons&8) | (mousep->buttons&16));
if(oin && !in)
scrunmark(l, r);
- if(in){
+ if(in || scw){
scrmark(l, r);
oy = y;
my = mousep->xy.y;
- if(my < s.min.y)
- my = s.min.y;
- if(my >= s.max.y)
- my = s.max.y;
- if(!eqpt(mousep->xy, Pt(x, my)))
- moveto(mousectl, Pt(x, my));
+ if(!scw) {
+ if(my < s.min.y)
+ my = s.min.y;
+ if(my >= s.max.y)
+ my = s.max.y;
+ if(!eqpt(mousep->xy, Pt(x, my)))
+ moveto(mousectl, Pt(x, my));
+ }
if(but == 1){
p0 = l->origin-frcharofpt(&l->f, Pt(s.max.x,
my));
rt = scrpos(l->scroll, p0, p0+l->f.nchars, tot);
@@ -148,7 +151,7 @@
}
}
}while(button(but));
- if(in){
+ if(in || scw){
h = s.max.y-s.min.y;
scrunmark(l, r);
p0 = 0;
Re: [9fans] Guide to using Acme effectively?
On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 4:00 PM, wrote: >> perhaps i should have taken piano, but i find the > > That's an interesting observation. As it turns out I > do play, and it's certainly possible that it colors my > taste in UIs. The weirdest thing about piano for me (typist first) is pressing more than one key at once very often. That really bemused me. > >> contortions kbd-based editors such as vi or emacs >> require to be quite irritating indeed. fumbling for > > I don't disagree with you there. vi isn't so bad because it has a huge command language. I was always fond of it, but now I'm appreciating sam's more spartan, elegant command set more. > >> the esc key takes ones left hand out of position > > I'm less sensitive to esc, probably because I used teco > heavily in college. Of course, the fact that esc is in > the wrong place on current keyboards doesn't help > any. Indeed. I remap caps to be escape, someplace where it should be. > >> i've enjoyed using ibm's trackpoint, but i've got >> two thumbs and acme needs three buttons. >> clearly there's room for improvement in input >> devices. > > Agreed on both points. I like Apple's new mice, but you can't chord with them. I got it before I got into plan 9. Now I want to chuck it.
Re: [9fans] Guide to using Acme effectively?
> first trick, but I do use hold mode... usually after I have typed a > few lines and want to edit them. Hold mode is a godsend
[9fans] Scrolling for plan9port sam
could someone help clean this crappy patch up a bit? i'm drunk and sam
not being able to understand my scrollwheel is really pissing me off.
at least this works despite it being ugly and steeped in cheap
whiskey...
--jorden
diff -r 5f1b36ecd9db src/cmd/samterm/main.c
--- a/src/cmd/samterm/main.cTue Jun 09 09:26:13 2009 -0700
+++ b/src/cmd/samterm/main.cWed Jul 01 00:29:48 2009 -0400
@@ -142,6 +142,10 @@
scroll(which, 3);
else
menu3hit();
+ } else if((mousep->buttons&8)) {
+ scroll(nwhich, 1);
+ } else if((mousep->buttons&16)) {
+ scroll(nwhich, 3);
}
mouseunblock();
}
diff -r 5f1b36ecd9db src/cmd/samterm/scroll.c
--- a/src/cmd/samterm/scroll.c Tue Jun 09 09:26:13 2009 -0700
+++ b/src/cmd/samterm/scroll.c Wed Jul 01 00:29:48 2009 -0400
@@ -100,7 +100,7 @@
void
scroll(Flayer *l, int but)
{
- int in = 0, oin;
+ int in = 0, oin, scw = 0;
long tot = scrtotal(l);
Rectangle scr, r, s, rt;
int x, y, my, oy, h;
@@ -116,9 +116,10 @@
do{
oin = in;
in = abs(x-mousep->xy.x)<=FLSCROLLWID/2;
+ scw = ((mousep->buttons&8) | (mousep->buttons&16));
if(oin && !in)
scrunmark(l, r);
- if(in){
+ if(in || scw){
scrmark(l, r);
oy = y;
my = mousep->xy.y;
Re: [9fans] Booting plan9 on intel macs
On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 2:11 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote: > I accidentally installed a FreeBSD drive in my MacBook. To my surprise, > it just worked. If you install a boot drive with the "usual" PC disk > partitioning the Macs will boot in what seems to be a fairly complete > BIOS emulation. > > How far Plan9 gets is another story, but my guess is that even if it > sees the disk controllers properly, it's not going to like the NIC(s). > > Don't even try to install it on a Mac. Instead, pull the drive and do > the install on a normal PC, then stick the drive back into the Mac. This > might give you a fighting chance, but it's inevitable you'll be doing > driver work before long. > > Just installing rEFIt will be much easier than any of that, assuming plan 9 can handle the hardware. But the intel macs use Broadcom NICs and a weird platform chip for the ambient light sensors and accelerometers, which you'd have to write a driver for. Looking for 'applesmc' would give some examples. I can't think of other weird hardware they might use... aside from discrete video cards, they're mostly intel hardware.
Re: [9fans] Sam commands in acme
On Sat, Jun 27, 2009 at 3:20 PM, Rob Pike wrote: > > Indeed, but it's an excellent reason to remove a bad feature. @ was a > bad feature. It was hard to use well because @* or @+ would consume > the whole file. Your structural regex paper gripes about . and * not consuming newlines. Apparently it didn't work in practice as you say, but have you thought about a different way that might work since? Changing the delimiter based on context would seem like a good, though heavyweight and probably harder-to-understand approach. > > Deletion is the greatest tool of software design. > Quite, though this one in particular seems much less out of place in sam compared to * despite its glaring faults.
Re: [9fans] Sam commands in acme
On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 6:57 AM, roger peppe wrote: > you need (.|\n) instead of . > > sam originally used @ as a "match everything" character > but it was removed, presumably because it was rarely used. That's a stupid reason to remove a good feature. By that token, maybe we should remove structural regular expressions since they're "rarely used" and just go back to using ed. Do you know if anyone preserved this feature and could send me the patch? > > to match C comments, you need something like this: > > x/\/\*([^*]|\*[^\/]|[^*\/]|\n)*\*\// > > 2009/6/26 hugo rivera : >> Hi, >> I am trying to select all c comments from within a file using acme, >> but I am unable to do it properly. The command x/\/\*.*\*\// is the >> closest I could get, but it doesn't work with comments that span over >> more than one line. This raises a question for me: somewhere, I cannot >> recall where, I read that commands in sam (and therefore acme) aren't >> line oriented but selection oriented, so, shouldn't '.*' match newline >> characters also? why it doesn't? I expected '.*' to work with newline >> characters since it works for spaces and tabs, and the three of them >> are white space, among others. >> And finally, what command I should use to select c comments without >> regard if they are several lines long or just one? >> Saludos >> -- >> Hugo >> >> > >
Re: [9fans] plumbing to get files from odd filesystems, and get pages from local manuals
On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 2:01 AM, Jason Catena wrote: > Some plan9port plumbing I wrote which may help someone. > > Using the plan9port plumber to find files in ClearCase VOBs. > http://www.evernote.com/pub/catena/public#7d2e9774-964f-423c-96e9-5e8721b1a78d > > Also plumb man(1) pattern to local manual. New convention "man(1l)" > to name eclipsed local manual pages. > http://www.evernote.com/pub/catena/public#73edd473-f300-4e1f-991c-9876eb29dba0 This is helpful, thanks. > > Jason Catena > > In addition, here's some plumbing to send coordinates to one of the mapping programs in contrib: # coordinate pairs are sent to gmap type is text data matches '(-?[0-9]+\.?[0-9]+\?-?[0-9]+\.?[0-9]+)' plumb start gmap -n$1 I think the matches clause is right, but it could be totally broken. I'm trying to get the C version of gmap to talk directly to the plumber on a 'coordinate' port. If anyone has some pointers, I'd be glad to hear them.
Re: [9fans] confusing astro output
On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 3:43 PM, andrey mirtchovski wrote: > most likely "astro" needs to be taught a bit about maths ;) > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drE5cHe6c3s > What *was* that?
Re: [9fans] rio with virtuals
p9p rio has virtuals, too. I would tell you to look at the source for more inspiration, but I don't really want to be a comedian. How does one switch desktops? Can/did you implement scrolling on a gray bit to switch? Extending the fs? On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 6:54 PM, wrote: > I spent a couple hours this afternoon reading rio source and hacking > it to do virtual desktops. /n/sources/contrib/john/rio-virtual.tgz > contains the files from /sys/src/cmd/rio with my changes made. At > this time, there is no support for specifying the number of virtuals, > because I'm lazy--you get six and you will ENJOY IT. > > Let me know if you try it and find bugs. I don't really give a damn > if you think this is Against The Plan 9 Way. Personally, the exercise > gave me a better appreciation for the simplicity of Plan 9 software--I > was able to take a piece of software I'd never looked at before, read > the code a bit, and put in some new functionality within an hour or > two. > > > John > > >
Re: [9fans] plan 9 regexp
I got it to build for linux with some modifications, if you or anyone is interested. Now I just need a sawk and syacc. On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 3:27 PM, erik quanstrom wrote: >> >> It does. That doesn't build either :( >> > > there is very little source code there. why not dump the configure > goo and use p9p instead? > > - erik > >
Re: [9fans] p9p venti problem
I can't help with this in particular, but QEMU does some really low-level hackery to the point where it wouldn't compile with GCC 4, so it's possible something like that is going on here. On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 8:06 PM, Adrian Tritschler wrote: > I've got a p9p venti running on two separate ubuntu linux boxes that > I've been using for months to keep backups of data and for QEMU plan9 > guests. They have both stopped working, I suspect due to a recent > ubuntu kernel update. I've rebuilt all of p9p but to no avail. > > The QEMU guests crash on boot stating "error reading block 43a72...3 > or wrong score: read too small 1: asked for 0 need at le... > panic: boot process died: unknown" > > Any attempt to write data into either venti on the linux systems fails > with the error: > > a...@xyz:~/tmp$ vac x > create bsize 8192 psize 8160 > vac: vacfscreate: vacfileroot: read too small 1: asked for 0 need at least 389 > > reading any existing *.vac file also fails: > > a...@xyz:~/venti/2009/04/24$ unvac -t xyz_bin-2009-04-24.vac > unvac: vacfsopen: read too small 1: asked for 0 need at least 300 > > Any ideas? > -- > Adrian > >
Re: [9fans] P9P gmail
That doesn't help. Ridiculously complex or not, I have a mutt that can talk to gmail via smtp. I've tried following the basic guide on the wiki for getting smtp to work, but it is plan9-specific and not very instructive. On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 1:42 AM, Ethan Grammatikidis wrote: > On Tue, 9 Jun 2009 18:15:37 -0400 > "J.R. Mauro" wrote: > >> Hi, >> >> I've gotten mailfs to work in plan9port with gmail's imap service, and >> now I'd like to get smtp working so I can reply. Has anyone tried >> this? Is there a way to do it? How about configuring Acme Mail to use >> something other than marshal (say, mutt)? > > I quail every time I hear the name "mutt". Its config file has beaten me more > times than I care to remember, mostly because of it's sheer size. Besides, > mutt is a mail client, not a replacement for sendmail. > > -- > Ethan Grammatikidis > The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne. -- Chaucer > >
Re: [9fans] critique of sockets API
On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 7:20 PM, Bhanu Nagendra Pisupati wrote: > First off, I really am a big fan of filesystem interfaces as used in Plan 9 > - after all my PhD work was based on the model :) Did you do this on Plan 9 or bring some of the filesystem sanity of another OS? > My objective here is to debate and understand how the points made in the > paper relate to the Plan9 networking model. > >>> * performance overhead: app requesting data from a socket typically needs >>> to perform 2 system calls (select/read or alt/read) >> >> alt ? which is not required ? is not a system call. only a read or write >> is >> required. > > Well, select() or alt might or might not be required depending on whether > you want your thread to wait till the read operation waiting for data from > the network completes. You may argue that since threads are "cheap" in Plan9 > you can afford to have a thread wait on the read operation. But that to me > is a different question... > >>> * lack of an "kernel up-call API": which allows the kernel to inform an >>> app each time network data is available >> >> plan 9 uses synchronous i/o, so this statement doesn't make sense >> in plan 9. you can use threads to do i/o asynch w.r.t. your application, >> but the i/o itself is still synchronous w.r.t. the kernel. > > Whether the IO is synchronous or not, there is this > read()->process()->read()... alternating sequence of operations that is > required, wherein the application has to explicitly go fetch data from the > network using the read operation. To borrow text from the paper: > > The API does not provide the programmer a way in which to say, "Whenever > there is data for me, call me to process it directly." > > > >>> * hard to implement "multi homing" with support for multiple network >>> interfaces >> >> i have no idea how this relates to the use of a fs in implementing the >> network stack. why would using a filsystem (or not) make any difference >> in the ability to multihome? >> >> by the way, plan 9 beats the pants off anything else i've used for >> multiple >> network / interface support. it's support for mulitple ip stacks is quite >> neat. > > The question was meant to ask as to how easy it is to programmatically use > the filesystem interface in a multi home network. But I agree that support > for multiple network interfaces in Plan9 is way superior. > >
[9fans] P9P gmail
Hi, I've gotten mailfs to work in plan9port with gmail's imap service, and now I'd like to get smtp working so I can reply. Has anyone tried this? Is there a way to do it? How about configuring Acme Mail to use something other than marshal (say, mutt)? Thanks in advance, Jorden
Re: [9fans] Different representations of the same file/resource in a synthetic FS
On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 1:14 PM, Roman V Shaposhnik wrote: > Lets assume a classical example (modified slightly to fit 9P): > a synthetic filesystem that serves images from a web cam. > The very same frame can be asked for in different formats > (.gif, .png, .pdf, etc.). Is serving > gif/frame > png/frame > ... > pdf/frame > and relying on reading > /// > for the list of "supported" representations really better > than what HTTP content negotiation offers? > Plan 9 does this a bit, in that you can ask a special file in /net for how to dial a certain host across all protocols. You can then pick the one that suits you, and get instructions on how to use that proto inside /net. I think it's a good use.
Re: [9fans] Configuring NFS
On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 12:48 PM, Roman V Shaposhnik wrote: > Hi John, > > it took me sometime to go through the old backups but it seems > that the NFS setup is gone by now. You can still ask questions, > if you want to, but I won't be able to send you all the working > conf. files. > > On Tue, 2009-06-02 at 11:34 -0700, John Floren wrote: >> I'd like to use the 9p mounting available in Linux, but it doesn't >> seem to work in this case. >> I try "mount -t 9p glenda /mnt" (glenda is my cpu/file server) and get: >> mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on glenda, >> missing codepage or helper program, or other error >> (for several filesystems (e.g. nfs, cifs) you might >> need a /sbin/mount. helper program) >> In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try >> dmesg | tail or so >> >> If I do "mount -t 9p 192.168.18.180 /mnt", using the file server IP, I just >> get >> mount: permission denied >> But dmesg shows "[88617.144804] p9_errstr2errno: server reported >> unknown error cannot attach as none before authentication", ONLY when >> I use the IP address--nothing appears when I use the /etc/hosts alias >> "glenda". >> >> What am I missing? > > I have very little experience working with the in-kernel support for > 9P. Somehow 9P and being a superuser feel mutually exclusive to me. Yes. This is sad. Sqweek has some suid tools to help get around the nastiness. > Thus, I can only recommend 9pfuse. It worked quite well for the limited > application I needed it for. > > Thanks, > Roman. > > >
Re: [9fans] geoloc - a crappy script I wrote.
On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 10:01 PM, J.R. Mauro wrote:
> generally useful besides a gmap helper, I suppose. I'm trying to see
> if I can get something like google maps directions based on geoloc
> since the yahoo site it uses seems to not fail if you give it a very
> vague address, unlike most other services I've tried. I suppose I
> could try to see if I can get a barebones access to google maps
> directions. Like an XML page or something. If anyone knows how, I'd
> appreciate some pointers.
Here's a hack on top of my hack. The real suckage comes from me making
geoloc separate lat and lon with '?' to appease gmap. It's a small
change if you don't like it. I really want subway directions, but
apparently Yahoo can't do that. I'll keep digging.
#!/bin/rc
# directions -- print directions from a coordinate pair to another.
if (! ~ $#* 2) {
echo Usage: directions lat1?lon1 lat2?lon2
exit
}
SLA = `{echo $1 | sed -e 's/\?.*//'}
SLO = `{echo $1 | sed -e 's/.*\?//'}
DLA = `{echo $2 | sed -e 's/\?.*//'}
DLO = `{echo $2 | sed -e 's/.*\?//'}
#echo I got: $SLA $SLO $DLA $DLO
hget
'http://maps.yahoo.com/print?mvt=m&tp=1&stx=&fcat=&frat=&clat='^$DLA^'&clon='^$DLO^'&mag=10&zoom=9&trf=0&radius=134.16445&&q1='$SLA'%20'^$SLO^'&q2='^$DLA^'%20'^$DLO^'&v3=0'
| htmlfmt
Re: [9fans] geoloc - a crappy script I wrote.
On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 10:12 PM, erik quanstrom wrote: > On Fri Jun 5 22:03:29 EDT 2009, jrm8...@gmail.com wrote: >> Hi, >> >> Someone on contrib has a gmap (not the shell script one that was >> mentioned recently, the older(?) one done in C). I made the following >> stupid script to help start gmap at a user-specified address. Gmap >> only understands coordinates, which I can't memorize. But it's > > steve's gmap script does a great job with arbitrary addresses. for example > > ; gmap 220 college ave athens ga > > - erik > > The gmap script is pretty cool, but I have problems with it on p9p and it's not interactive. The other gmap has some nifty features I like. I hope even if you don't use the other gmap you might like geoloc since it is still useful in and of itself. Even though it's a hack.
[9fans] geoloc - a crappy script I wrote.
Hi,
Someone on contrib has a gmap (not the shell script one that was
mentioned recently, the older(?) one done in C). I made the following
stupid script to help start gmap at a user-specified address. Gmap
only understands coordinates, which I can't memorize. But it's
generally useful besides a gmap helper, I suppose. I'm trying to see
if I can get something like google maps directions based on geoloc
since the yahoo site it uses seems to not fail if you give it a very
vague address, unlike most other services I've tried. I suppose I
could try to see if I can get a barebones access to google maps
directions. Like an XML page or something. If anyone knows how, I'd
appreciate some pointers.
The script outputs lat and lon (in that order) delimited with a '?'
character, because that is what gmap uses. This is so that I can do
something like:
gmap -n`{geoloc 123 foo street anywhereville}
Please note that the gmap on sources expects longitude to come before
latitude for its -n option. I think that is backward from the normal
convention, so I modified mine locally to swap them. It's a simple
change.
The script is really stupid and calls sed 87 times because it's
parsing an ugly xml page and I don't know any better. Please feel free
to tell me how bad it is.
Without further ado:
#!/bin/rc
# geoloc - find coordinates of an address
if (~ $#* 0) {
echo Usage: geoloc address
exit
}
addr = `{echo $* | sed -e 's/ /+/g'}
hget
http://api.local.yahoo.com/MapsService/V1/geocode?appid'='capelinks'&'location'='$addr'&'Geocode'='Geocode
| \
awk -F'>' '{ print $4"X?"$6}' | sed -e 's/<.*eX//' | sed -e
's/<.*e//' | sed -e '/X/d'
Re: [9fans] plan 9 regexp
On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 3:27 PM, erik quanstrom wrote: >> >> It does. That doesn't build either :( >> > > there is very little source code there. why not dump the configure > goo and use p9p instead? > > - erik > > I want to, but as usual, time is a problem.
[9fans] p9p Juke issues
Hi all, In an attempt to get the Juke program to play nice with other programs wanting to use sound, I modified the Juke script to run 'aoss ajuke $*' This had the result of letting other programs access the sound card, but now Juke can't play more than one song. It seems that ajuke is stuck on something, and I'm having a hard time debugging it. I ran the following to try to see what's happening (this is after I try to 2-click Next while Juke is playing a song): ; lsof | grep snd ajuke 23365 thedoctor4u CHR 116,0 0t0 5678 /dev/snd/controlC0 ajuke 26261 thedoctor mem CHR 116,16 5671 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p ajuke 26261 thedoctor9r CHR 116,33 0t0 5422 /dev/snd/timer ajuke 26261 thedoctor 10u CHR 116,16 0t0 5671 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p ajuke 26261 thedoctor 11u CHR 116,0 0t0 5678 /dev/snd/controlC0 ; ps | grep ajuke 1000 23364 23:08 0:00892K pipe_w ajuke 1000 23365 23:08 0:00 2172K futex_ ajuke 1000 26261 23:09 0:00 1232K poll_s ajuke ; Does anyone know enough about Juke and aoss to shed some light on this? Thanks ~jrm
Re: [9fans] plan 9 regexp
On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 7:56 PM, erik quanstrom wrote: > On Wed Jun 3 19:41:39 EDT 2009, n...@lsub.org wrote: >> I have a ssam script that does the work. But it's not really streaming. >> >> El 04/06/2009, a las 1:36, jrm8...@gmail.com escribió: >> >> > Speaking of regexes in Plan 9, did the "structural awk" or "stream >> > sam" Rob dreamed of in the SE paper ever get realized? >> > >> > [/mail/box/nemo/msgs/200906/41493] >> > > here's a pointer to the previous discussion of ssam, which > does exist for unix: > > http://9fans.net/archive/2003/10/309 Unfortunately, I can't get it to build. It looks long un(der)maintained. > > "structural awk" is still a tempting idea. but why not > just go wild and implement a shell with sres? One step at a time. Although if I woke up tomorrow and everything from sed to lex and yacc and rc magically had sres, I would be very /very/ happy. You can kind of get something not entirely unlike sres in sed, but it is quite hard and unintuitive.
Re: [9fans] plan 9 regexp
Speaking of regexes in Plan 9, did the "structural awk" or "stream sam" Rob dreamed of in the SE paper ever get realized?
Re: [9fans] Configuring NFS
On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 2:34 PM, John Floren wrote: > On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 11:19 AM, Roman V. Shaposhnik wrote: >> On Tue, 2009-06-02 at 11:03 -0700, John Floren wrote: >>> On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 10:35 AM, Roman V. Shaposhnik wrote: >>> > On Tue, 2009-06-02 at 10:30 -0700, John Floren wrote: >>> >> Has anyone here successfully set up nfsserver to share Plan 9 files >>> >> with Unix machines? The examples given in the man pages are rather... >>> >> opaque. All I want to do is share one directory tree (/lib/music, in >>> >> particular) with a number of independent Linux laptops and >>> >> workstations. >>> > >>> > I used it in combination with Solaris. >>> >>> Do you still have the configuration? >> >> I might. For Solaris NFS was *the* only choice. For Linux I have >> abandoned NFS approach in favor of native 9P. You should be >> aware of the fact that nfsserver can only speak NFS v.2 which >> is *really* old. >> >>> I'm looking at the man page for >>> nfsserver but wondering what the machine 'ivy' does, and what exactly >>> 'pie' and 'yoshimi' are doing, etc. >> >> If you have practical questions -- feel free to ask them. I'll try >> to dig bits and pieces of my Solaris setup for you later this week. >> So far, I can tell you this much: nfsserver is NFS to 9P translator. >> Thus you can hide a whole bunch of 9P-aware services behind a single >> nfsserver by specifying multiple -a options (in fact these 9P >> services don't even have to be remote machines). Each individual -a >> entry will become a single NFS export share in its own right (visible >> via showmount -e). >> >> So, when you see something like >> aux/nfsserver –a tcp!pie –a tcp!yoshimi >> all this means is that we are creating 2 NFS shares pie and yoshimi >> on a single NFS server. >> >>> >> I'm looking into NFS because it seems that it has about the lowest >>> >> barrier to entry of all the possible file-sharing methods. Any other >>> >> suggestions would be appreciated. >>> > >>> > Whether or not to use NFS depends greatly on what is on the other end. >>> > What kind of UNIX? >>> > >>> >>> Like I said, it's a collection of Linux machines, mostly running >>> Debian, Ubuntu, and Redhat. >> >> In that case why not use FUSE and 9P? This will also let you mount >> more easily from a non-root accounts. >> >> Thanks, >> Roman. >> > > I'd like to use the 9p mounting available in Linux, but it doesn't > seem to work in this case. > I try "mount -t 9p glenda /mnt" (glenda is my cpu/file server) and get: > mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on glenda, > missing codepage or helper program, or other error > (for several filesystems (e.g. nfs, cifs) you might > need a /sbin/mount. helper program) > In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try > dmesg | tail or so You could try 9pfuse and redistribute it standalone if it works. > > If I do "mount -t 9p 192.168.18.180 /mnt", using the file server IP, I just > get > mount: permission denied > But dmesg shows "[88617.144804] p9_errstr2errno: server reported > unknown error cannot attach as none before authentication", ONLY when > I use the IP address--nothing appears when I use the /etc/hosts alias > "glenda". > > What am I missing? > > > John > -- > "I've tried programming Ruby on Rails, following TechCrunch in my RSS > reader, and drinking absinthe. It doesn't work. I'm going back to C, > Hunter S. Thompson, and cheap whiskey." -- Ted Dziuba > >
Re: [9fans] sources down?
On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 2:27 PM, Steve Simon wrote: >> damn, he found out our evil plan... > > And we would have got away with it if it hadn't been for you pesky kids. > And their TALKING DOG.
Re: [9fans] sources down?
On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 8:17 PM, ron minnich wrote: > On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 4:59 PM, J.R. Mauro wrote: >> There are plenty of mirrors, I'm pretty sure the "sources is down >> AGAIN" comments could be mitigated by people improving their 9fs >> scripts. >> >> > > would be interesting to have a server that provided reliability by > using whatever mirrors are out there and falling over transparently as > things failed. Mycroftiv (on #plan9) was working on some "unkillable" cpu session that shows promise.
Re: [9fans] sources down?
There are plenty of mirrors, I'm pretty sure the "sources is down AGAIN" comments could be mitigated by people improving their 9fs scripts.
Re: [9fans] Vidi
On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 10:54 AM, Latchesar Ionkov wrote: > http://sourceforge.net/projects/vidi > > It doesn't run on Plan9 though. Thanks! I'm just using it on a linux laptop. Is there any documentation? If not and you'd be willing to explain it, I can write man pages for it. > > Lucho > > On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 6:15 PM, J.R. Mauro wrote: >> Does anyone have any updates/links to source code for vidi? I just got >> a venti up and running to back my laptop up to and I'd really like to >> have vidi in between for when I'm offline. >> >> > >
[9fans] Vidi
Does anyone have any updates/links to source code for vidi? I just got a venti up and running to back my laptop up to and I'd really like to have vidi in between for when I'm offline.
Re: [9fans] roots
On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 10:16 AM, erik quanstrom wrote: > where do they think linux, minux, unix came from? > > “ > "It rarely leads to good things" when a small community gets > headed off in their own direction, he [lwn editor j. corbet] said. That's odd since he's worked on Linux for quite some time writes about every new feature. > > — http://lwn.net/Articles/327938/ > > - erik > >
Re: [9fans] Plan9 - the next 20 years
> > What kind of latency? > > For speed of light in fibre optic 30ms is about 8000km (New York to San > Francisco and back) Assuming you have a direct fiber connection with no routers in between. I would say that is somewhat rare.
Re: [9fans] Help for home user discovering Plan 9
>> >> The update/installation process in Ubuntu sucks. If you try something >> using BSD ports or Gentoo portage, you can fine tune things and have >> explicit control over the update process. > > I don't think so, one can acquire a complete control over any common > Linux distribution, can opt for tuning and, tweaking around any package > build system, provided one has the knowledge and courage to do so. Yes and no. If you want to patch something, you have to build it on your own, so you lose package management support. And building your own deb package is not a great process. Plus, you have to rebuild it whenever you update. I'm not saying you can't "completely control" your distro, just that the package manager is inflexible and immature. USE flags give you /real/ control over packages without forcing you to step out of the package management infrastructure (i.e., you don't have to install anything locally to get a patch incorporated, and you don't sacrifice updates). You also have less namespace pollution, such as having mutt and mutt-ng in the repository. Emerge and ports also don't have a database that can only have one process using it at a time, and don't take forever to update said database. > > OTOH, I hate wasting cpu cycles on compiling each and every package from > source; IMHO, building, updating and managing a FreeBSD, Gentoo and, or > other so called source or meta distribution is merely a wastage of the > man and machine hours. > I wouldn't install gentoo on an older machine, but on anything I use day-to-day, the compilation time is a non-issue. There is no wastage of man-hours in managing Gentoo. That is what emerge is for. There is some wastage in CPU cycles. I never notice it (a decent machine can emerge world, watch an HD movie, and compile a Linux kernel without slowdown)
Re: [9fans] Plan9 - the next 20 years
On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 7:31 PM, Charles Forsyth wrote: > this discussion of checkpoint/restart reminds me of > a hint i was given years ago: if you wanted to break into a system, > attack through the checkpoint/restart system. i won a jug of > beer for my subsequent successful attack which involved patching > the disc offset for an open file in a copy of the Slave Service Area saved > by the checkpoint; with the offset patched to zero, the newly restored process > could read the file and dump the users and passwords conveniently stored in > the clear at > the start of the system area of the system disc. the hard bit was > writing the code to dump the data in a tidy way. > > Unfortunately, in the rush to build the Next Cool Thing people often leave security issues to the very end, at which point shoehorning fixes in gets ugly.
Re: [9fans] Help for home user discovering Plan 9
On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 3:34 PM, Eris Discordia wrote: >> Actually, I used Windows for years before discovering something >> better. I explicitly disabled updates in XP, and it would insist on >> looking for them and bothering me about them, anyway. > > I put it here for I don't know what to call it--shall we say... historical > record?--how to turn off your Windows XP installation's automatic update > service: get into Control Panel, run the System applet, turn to Automatic > Updates page tab, set the radio button to your desired option. If you want > Windows to never download anything of its own accord, even when instructed > by applications (such as InstallShield) that use Windows Update > infrastructure for their purposes, go to Control Panel, go to Administrative > Tools, run the Services MMC snap-in, find Background Intelligent Transfer > Service, stop the service, set the service's startup mode to 'Disabled.' Yes, simple as 1,2,3... 4,5,6,7,8,9. What a snap! > > Very easy, very logical, very intuitive, clearly documented, and even > self-documented. Windows has lots of disadvantages but UI, configuration, > and representation of the local system is where there's the smallest > concentration of them. If you want to blame it get under the hood, find > actual OS design flaws, and then laugh to your heart's content. > > In conclusion, I apologize to 9fans for polluting their list with Windows > nonsense. This will end right here even if J. R. Mauro goes on to say > her/his Windows system won't boot after a clean successful installation. No one asked you to pollute the list the first time around, and I haven't run Windows on anything in years. I'm glad it works for you. Wish I could say the same. > > --On Saturday, April 18, 2009 3:43 PM -0400 "J.R. Mauro" > wrote: > >> On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 2:29 PM, Eris Discordia >> wrote: >>>> >>>> That is a lie. There are updates which (at least on XP) you could >>>> never refuse. Nevermind the fact that Windows would have to restart >>>> more than once on a typical series of updates. >>> >>> Windows isn't really the subject on this thread or this list. Except when >>> someone goes out of their way to nonsensically blame it. I don't think >>> that's really meaningful or productive in any imaginable way. As it >>> happens, no one here is really a Windows user (or some are and they're >>> laughing in the hiding bush). You are no better. Please do substantiate >>> what you claim or stop trolling. There are absolutely no mandatory >>> Windows updates; you can run a Windows system intact, with zero >>> modification, for as long as you want or as long as it holds up given >>> its shortcomings. So, my educated guess goes: you have zero acquaintance >>> with that OS. Not even as much acquaintance as a normal user should have. >> >> Actually, I used Windows for years before discovering something >> better. I explicitly disabled updates in XP, and it would insist on >> looking for them and bothering me about them, anyway. >> >> Now maybe I missed some other option or the option I chose was >> misleadingly labeled, or something was biffed in my registry. I just >> googled for "can't turn off Automatic update" and found a bunch of >> similar stories, though. In any event, it was so long ago I can't >> remember what the circumstances exactly were. >> >>> >>> --On Saturday, April 18, 2009 12:19 PM -0400 "J.R. Mauro" >>> wrote: >>> >>>> On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 2:08 AM, Eris Discordia >>>> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> This thing about Windows updates, I think it's a non-issue. It's not >>>>> like updates are mandatory and, as a matter of fact, there's rather >>>>> fine-grained classification of them on Microsoft's knowledge base which >>>>> can be used by any more or less experienced user to identify exactly >>>>> what they need for addressing a specific glitch and to download and >>>>> install that and only that. Periodic updates of Windows are really >>>>> unnecessary and can be easily turned off. Cumulative updates (like the >>>>> service packs), on the other hand, are often the best way to go. >>>> >>>> That is a lie. There are updates which (at least on XP) you could >>>> never refuse. Nevermind the fact that Windows would have to restart >>>> more than once on a typical series of updates. >
Re: [9fans] Help for home user discovering Plan 9
On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 2:29 PM, Eris Discordia wrote: >> That is a lie. There are updates which (at least on XP) you could >> never refuse. Nevermind the fact that Windows would have to restart >> more than once on a typical series of updates. > > Windows isn't really the subject on this thread or this list. Except when > someone goes out of their way to nonsensically blame it. I don't think > that's really meaningful or productive in any imaginable way. As it happens, > no one here is really a Windows user (or some are and they're laughing in > the hiding bush). You are no better. Please do substantiate what you claim > or stop trolling. There are absolutely no mandatory Windows updates; you can > run a Windows system intact, with zero modification, for as long as you want > or as long as it holds up given its shortcomings. So, my educated guess > goes: you have zero acquaintance with that OS. Not even as much acquaintance > as a normal user should have. Actually, I used Windows for years before discovering something better. I explicitly disabled updates in XP, and it would insist on looking for them and bothering me about them, anyway. Now maybe I missed some other option or the option I chose was misleadingly labeled, or something was biffed in my registry. I just googled for "can't turn off Automatic update" and found a bunch of similar stories, though. In any event, it was so long ago I can't remember what the circumstances exactly were. > > --On Saturday, April 18, 2009 12:19 PM -0400 "J.R. Mauro" > wrote: > >> On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 2:08 AM, Eris Discordia >> wrote: >>> >>> This thing about Windows updates, I think it's a non-issue. It's not like >>> updates are mandatory and, as a matter of fact, there's rather >>> fine-grained classification of them on Microsoft's knowledge base which >>> can be used by any more or less experienced user to identify exactly >>> what they need for addressing a specific glitch and to download and >>> install that and only that. Periodic updates of Windows are really >>> unnecessary and can be easily turned off. Cumulative updates (like the >>> service packs), on the other hand, are often the best way to go. >> >> That is a lie. There are updates which (at least on XP) you could >> never refuse. Nevermind the fact that Windows would have to restart >> more than once on a typical series of updates. >> >>> >>> What seems to actually be the problem for you is that you don't like >>> being told there's a closed modification to your existing closed >>> software. Well, that's the nature of binary-only proprietary for-profit >>> software. The only way to get you to pay out of anything other than good >>> will, which is a rare bird. >> >> No, I think he's saying that Windows Update is a piece of fetid garbage. >> >>> >>> P.S. On open/free software mailing lists and forums justice is often not >>> done to Windows, et al. Particularly, no meaningful alternative is >>> presented for carrying out the important duties Windows currently >>> performs for general computing, i.e. non-technical home and office >>> applications which combined together were and continue to be the killer >>> application of microcomputers. >> >> Mac's updater is miles ahead of Windows Update, but both are still >> crappy. I've given Linux to several "computer illiterates" and they >> were immediately relieved that they could open up a single application >> and search for any kind of software they needed, and updating it all >> was done by that simple application. How simple is that! >> >> The rate of failure of updates (compared to Windows update, which >> would leave you with a completely unusable system every once in a >> while) was also much lower. >> >>> >>> --On Saturday, April 18, 2009 8:11 AM +0200 lu...@proxima.alt.za wrote: >>> >>>>> The update/installation process in Ubuntu sucks. If you try something >>>>> using BSD ports or Gentoo portage, you can fine tune things and have >>>>> explicit control over the update process. >>>> >>>> I was specifically omitting BSD ports, as they are in a different >>>> league. The point I _was_ making is that one readily sacrifices >>>> control for convenience and that Linux and Windows users and those who >>>> assist them have to accept second-rate management and pay for it (I >>>> should know, I can see it when XP decides to use the GPRS link for its >>>> updating :-( >>>> >>>> Enough reason for me to prefer Plan 9 (and NetBSD, but I can only get >>>> my teeth into so many apples), if there weren't many more reasons. >>>> >>>> ++L >>>> >>>> >>> >>> >> > >
Re: [9fans] Plan9 - the next 20 years
> > I _do_ think yours should come first! Having to say: "yes" to an user... If you don't say 'yes' at some point, you won't have a system anyone will want to use. Remember all those quotes about why Unix doesn't prevent you from doing stupid things?
Re: [9fans] Plan9 - the next 20 years
On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 12:20 PM, ron minnich wrote: > On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 9:10 AM, J.R. Mauro wrote: > >> I agree that generally only one process will be accessing a "normal" >> file at once. I think an editor is not a good example, as you say. >> > > I'll say it again. It does not matter what we think. It matters what > apps do. And some apps have multiple processes accessing one file. > > As to the wisdom of such access, there are many opinions :-) > > You really can not just rule things out because reasonable people > don't do them. Unreasonable people write apps too. > > ron > I just meant it was a bad example, not that the case of an editor doing something can or should be ruled out.
Re: [9fans] Help for home user discovering Plan 9
On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 12:20 PM, erik quanstrom wrote: >> Seriously, give Gentoo portage a try. There is a sane package >> management system for Linux. > > if you don't upgrade in lock step you will get into dependency hell. > portage is now exactly what its developers railed against — rpm > dependency hell. portage just kicks the can down the street a bit. I didn't upgrade for 6 months because of the e2fsprogs problem, but when I finally did, I didn't have any problems across 190 packages. > > in fact, an upgraded system will differ significantly from a fresh install > even after an emerge world. > > portage is just broken. In many ways, yes, but it is less broken than apt or rpm. The only way it could be less broken is by not caring about dependencies, but then you're left with something like Arch, where you *really* have to know what you're doing. Of course, 90% of this could be solved by the elimination of shared libraries, but oh well. > > unfortunately, i don't know of any alternatives that will allow me > and not rh or somebody else to decided if i am going to run ldap > or whatever. If you want something that gives you freedom from "standard packaging" and is less of a nanny than portage, either LFS or Arch are your best bet.
Re: [9fans] Help for home user discovering Plan 9
On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 2:08 AM, Eris Discordia wrote: > This thing about Windows updates, I think it's a non-issue. It's not like > updates are mandatory and, as a matter of fact, there's rather fine-grained > classification of them on Microsoft's knowledge base which can be used by > any more or less experienced user to identify exactly what they need for > addressing a specific glitch and to download and install that and only that. > Periodic updates of Windows are really unnecessary and can be easily turned > off. Cumulative updates (like the service packs), on the other hand, are > often the best way to go. That is a lie. There are updates which (at least on XP) you could never refuse. Nevermind the fact that Windows would have to restart more than once on a typical series of updates. > > What seems to actually be the problem for you is that you don't like being > told there's a closed modification to your existing closed software. Well, > that's the nature of binary-only proprietary for-profit software. The only > way to get you to pay out of anything other than good will, which is a rare > bird. No, I think he's saying that Windows Update is a piece of fetid garbage. > > P.S. On open/free software mailing lists and forums justice is often not > done to Windows, et al. Particularly, no meaningful alternative is presented > for carrying out the important duties Windows currently performs for general > computing, i.e. non-technical home and office applications which combined > together were and continue to be the killer application of microcomputers. Mac's updater is miles ahead of Windows Update, but both are still crappy. I've given Linux to several "computer illiterates" and they were immediately relieved that they could open up a single application and search for any kind of software they needed, and updating it all was done by that simple application. How simple is that! The rate of failure of updates (compared to Windows update, which would leave you with a completely unusable system every once in a while) was also much lower. > > --On Saturday, April 18, 2009 8:11 AM +0200 lu...@proxima.alt.za wrote: > >>> The update/installation process in Ubuntu sucks. If you try something >>> using BSD ports or Gentoo portage, you can fine tune things and have >>> explicit control over the update process. >> >> I was specifically omitting BSD ports, as they are in a different >> league. The point I _was_ making is that one readily sacrifices >> control for convenience and that Linux and Windows users and those who >> assist them have to accept second-rate management and pay for it (I >> should know, I can see it when XP decides to use the GPRS link for its >> updating :-( >> >> Enough reason for me to prefer Plan 9 (and NetBSD, but I can only get >> my teeth into so many apples), if there weren't many more reasons. >> >> ++L >> >> > >
Re: [9fans] Help for home user discovering Plan 9
On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 2:11 AM, wrote: >> The update/installation process in Ubuntu sucks. If you try something >> using BSD ports or Gentoo portage, you can fine tune things and have >> explicit control over the update process. > > I was specifically omitting BSD ports, as they are in a different > league. The point I _was_ making is that one readily sacrifices > control for convenience and that Linux and Windows users and those who > assist them have to accept second-rate management and pay for it (I > should know, I can see it when XP decides to use the GPRS link for its > updating :-( > > Enough reason for me to prefer Plan 9 (and NetBSD, but I can only get > my teeth into so many apples), if there weren't many more reasons. > > ++L > Seriously, give Gentoo portage a try. There is a sane package management system for Linux.
Re: [9fans] Plan9 - the next 20 years
On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 11:11 AM, erik quanstrom wrote: > On Sat Apr 18 11:08:21 EDT 2009, rminn...@gmail.com wrote: >> On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 6:50 AM, erik quanstrom >> wrote: >> >> > in a plan 9 system, the only files that i can think of which many processes >> > have open at the same time are log files, append-only files. just >> > reopening >> > log file would solve the problem. >> >> you're not thinking in terms of parallel applications if you make this >> statement. > > you're right. i assume you specificly mean hpc things. the gulf between hpc > and anything else is pretty big. > > - erik > > Not necessarily. There are plenty of files that a normal process run by any user will access which, upon migrating to another node, will be different or will need to be restored. I gave examples in my earlier email. It's *not* just an HPC problem. It's a problem when you want to be able to move process around even two computers on a home LAN.
Re: [9fans] Plan9 - the next 20 years
On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 9:50 AM, erik quanstrom wrote: >> > * you can get the same effect by increasing the scale of your system. >> > >> > * the reason conventional systems work is not, in my opinion, because >> > the collision window is small, but because one typically doesn't do >> > conflicting edits to the same file. >> > >> > * saying that something "isn't likely" in an unquantifiable way is >> > not a recipie for success in computer science, in my experience. >> > >> > - erik >> > >> >> I don't see how any of that relates to having to do more work to >> ensure that C/R and process migration across nodes works and keeps >> things as consistent as possible. > > that's a fine and sensible goal. but for the reasons above, i don't buy this > line of reasoning. > > in a plan 9 system, the only files that i can think of which many processes > have open at the same time are log files, append-only files. just reopening > log file would solve the problem. > > what is a specific case of contention you are thinking of? > > i'm not sure why editor is the case that's being bandied about. two users > don't usually edit the same file at the same time. that case already > does not work. and i'm not sure why one would snapshot an editing > session edit the file by other means and expect things to just work out. > (and finally, acme, for example, does not keep the original file open. > if open files are what get snapshotted, there would be not difference.) > > - erik > > Ron mentioned a bunch before, like /etc/hosts or a pipe to another process, and I would also suggest that things in /net and databases could be a serious problem. If you migrate a process, how do you ensure that the process is in a sane state on the new node? I agree that generally only one process will be accessing a "normal" file at once. I think an editor is not a good example, as you say.
Re: [9fans] Help for home user discovering Plan 9
On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 1:47 AM, wrote: >> Every time I have to use something like >> Linux or MS, I feel overwhelmed by the sheer complexity of it all. > > Possibly OT, my main beef with Linux and Windows is that they keep > wanting to update themselves and the effort to "manage" these updates > is enormous (less so with Ubuntu, but still great). With Plan 9, I > find I can control the updating process and do not feel I'm leaving > myself exposed whenever I do. Of course, the factors involved are > very different, but I have a suspicion that with Windows and Linux one > relinquishes control at too deep a level and the continual updates are > a particularly visible case of this loss of control. > > ++L > > The update/installation process in Ubuntu sucks. If you try something using BSD ports or Gentoo portage, you can fine tune things and have explicit control over the update process.
Re: [9fans] Plan9 - the next 20 years
On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 12:16 AM, erik quanstrom wrote: >> On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 11:37 PM, erik quanstrom >> wrote: >> >> I can imagine a lot of problems stemming from open files could be >> >> resolved by first attempting to import the process's namespace at the >> >> time of checkpoint and, upon that failing, using cached copies of the >> >> file made at the time of checkpoint, which could be merged later. >> > >> > there's no guarantee to a process running in a conventional >> > environment that files won't change underfoot. why would >> > condor extend a new guarantee? >> > >> > maybe i'm suffering from lack of vision, but i would think that >> > to get to 100% one would need to think in terms of transactions >> > and have a fully transactional operating system. >> > >> > - erik >> > >> >> There's a much lower chance of files changing out from you in a >> conventional environment. If the goal is to make the "unconventional" >> environment look and act like the conventional one, it will probably >> have to try to do some of these things to be useful. > > * you can get the same effect by increasing the scale of your system. > > * the reason conventional systems work is not, in my opinion, because > the collision window is small, but because one typically doesn't do > conflicting edits to the same file. > > * saying that something "isn't likely" in an unquantifiable way is > not a recipie for success in computer science, in my experience. > > - erik > I don't see how any of that relates to having to do more work to ensure that C/R and process migration across nodes works and keeps things as consistent as possible.
Re: [9fans] Plan9 - the next 20 years
On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 12:16 AM, erik quanstrom wrote: >> But I'll say that if anyone tries to solve these problems today, they >> should not fall into the same trap, [...] > > yes. forward thinking was just the thing that made multics > what it is today. > > it is equally a trap to try to prognosticate too far in advance. > one increases the likelyhood of failure and the chances of being > dead wrong. > > - erik > > I don't think what I outlined is too far ahead, and the issues presented are all doable as long as a small bit of extra consideration is made. Keeping your eye only on the here and now was "just the thing" that gave Unix a bunch of tumorous growths like sockets and X11, and made Windows the wonderful piece of hackery it is. I'm not suggesting we consider how to solve the problems we'll face when we're flying through space and time in the TARDIS and shrinking ourselves and our bioships down to molecular sizes to cure someone's brain cancer. I'm talking about making something scale across distances and magnitudes that we will come accustomed to in the next five decades.
Re: [9fans] Plan9 - the next 20 years
On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 11:56 PM, erik quanstrom wrote: >> Vidi also seems to be an attempt to make Venti work in such a dynamic >> environment. IMHO, the assumption that computers are always connected >> to the network was a fundamental mistake in Plan 9 > > on the other hand, without this assumption, we would not have 9p. > it was a real innovation to dispense with underpowered workstations > with full adminstrative burdens. > > i think it is anachronistic to consider the type of mobile devices we > have today. in 1990 i knew exactly 0 people with a cell phone. i had > a toshiba orange screen laptop from work, but in those days a 9600 > baud vt100 was still a step up. > > ah, the good old days. Of course it's easy to blame people for lack of vision 25 years later, but with the rate at which computing moves in general, cell phones as powerful as workstations should have been seen to be on their way within the authors' lifetimes. That said, Plan 9 was designed to furnish the needs of an environment that might not ever have had iPhones and eeePCs attached to it even if such things existed at the time it was made. But I'll say that if anyone tries to solve these problems today, they should not fall into the same trap, and look to the future. I hope they'll consider how well their solution scales to computers so small they're running through someone's bloodstream and so far away that communication in one direction will take several light-minutes and be subject to massive delay and loss. It's not that ridiculous... teams are testing DTN, which hopes to spread the internet to outer space, not only across this solar system, but also to nearby stars. Now there's thinking forward! > > none of this is do detract from the obviously good idea of being > able to carry around a working set and sync up with the main server > later without some revision control junk. in fact, i was excited to > learn about fossil — i was under the impression from reading the > paper that that's how it worked. > > speaking of vidi, do the vidi authors have an update on their work? > i'd really like to hear how it is working out. > > - erik > >
Re: [9fans] Plan9 - the next 20 years
On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 11:37 PM, erik quanstrom wrote: >> I can imagine a lot of problems stemming from open files could be >> resolved by first attempting to import the process's namespace at the >> time of checkpoint and, upon that failing, using cached copies of the >> file made at the time of checkpoint, which could be merged later. > > there's no guarantee to a process running in a conventional > environment that files won't change underfoot. why would > condor extend a new guarantee? > > maybe i'm suffering from lack of vision, but i would think that > to get to 100% one would need to think in terms of transactions > and have a fully transactional operating system. > > - erik > There's a much lower chance of files changing out from you in a conventional environment. If the goal is to make the "unconventional" environment look and act like the conventional one, it will probably have to try to do some of these things to be useful.
Re: [9fans] Plan9 - the next 20 years
On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 10:39 PM, ron minnich wrote: > On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 7:06 PM, J.R. Mauro wrote: > >> Yeah, the problem's bigger than I thought (not surprising since I >> didn't think much about it). I'm having a hard time figuring out how >> Condor handles these issues. All I can see from the documentation is >> that it gives you warnings. > > the original condor just forwarded system calls back to the node it > was started from. Thus all system calls were done in the context of > the originating node and user. "Best effort" is a good place to start. > > >> But this still has the 90% problem you mentioned. > > it's just plain harder than it looks ... Yeah. Every time I think of a way to address the corner cases, new ones crop up.
Re: [9fans] Plan9 - the next 20 years
On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 7:01 PM, ron minnich wrote: > On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 3:35 PM, J.R. Mauro wrote: > >> Amen. Linux is currently having a seriously hard time getting C/R >> working properly, just because of the issues you mention. The second >> you mix in non-local resources, things get pear-shaped. > > it's not just non-local. It's local too. > > you are on a node. you open /etc/hosts. You C/R to another node with > /etc/hosts open. What's that mean? > > You are on a node. you open a file in a ramdisk. Other programs have > it open too. You are watching each other's writes. You C/R to another > node with the file open. What's that mean? > > You are on a node. You have a pipe to a process on that node. You C/R > to another node. Are you still talking at the end? > > And on and on. It's quite easy to get this stuff wrong. But true C/R > requires that you get it right. The only system that would get this > stuff mostly right that I ever used was Condor. (and, well the Apollo > I think got it too, but that was a ways back). > > ron > > Yeah, the problem's bigger than I thought (not surprising since I didn't think much about it). I'm having a hard time figuring out how Condor handles these issues. All I can see from the documentation is that it gives you warnings. I can imagine a lot of problems stemming from open files could be resolved by first attempting to import the process's namespace at the time of checkpoint and, upon that failing, using cached copies of the file made at the time of checkpoint, which could be merged later. But this still has the 90% problem you mentioned.
Re: [9fans] Plan9 - the next 20 years
On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 6:15 PM, ron minnich wrote: > if you want to look at checkpointing, it's worth going back to look at > Condor, because they made it really work. There are a few interesting > issues that you need to get right. You can't make it 50% of the way > there; that's not useful. You have to hit all the bits -- open /tmp > files, sockets, all of it. It's easy to get about 90% of it but the > last bits are a real headache. Nothing that's come along since has > really done the job (although various efforts claim to, you have to > read the fine print). > > ron > > Amen. Linux is currently having a seriously hard time getting C/R working properly, just because of the issues you mention. The second you mix in non-local resources, things get pear-shaped. Unfortunately, even if it does work, it will probably not have the kind of nice Plan 9-ish semantics I can envision it having.
