Re: [9fans] $200 walmart PC
On Feb 2, 2008 1:30 PM, ron minnich <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > So these are really effective Plan 9 boxes. 512G memory feels so roomy! I'm thinking that 512G is pretty roomy at this time no matter how you shake it up. :-) - Dan C. (Who thinks that Ron meant to write 512M)
Re: [9fans] Is there a Plan 9 equivalent of the find command
Back in the day, I wrote two commands: walk and sor. Walk was
somewhat similar to Russ's lsr command (these days, lsr would probably
be better; the only additional thing walk offered was the ability to
limit the depth of searching via an option). Sor took other commands
as arguments; for each filename that it read (presumably generated by
walk), it would apply each test successively; if one returned `true'
it would print out the resulting filename. (sor, incidentally, stands
for `stream or').
The idea behind find, when you step back a little bit, is to produce
some list of files (or otherwise do something interesting with them)
after applying a set of predicates to them. The predicates can be
strung together into aribrary sequences that form filters based on the
boolean value of evaluating the predicates for each file that find
visits. Well, in Plan 9, we form filters that reduce lists using
pipes, and sor was just a convenient way to compute the boolean or of
a bunch of predicate evaluations. It worked out, I thought,
reasonably well, but never made it into the distribution; I guess no
one else saw the point. But, if you search through the 9fans
archives, you can probably find the tools (and they're in my contrib
directory on sources). I still thing it's mostly an improvement.
- Dan C.
On 6/10/07, Kim Shrier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
This is probably me just stuck in the UNIX mind set again. I have
looked through the commands and I don't see anything that does what
find does. What I am trying to do is look in a directory that has
many files and subdirectories and find any file that contains a string.
In UNIX, I would do something like this.
find . -type f -exec grep some_pattern {} \; -print
What is the Plan 9 way?
Thanks,
Kim
Re: [9fans] How can I shift a variable other than ?
Was that a Haiku? On 3/12/07, Russ Cox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Everyone has said their piece, and opinions have stopped changing. Let's move on. Russ
Re: [9fans] How can I shift a variable other than ?
On 3/11/07, Kris Maglione <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: [...] And if rc is to have such a massive revamping, there's no good reason to keep calling it rc. I think the point you keep missing is that this isn't such a massive revamping. It's a simple change that doesn't break any existing scripts; the worst thing that could happen is that new scripts don't run on the old shell, in which case one can update the shell. This really isn't that big of a deal. You're making a mountain out of a molehill. As for your point about writing a new shell. Well, go do it, then. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] How can I shift a variable other than ?
On 3/10/07, Kris Maglione <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Sat, Mar 10, 2007 at 04:20:22PM -0500, Dan Cross wrote: >Nonsense. You think rc has never changed before? There have been >plenty of non-backwards compatible changes in Plan 9. You miss the point entirely. I agree that things shouldn't stay the same simply for the sake of compatibility. Plan 9 threw away a bunch of UNIX crud in the begining, and was not set in stone from the begining. I have no desire to add teletypes and ioctls to be compatible with UNIX. The point is that rc(1) has been rc since the begining. It's rc everywhere. If you write an rc script, you can expect it work wherever you send it. The one infuriating exception which I've run across is the UNIX port, which I have to worry about being in peoples' PATHs on UNIX, rather than the Plan 9 version. If there are to be changes, there's no reason to make those changes to rc. It would be best to create a new shell that deals with the shortcomings of rc, rather than adding features and cruft. That is how UNIX got to be so cruddy to begin with. The reason that sh(1) and Plan 9 are so nice is because they reevaluated and threw away most of what came before them. No, I didn't miss the point, which, if carried to its logical conclusion would imply that we should just write a new operating system whenever we want to add something new. There's nothing set in stone about any system; the problems you describe come when people start believing that there is. The proliferation of shells under Unix could have been avoided by carefully re-evaluating the existing offers and making appropriate changes. Instead, we ended up with Shell Soup. Rc is just a program; yes, a pretty good one, but it is not a religious document: it is open to interpretation, re-evaluation and change. Put another way, one of the reasons Plan 9 has remained so nice over the years is because the folks primary responsible for it have been open to making reasonable changes where appropriate. >>It runs on Inferno, which runs on Plan 9. You can script for Plan 9 in >>Inferno's sh. You can even script for UNIX in it. I've done both. It >>works. It's not even ugly. Then perhaps, as has been said for ages, it is best to make the integration between Inferno and Plan 9 more seemless, and the installation easier. It would, indeed, be nice to include Inferno in Plan 9 by default. You're replying to yourself there. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] How can I shift a variable other than ?
On 3/10/07, Kris Maglione <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: The difference here is that there has always been one rc (ignoring the UNIX version, which is gratuitously incompatible), unlike the bourne shells. One of the great things about it has always been that you could write rc scripts and know that they'd work on rc wherever they were run. If you start extending the spec, then things start to suck, truly. Nonsense. You think rc has never changed before? There have been plenty of non-backwards compatible changes in Plan 9. Plan 9 is a research system; it should be unfettered by the demands of backwards compatibility with itself (within reason). Taking your argument to its logical conclusion, we should all be using VT220's (or better yet, DECwriter III's) on a VAX running 7th edition Unix. But I'd rather incorporate good ideas for change than remain stuck in the past. In this environment, I think innovation is worth more than some minimal amount o backwards compatibility. Besides, one doesn't even know how used this feature would be; it may come to pass that the vast, vast majority of sites are totally unaffected. Besides, there are sufficiently few sites running Plan 9 that, when confronted with script breakage, it is not an unreasonable answer to say, ``upgrade your shell.'' There are times when forward progress demands a break from established convention. Sometimes, this buys you nothing, but that does not mean that every proposed change is bad. Certainly, without deciding to break backwards compatibility with Unix, Plan 9 would never have come about. >doesn't run on plan 9. it's written in limbo and depends on >features of inferno that are not part of plan 9. It runs on Inferno, which runs on Plan 9. You can script for Plan 9 in Inferno's sh. You can even script for UNIX in it. I've done both. It works. It's not even ugly. Have to incorporate all of the Inferno machinery into a system just to run a shell script is way too much to ask of most people. Certainly, more than asking them to upgrade their shell interpreter from sources. At any rate, someone might write a new shell which is neither es nor Inferno's shell, which is designed to run on Plan 9. I'd still rather just use Inferno's shell, myself. Then by all means, port over the Inferno shell. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] plumber - more versatile than previously thoughtj
On Wed, Feb 07, 2007 at 03:05:22PM +0100, Enrique Soriano wrote: > ahem... http://www.planbskateboarding.com/features/slayer/ Plan B skateboards predates the Plan B operating system by a good margin. For that matter, it *might* predate the Plan 9 system that Plan B is based on; they were roughly contemporaneous within an epsilon of a couple of years. I don't think, however, that either had a particularly profound influence on the other. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] plumber - more versatile than previously thought
On Tue, Feb 06, 2007 at 02:51:05PM -0500, Russ Cox wrote: > I apologize for the off-topic spam, but this is pretty funny. > > In his own words [*] this is what this guy does: > > [...] I think you should link back to him. - Dan C.
[9fans] [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Michael Baldwin 1964-2007]
9fans and Inferno fans: It is with great sadness that I report the death of one of our own. Michael Baldwin, who worked at the labs for some time and later at Vita Nuova, died last night after a brief battle against cancer. Michael was, perhaps, most famous in our community for writing the `pq' implicit relational database that comes with the plan9 distribution. He was also a terrific guy in real life, and will be sorely missed. Arrangements are still pending, but you can find the preliminaries in the forwarded message below. If you'd like more information, please send me email directly and I'll try to keep you informed as I find out details (I plan on sending another email to 9fans and infero-list once things are finalized, however). - Dan C. - Forwarded message from Paul C Lustgarten <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - From: Paul C Lustgarten <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Michael Baldwin 1964-2007 Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2007 09:17:47 -0500 Matthew's message from last night says it well ... Begin forwarded message: >From: Lara Guerra and Matthew Diaz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Date: February 5, 2007 9:49:08 PM EST >Subject: Michael > >It is with great sorrow over our loss and great joy in having >shared in such a vibrant and loving life that I report that Michael >Scott Baldwin passed away today, February 5, 2007 at approximately >7:30 EST in his sister's home, surrounded by Uriel, family and >friends. He had been discharged from the hospital this morning and >as he desired spent his remaining hours at home. > >Final plans are yet to be confirmed, but at Michael's request he >will be cremated, with his ashes to be scattered at 4 locations: >his parent's farm, on a Hopi reservation and in two locations in >Guatemala. A memorial will be held at the Sandy Springs Quaker >meeting house in Maryland. Further details will be sent out as I >learn of them. > >As always, keep Michael and Uriel and their family in your >thoughts, prayers and in the Light. > >Matthew - End forwarded message -
Re: [9fans] Replacements for lex
On Fri, Jan 19, 2007 at 01:58:06PM -0500, Joel Salomon wrote: > Has anyone had success with lexer-generators other than lex under Plan > 9? I'm taking a compilers class this semester and I'd like to do as > much work under Plan 9 as possible. > > I looked around online and found re2c, which looked interesting except > it's written in C++. > > For languages sufficiently like C, is regexp(2) suitable? I think that most people roll their own lexical analyzers under Plan 9. That's typically not too hard to do, though. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] Pull?
On Fri, Dec 29, 2006 at 01:39:01PM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I did a pull last night to update a machine here and found that just > letting it run to completion was fine. The deleted files that are > meant to persist get recreated. > > I'm looking into the possibility of altering the replica log > to remove the deletions of files that are meant to persist. Unfortunately, it seems that I did a pull during a rather inconvenient time when the files were deleted, but had not yet been re-added to the replica log. So, I fudged things around enough to get pull to sort of work, but it was too late, and pull will not complete, and thus not restore the system. :-( - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] Pull?
On Thu, Dec 28, 2006 at 09:00:07PM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > There was a problem locally wherein losing a file server connection > was making replica/scan think that all the files had vanished. I've > taken measures to prevent it happening in future, and as far as we > know, pull is working again. If in doubt, try `pull -n' first. I don't know; attempts to restore my system have so far been failures, resulting in a host of error messages yet failing to repopulate the filesystem. :-( - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] Pull?
On Thu, Dec 21, 2006 at 05:05:20PM -0800, Paul Lalonde wrote: > I just backed up my VM and gave it a shot. I confirm that > behaviour. Yikes. So, anyone else have any idea what's up with this? Or, more importantly, is sources repopulated? - Dan C.
[9fans] Pull?
Uh, I just ran pull and it deleted nearly every file on my system; something tells me this is not normal. Anyone else just have this? - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] /Library/LauchAgents/9pfs.plist
On Thu, Dec 21, 2006 at 10:11:39AM -0500, erik quanstrom wrote: > > the GNU folks are progressively cramming as much of the system as they > > can into bash. eventually, we're only going to have two programs. > > bringing the two together is the Grand Unified Theory of modern unix. > > i wonder if they will be more successful than the physics guys? Well, if anything, at least it does seem to put to rest the evolution versus intelligent design debate - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] notebooks
On Sun, Oct 29, 2006 at 06:07:49PM +, Charles Forsyth wrote: > my t23 is finally starting to fail, frequently, and i > might need a replacement urgently. > which notebooks with screens at least 1400x1050 work with plan 9 native? > (`vesa' graphics mode might be fine.) it's a bonus if it has got > an 802 wireless for which a native driver could be written. > i looked at the wiki but can't easily tell machine characteristics from that. I don't know about Native, but a MacBook with parallels is scratching so many itches for me right now that I feel quite comfortable. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] Plan 9 in robotics
On Tue, Oct 10, 2006 at 10:55:46AM -0400, Bhanu Nagendra Pisupati wrote: > The work is based on a home cooked robot used as an instructional platform > in our department, some based on ARM7 and others on MSP430 MCUs: > http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~geobrown/goofy.html Interesting. This isn't exactly related to Plan 9, but I've got a question: where do people get this type of hardware? I've looked for solo CPU's and things, and basically can't find them. You'd think it wouldn't be so hard to find a Z80 and a socket and some breadboard to plug it into, but it's remarkably hard - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] Investigating the Plan 9 Operating System - OSNews.com
On Tue, Jul 25, 2006 at 01:33:44PM -0400, Michael Baldwin wrote: > I feel like responding... oh never mind. I shall do what I'm told, > sir! You are so right: authority needs to put its foot down and not > stand for any funny business. Or else. In general I concur, but I think that, in this case, the business wasn't funny, it was highly offending someone, that person asked the offending party to stop, and the offending party refused. It's not as if Uriel was making references to Star Trek or something equally unimportant or inane. If he had been, I'm quite sure the reaction would have been different. I suspect Uriel may be permitted to rejoin the list once he learns how not to be an asshole. Then again, that may mean he never gets to resubscribe. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] Re: 9fans Digest, Vol 27, Issue 52
On Mon, Jul 24, 2006 at 09:49:58PM +0200, csant wrote: > Allow me a question: what exactly is it that the long-term Plan 9 users > miss on Plan 9, to look for it on some other system? An application I > understand people use regularly via VNC is a browser - is there anything > else that really is missing? You mention "third party apps": what exactly > is missing? And mainly: what is the reason for it missing? It's no one thing that *you* can't live without, but rather that you cut yourself off from the rest of the world when you run Plan 9 as your only system. Yes, the back of a browser can be a real bummer (I tried to live with Charon as my only browser for a while; that didn't work out too well). Any number of things may or may not be necessary on a daily basis: 0) A browser. 1) Some office suite application or applications. Sure, *I* can edit my documents in sam or acme and do markup using troff or tex or some other such thing, but you ever try emailing a troff document to a non-technical colleague? Or one who comes from a Windows only background? These are the same people who may email me an MS word document with embedded graphics, or a PowerPoint presentation, or an Excel spreadsheet. Or a Visio graphic. You get the picture; I can control the format of the output I produce output, and thus can get away with using Plan 9. But I can't control others, who may send me something I need to see, read, watch or listen to, but can't do so under Plan 9. 2) An IM client (I worked at a job where we used AIM for internal company communications; actually, two of my jobs used it. Believe it or not, it was highly effective. Sure, the protocol sucks, but we could "talk" to one another on a daily basis). 3) I use Mathematica a lot. That's critical for me. 4) I hate to say it, but sometimes I need C++, or Objective-C, or any number of other languages that I just don't have either compilers or interpreters for under Plan 9. 5) Any number of players of various multimedia formats. 6) A mail client that can do GnuPG or OpenPGP or whatever. 7) Any number of other applications Some of the traditional solutions are bandaids; VNC is a good example here. It prevents gangrene, but isn't a real solution by itself; for instance, it *may* be fast enough to push video over my network (or, rather, my network may be fast enough for VNC to keep up with real-time video), but what about sound? Ugh. It's like X11 all over again...a partial solution to a sticky problem at the wrong level. Other solutions, the so-called, "well, quit bitching and write the code..." models also break down. I'm sorry, but Mozilla has 10,000 sets of hands writing code for firefox; I can't duplicate all that effort. And from a usage point of view, they've done a lot and done a reasonable job at it, too. I'd rather leverage their work than reinvent the square wheel myself. So, I come up with some hybrid solution where I have multiple platforms. For me, it works to have a combination of Plan 9 (even if my servers are currently down, and have been for a while now...hi Andrey! Sorry about that!), Unix, VMS, and the mac. Others wouldn't like that. Hey, that's cool, this is what I like and feel I'm effective in. Anyway, that's my 2c. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] Investigating the Plan 9 Operating System - OSNews.com
On Sun, Jul 23, 2006 at 06:24:10PM -0300, Federico G. Benavento wrote: > Maybe uriel could talk about it, but he's banned from the list. He is? Shucks; that's a shame. He was amusing in a village-idiot sort of way. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] webfsget
On Fri, Jul 14, 2006 at 07:27:25PM -0500, erik quanstrom wrote: > is there something obvious wrong with this? > > webfsget -b http://swtch.com/~rsc/ rsc-small.jpg > webfsget: get ctl write: parseurl: relative URI given without base Other than the space before the filename in the URL? - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] usb keyboard and mouse?
On Wed, Jun 28, 2006 at 10:31:26PM -0700, Mike Haertel wrote: > The implementation is chipset dependent. Often what happens is > that the chipset recognizes an I/O request to port 0x60 or 0x64 and > aborts the request with an SMI (system management interrupt). This > is a *very* non-maskable interrupt (more non-maskable than NMI...) > that causes the processor to save pretty much all its register state > in a special memory area, and jump to a handler in the system BIOS. > The BIOS SMI handler examines the saved register state, figures out > what the OS was trying to do, runs a software model of the PS/2 > keyboard controller's state, chats with the USB keyboard, formulates > an appropriate response, emulates the I/O instruction the OS was > trying to do, and resumes execution of the OS at the instruction > following the I/O instruction. > > Some chipsets might do it directly in hardware rather than using > the SMI+BIOS strategy. Dear Lord! At what point is a chicken sacrificed in this process? - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] quantity vs. quality
On Wed, Jun 07, 2006 at 06:39:42PM -0700, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote: > Plan 9's "future" is in guiding the UNIX community forward, not in > regressing back to what spawned it in the first place. And I > sincerely hope that doesn't happen by having Plan 9 be adopted > wholesale by the masses, for that would (sooner or later) see the end > of research and innovation for the sake of not breaking all the > currently running apps, which is what caused UNIX to start growing > mold. I would much rather see Plan 9 stay small and mostly ignored, > since that's how it will remain agile and pliable. It's the *ideas* > from Plan 9 (e.g. the servers, namespaces) that will help the masses > morph their current environment into something suitable for the 21st > century. I concur. One has to ask the question, *why* does one want to attract new users to Plan 9? It would take many man-centuries of effort to get an environment as rich (for the end-user) as that provided by the mainstream Unices right now. And what would be the point? As many have noted, it would lead to increased complexity, bloat, and decreased quality on what is otherwise a pretty clean and high quality system. Plan 9 would, at that point, cease to be Plan 9 and turn into something else. I don't particularly want that, just as I don't really want to add a lot of new ``features'' to C: if I want C++, Java, C#, or Ruby, I know where to get them. Similarly, if I want Unix, I know where to get it. Instead, I'd like to go back to basics and use Plan 9 as a clean, conceptually pure prototype for a new Unix-like system. Let's take the good ideas from Plan 9, and a current BSD kernel (probably the FreeBSD one), a current Unix user-land, an axe, and go to town like Charles did with SunOS 4 back in the day. For that matter, throw in some of the good ideas from VSTa (now FMI/OS? They seem to be regressing: from their Wiki's page on `Current Work': ``working on getting switching to posix style error numbers instead of strings. done'' Great...), EMAS, TOPS-20, VMS, Multics, QNX, etc. (Yes! VMS had some good ideas! Like a standardized calling convention that made it possible to call modules from any number of languages! 20 years ago! Stick THAT in your ELF and smoke it!) But in general, you know, look back at history and add in some of those things that were good ideas and got lost in the sands of time but which will get reinvented two years from now, badly, because no one thinks to do any research before starting on their work anymore. At least, not in computer science Of course, that will never happen, and Geoff is right: it's mostly an issue with education and defeating incorrect or outdated perceptions (I get physically ill when I hear about ``efficiency'' these days. Yeah, like your GCC extension to pack struct's is *so* much more efficient on a 3 GHz machine than code to pack it or unpack it from a bytestream. You spend more time porting it to a new platform than you ever did writing and debugging once, and running an arbitrary number of times, the byte packing code). Too bad the example a beginning programmer sees now is the cess pool of open source cruft instead of well-written code. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] gcc on plan9
On Wed, Jun 07, 2006 at 08:32:12PM -0300, Federico G. Benavento wrote: > you can run "9fs sources; cd /n/sources/contrib/zwansch; ls", can you? At the moment, no, I can't. > judging all "the IRC crowd" by what uriel said is the same as judging all > 9fans by what you say. It's not just that, but the snarky attitudes and IRC logs, and the attitudes that, ``we use Plan 9, so we're better than everyone else.'' I'm sorry, I'm not convinced. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] gcc on plan9
On Thu, Jun 08, 2006 at 12:56:35AM +0200, Christoph Lohmann wrote: > Good evening. Why do you always put the appropriate greeting of the day in your emails? > > I have neither the morale nor the power to write even a single line of > > code for this new "integrated graphical desktop environment" on Plan 9 > > -- I merely intend to assemble the work that others are doing; I'm like > > a child clumsily playing with lego bricks. The best that I can do is > > help write the gluework to get it working together nicely. > > So why are you discussing this, when you are not going to write any source > code? Because he doesn't want to invent a new window system and programming abstractions for it, but he's interesting in using one if it already exists? Why shouldn't he discuss it? What a stupid, arrogantly elitist attitude. > That is only a propaganda position and not a technical one. Propaganda is > boring. More wisdom from the IRC crowd. What, collectively, have you people ever done? We're still waiting for Uriel's 9load replacement, if I recall correctly. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] gcc on plan9
On Wed, Jun 07, 2006 at 03:49:47PM -0600, Ronald G Minnich wrote: > of course it sucks. All secret societies do. But we have such fine > fashion style! Fashion and style sense are not the same thing. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] how low can you limbo?
On Tue, May 30, 2006 at 07:24:40PM -0700, Skip Tavakkolian wrote: > where's limboscript?! > > ftp://ftp.research.microsoft.com/pub/tr/TR-2006-50.pdf > http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/2006/05/scheme-implementation-in-javascript.html That's nothing. If you want to see something truly awful, look at what the FreeBSD people are doing as one of their, `summer of code' projects: _K: The Kernel Metalanguage_. >From the blurb: Kernel meta-language: Develop a dialect of the C language that simplifies the task of writing kernel code. It should include language extensions that make it possible to write kernel code more cleanly and with less bugs. An example of this would have language support for linked lists, to obviate the need for messy MACROs. George V. Neville-Neil and Poul-Henning Kamp are coordinating. http://wikitest.freebsd.org/K This paper that the reference, from Berkeley: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~zf/papers/ivy-hotos05.pdf doesn't mention limbo at all (or Cyclone). Nor do the other references (though they do mention Singularity, from MS research). It's like a complexity bomb went off inside these guys' heads. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] combining characters
On Fri May 19 19:45:43 CDT 2006, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > There's no such thing as an accented letter in a Russian language. > That was the exact point of my initial remark. This is true, at least for Cyrillics, but there are stress marks which, to beginners in the language, are invaluable aids for sounding out the correct pronunciation of words. Typically, adult Russian isn't written with the accent marks, though. But children's books and textbooks for foreigners are. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] bootalpha and the no valid stack error
On Wed, Apr 26, 2006 at 08:29:42PM -0700, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote: > >- In the begining (well once Olsen got over his anti-UNIX thing), > >there > >was ULTRIX on the 11, the VAX and MIPS. > > On the /11? Ultrix seemed very VM-centric. (I.e. wanting post-11 > TLBs and such.) Yes, there was Ultrix on the 11. I believe you can download it Ultrix was a succession of different systems, starting on the PDP-11 but moving to the VAX and eventually MIPS. > >- When DEC decided to swich from ULTRIX to OSF/1, it started its > >development on MIPS. > >- To what extent OSF/1 on MIPS was seen in the wild is not clear. > >Claims range from, it was never officially released to, support for MIPS > >existed in the source tree for several versions. I know that CMU did a port of OSF/1 to MIPS, but I don't think it was generally available. And I certainly believe that a lot of the development work was hosted on MIPS and possibly even targeted MIPS before the Alpha was ready, but I don't ever recall it being a commercial offering from DEC. Even after the Alpha was released, if you bought a MIPS or VAX-based machine from DEC, the only Unix offered was Ultrix. Maybe if you were one of those special customers you could get them to give you OSF for MIPS, but I never ranked that high. :-) > My hazy recollections of the first MIPS workstations involved Ultrix. > (1.1?) No OSF until ... That's right. > I think Tru64 pre-dated Compaq. Nothing much changed between OSF/DUX/ > Tru (from the standpoint of someone who had to keep reasonably large > apps running throughout). Nothing much changed, but I'm pretty sure the Tru64 name came after the Compaq buy-out. The name Digial Unix didn't fly anymore since they didn't keep the Digital name (though, if I recall, in the original buy-out agreement they said they would). For a while, when you bought a Compaq Alpha, it came with the D|I|G|I|T|A|L logo still on the front-panel; I guess branding wasn't so important as using back-inventory of parts. > Of all the commercial Unixen of the era, the Ultrix follow-on > variants were the least painful to deal with. And the DEC MIPS- > derived C compiler kicked ass when it came to spitting out > grandmother-guilt-fed diagnostics :-) (Was it DEC or MIPS who were > responsible for the Spanish Inquisition error messages? While noisy, > the verbiage shortened a lot of other conversations :-) Oh, Ultrix was a pain to administer, especially after DEC dropped support for it. I didn't especially like the compiler for it, either, though I have a vague recollection that it had good diagnostics. I don't think it was fully ANSI C89 compliant, though, and other things in the OS left a lot to be desired. The monicker Uglix wasn't all together inappropriate. That said, I still have a MIPS-based Ultrix machine somewhere in storage. I should dig it out and see if it still boots (and if I still have any data on it!). - Dan C.
Re: Re: [9fans] bootalpha and the no valid stack error
On Wed, Apr 26, 2006 at 10:19:00PM -0400, Brian L.Stuart wrote: > > You may be right. I had thought that the console monitor and the PAL > > code were lashed together. The whole thing is a mess. I'd have > > preferred no PAL code and 001 console monitors. It's not obvious to > > me that the whizzo VMS queue instructions are actually worth having. > > I've got kind of mixed opinions on the subject of the PALcode. The > multiple console monitors do seem a little pointless. As near as > I can tell, the main motivation behind multiple PALcodes was to ease > porting VMS from the VAX and DigitalUNIX (or whatever it was called > that week) from the MIPS. One had a lot of built-in assumptions about > the VAX MMU and the four VAX processor modes and the other assumed > a lot about MIPS. That naturally led to the usual CS narcotic. "We'll > just abstract it away with an interface layer." In retrospect, it looks > to be an unnecessary bit of complexity. But at least it's vaguely > interesting, > unlike say the 7000 variations of how to specify which block you want > from an IDE drive. The thing about DEC's Unix on the Alpha was that it never ran on either the MIPS or VAX It was essentially OSF/1 with some DEC customizations and a custom compiler. At the time, I thought it was pretty nice. It `felt' a lot more like BSD, which was what I was used to coming from a SunOS 4/straight BSD world. It was certainly a better offering than Solaris. The thing is, DEC was the only company that bought into the koolaid of a unified Unix to take on Sun/AT&T; the idea of a standard OS across DEC, HP, and IBM hardware was nice and could have potentially forced Sun's hand to adopt it, too, but since DEC was struggling and no one else took it seriously, it just never happened. Now we're stuck with Linux. I suspect that you're right: the PALcode was to help ease porting of VMS from the VAX to Alpha. There was no such backwards compatibility requirement for their Unix, so it's unclear why they had a separate module for it, other than that perhaps the VMS version was too complicated and/or made too many VMS-centric assumptions to fit the Unix model neatly. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] impressive
On Tue, Apr 25, 2006 at 01:02:30PM +1000, Andy Newman wrote: > I like this quote from the glibc FAQ... > > 1.2. What compiler do I need to build GNU libc? > > ... A lot of extensions of GNU CC are used to increase portability ... I remember a year or two picking up a Linux rag at the train station on the way back from somewhere. They were talking about gcc 4 or something in it and saying how they were hoping to do away with a lot of GNU extensions by stricter adherence to the language standards in the compiler itself; I guess that work got buried. Then again, this was a cursory read on the Subway, and I'm slightly dyslexic, so maybe read it the opposite way it was meant. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] Install from CD fails
On Thu, Apr 20, 2006 at 09:43:35PM -0600, Ronald G Minnich wrote: > it gets better. They also define a Flat File System (FFS) in the spec. > It has functions to look up and create files, including one function to > tell you if there are two files of the same name on the volume, and if > so, where the many files with the same name are. I kid you not. It's one > of the worst things I've ever seen. Sounds a lot like my final project for high school AP computer science (back when it was in Pascal). You know, the way the Intel engineer described EFI, some of it didn't sound all together unreasonable. I don't understand why they wouldn't try and integrate ACPI support into Open Firmware and be done with it, but hey, what do I know? However, it seems like Dis would have been a really interesting choice for the EFI bytecode engine. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] Install from CD fails
On Thu, Apr 20, 2006 at 09:45:41PM -0600, Ronald G Minnich wrote: > I am hoping, in the next two weeks, to be booting Plan 9 out of the BIOS > FLASH part :-) (Which, BTW, will make Plan 9 my 9load replacement). Well then. The IRC crowd had better get a move on! - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] Install from CD fails
On Thu, Apr 20, 2006 at 03:20:56PM -0600, Ronald G Minnich wrote: > EFI requires a FAT-12 formatted FLASH on your mainboard. Licensed IP > from M$. As is the PCOFF format the binaries use. > > need I say more? FAT-12? Shesh. You know, I wonder why a more reasonable filesystem format can't be found for things like this. I mean, it doesn't have to be fancy (I've often thought that a simple extent-based filesystem with an extent- based directory structure would be sufficient for, e.g., 9fat), but it doesn't have to be FAT, either. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] Install from CD fails
On Tue, Apr 18, 2006 at 07:53:30PM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > [...] > > We scratched our heads about what in the world the kernel was doing > for 42ms per fork. Even on a Sun 3/50, that's a lot of cycles. > > This was a long time ago, but it's some actual measurements. Hmm. Weird. If it had been doing an exec, it would have been easy to point the finger at the run time loader, but if all you did was fork? My guess was reference counting pages in the shared libraries. Did you ever find out where the time went? - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] Install from CD fails
On Tue, Apr 18, 2006 at 02:24:49PM -0700, David Leimbach wrote: > It certainly wouldn't have any effect on the context switch itself > necessarily. But it might have an effect on page faults for code > that's loaded dynamically and the swapping that would occur while > freeing up free memory to load multiple copies of the same code or > not. (though it's been said over and over again that physical memory > savings of dynamic libraries rarely happens in practice.) Well, this is Unix, so text segments are shared anyway. The point is, you're right: it wouldn't have an effect on the context switch itself. The person in question was just plain wrong. I tried to explain it to him, and for a second he gave me that ``deer in the headlights'' blank stare of non-comprehension, and then just went back to saying, ``write, so it saves on the context switch'' The guy was senior to me, so we went with his idea, which introduced a new level of complexity that was just ridiculous. Of course, this was on a project written in C++ where each *class* was in it's own directory. That is, the headers were in a single directory, and the ``.cpp'' (heaven forbide we should use .cc as the extension for our C++ source files, since, you know, most of the guys had a Windows background) were each in their own directory. Make was utterly defeated. Ugh. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] Install from CD fails
On Tue, Apr 18, 2006 at 10:11:55PM +0100, Charles Forsyth wrote: > > I think shared libraries are often times misunderstood. I once knew > > someone who thought that a context switch was less expensive using > > shared libraries than without. > > many, many people apparently that think that a context switch > must necessarily be much more expensive than a function call > and return (or two) Ooops, let me clarify. The individual in question thought that a program that was linked dynamically was less expensive to switch than one that was linked statically. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] Install from CD fails
On Tue, Apr 18, 2006 at 07:54:16PM +0100, Charles Forsyth wrote: > that's often quoted as a consequence, but in practice, > not that i've seen in ... what is it now? ... at least six or > seven different systems. i think the trouble is that to get savings > that make the pain worthwhile you still need various forms of > discipline, but with shared libraries, people are even less concerned. > and RSS continues up. I think shared libraries are often times misunderstood. I once knew someone who thought that a context switch was less expensive using shared libraries than without. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] How low can you go?
On Tue, Apr 18, 2006 at 12:09:02PM -0600, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote: > [...] I didn't run native UUCP until 1984. Was big brother involved? > I also had the misfortune of bringing up UREP on a Sun 3/160 to implement > the last node added to BITNET in Canada (ATHA.BITNET). The author of UREP could certainly have qualified as big brother. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] Google Summer of Code
On Mon, Apr 17, 2006 at 10:21:28PM +0200, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > My apologies for trying to keep an eye in how the world outside Plan 9 > looks like. I will remember to avoid making such mistakes in the > future, it surely will be good to improve my badly hurt sanity. Actually, perhaps you could do us all a favor and stop posting your observations of what the world *inside* Plan 9 looks like, and go elsewhere. I'm sure I'm not the only one who would appreciate it. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] Can't install on VirtualPC
On Sat, Apr 01, 2006 at 11:04:14PM -0800, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote: > VPC can't boot the installation CD image. I never did figure out > why. You need to download the floppy boot image, and boot with both > it and the CD image attached. After the install is complete you can > toss the floppy image. I've gotten Virtual PC on the Mac to boot from the Plan 9 installation CD, but I don't remember how. It was strange, however it worked. It seems, however, that they've modified virtual PC to intercept the middle mouse button and map it to button 1, so it's sort of useless for Plan 9. Also, the virtualized disk access to horribly slow; I'm waiting for qemu to get up to snuff (or just to get an Intel based Mac and dual boot, which perhaps shouldn't be too hard). - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] Bell Labs moving to France
On Sat, Apr 01, 2006 at 07:25:56AM +0200, Christoph Lohmann wrote: > Good morning. Too transparant. Try again next year! - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] hola
On Tue, Mar 14, 2006 at 08:25:16AM +, Steve Simon wrote: > > flaco!!! ?est?s vivo? > > sorry, my Spanish stretches only to "Dos cervezas porfavor" :-) I made it up to ``quatro cervezas porfavor.'' They usually look a little surprised to see no one else there but me - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] bge
On Fri, Mar 10, 2006 at 05:44:54PM +1100, Bruce Ellis wrote: > Dan, some people have unusual skills. Let's play pool again. Oh, burn. Okay, it's on. Brucee just took it to 11. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] bge
On Thu, Mar 09, 2006 at 08:45:03PM +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > As russ explained, the replacement for 9load is a standard Plan 9 > kernel. I am still thinking about what the best way design the user > space bits that parse the plan9.ini invoque /dev/reboot. I'm happy to > hear suggestions. No need for suggestions, surely. It sounds like you've got the situation well in hand. We'll defer to your superior knowledge and experience and just wait for your solution. - Dan C.
[9fans] A Plan 9 C request....
Here's a request for my favorite C feature from C99, which isn't yet in Plan 9 C. I'd really like it if one could write statements of the form, for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++); or for (char *p = s; *p != '\0'; p++); That is, declare variables in the first part of a for loop. That would be nice. Anyone care to add it to the compiler? I'd try it myself, but I'm just too busy right now - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] Re: acme mail
On Tue, Feb 21, 2006 at 09:41:57AM +, Charles Forsyth wrote: > > Nothing is good enough for the fortune file! I have posted witticisms to > > 9fans for years, and have yet to see anything come of it! > > i think you first must have a few letters published in The Times. Of London or of New York? But it appears that my dry spell is over. I've been vindicated! - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] Re: acme mail
On Mon, Feb 20, 2006 at 03:37:01PM -0800, David Leimbach wrote: > Ok that's probably not good enough for the fortunes file. Nothing is good enough for the fortune file! I have posted witticisms to 9fans for years, and have yet to see anything come of it! - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] asn.1 alternatives
On Sat, Feb 11, 2006 at 02:29:19PM +, Charles Forsyth wrote: > also, in my experience, managers (pointy-head or not) are rarely overly > caught up by the technical details. they just want such-and-such a problem > to go away. they usually don't really care how you do it, especially if it > works well and they never ever have to cut short a trip to the golf course > because of it. I think, perhaps, that this is less true than it once was. In particular, they need to answer to marketting and ensure that the product is sufficiently buzzword compliant. But my point in bringing up the managerial team in the first place was just to demonstrate that sometimes the person doing the implementation doesn't *really* have all that much control over the choices made for the implementation. An extreme example would be, say, if I were writing a Windows application. I probably don't have much ability to write it for another system (Unix, Plan 9, whatever) instead because I'd prefer that. As for ASN.1 alternatives When you have a choice, I would agree that S expressions are compelling. Another option is YAML, which is becoming popular in the scripting language world, and is fairly reasonable, even for representing complex hierarchical objects. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] More 'Sam I am'
On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 10:45:34AM +, Steve Simon wrote: > Sounds to me like an application for these: > > Rob Pike, Structural Regular Expressions > http://netlib.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/doc/87/3-se.ps.gz That's part of the story, but again, I don't think it's sufficient. Don't get me wrong; you can do a lot with hierarchical data using SRE's, but it may not be sufficient. Then again, it may. It all depends on the problem at hand. As for Smart People, XML, Corporate IT, and all the rest It's really true that sometimes you're handed things that you have no control over. Sometimes you're forced to pick the lesser of two evils. Would you pick XML or ASN.1 if those were the only two options? If the pointy-haired powers that be are mandating one or the other and, ``neither'' isn't in the range of possible solutions? Sometimes, it's not worth fighting those battles - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] More 'Sam I am'
On Thu, Feb 09, 2006 at 01:17:51AM +0100, Christoph Lohmann wrote: > Not himself, but the 'higher class' he talks about. It does not exist. > There is already a TODO list and having an elderly regulars' table of > those, who 'know better', is also not a solution. Uhh, he didn't mention a ``higher class.'' - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] More 'Sam I am'
On Wed, Feb 08, 2006 at 11:57:05PM +0100, Christoph Lohmann wrote: > Send the patch, if you want it. Ron has already sent quite a few patches over the years. I don't think he needs to prove himself to anybody here. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] More 'Sam I am'
On Wed, Feb 08, 2006 at 07:20:38PM +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I think sam is a much safer bet than some hideous lib that pretends to > be capable of parsing (pseudo)HTML. > > Years ago some people tried to write a web browser in python... some > years later they gave up, all they had produced was a spec for an XML > format to store bookmarks. Quoting boyd: "hysterical." And I think that you're probably not qualified to make that judgement. You need to work on your street cred, son. Working on some web pages and doing some easy ports to Plan 9 or writing a few scripts don't make you a guru. Yet, you're the one consistently posting the snarky little replies as if you were one. Please, do us all a favor and stop. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] More 'Sam I am'
On Wed, Feb 08, 2006 at 10:14:53AM -0800, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote: > The problem with this is the data I want is interspersed with data that > I don't want. And the bits I don't want are variable length > inconsistent multi-line text that is a bitch to filter out of the > rendered output stream. It turns out that sam (against the raw HTML) > was the only tool that was able to do the job. I just wish I could wrap > it in a shell script that I could throw at the directory containing all > the .html files. I'm not talking about rendering, just parsing. Well, ultimately, what's important is that you get what you need out of the solution, I guess. Still, regular expressions alone give you part of the story, but not the whole thing. I submit that the power to actually parse the tokens in the data as opposed to just matching them (even if the regular expression language you're using is powerful enough to match the structure of the document) is more powerful. But hey, if sam floats your boat, fish on that river! - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] More 'Sam I am'
On Tue, Feb 07, 2006 at 10:50:22PM -0800, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote: > So I thought, but something's not right. I can't demonstrate more > until I get to work in the morning. Hmm. I'm going to make an unpopular but pragmatic suggestion: Don't use sed or sam, but instead, use a language with an HTML parser available. There are some jobs for which regular expressions aren't the best tool; I personally think this is one of them. Here's a script I posted to USENET years ago to extract data from a table. #!/usr/local/bin/python import sys import htmllib import formatter class MyParser(htmllib.HTMLParser): def __init__(self, format): htmllib.HTMLParser.__init__(self, format) self.state = 0 def do_tr(self, data): if self.state: print htmllib.HTMLParser.save_end(self) self.state = 0 def do_td(self, data): if self.state: print "%s, " % htmllib.HTMLParser.save_end(self), self.state = 1 htmllib.HTMLParser.save_bgn(self) parse = MyParser(formatter.NullFormatter()) for file in sys.argv[1:]: parse.feed(open(sys.argv[1],"r").read()) parse.close() I wonder if this even still works. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] acme + mh
On Fri, Feb 03, 2006 at 10:03:45PM -0700, andrey mirtchovski wrote: > true. i found it under Preferences. missed it the first time because > of the huge "Configure LDAP" button right next to it. Yet another case of being smacked in the eye by LDAP. > i retract my original statement. how do you like OSX by the way? I'm not Rob, but OS X is pretty nice. It makes me wonder why I ever sat in front of a Unix worstation all those years - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] Status of 3C589D driver (and BCM57XX)
On Fri, Feb 03, 2006 at 03:20:21PM +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Open source might produce tons of crap, but it is the only hope if > Plan 9 is going to survive. Oh dude, seriously, put a sock in it. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] Van Jacobsen's network stack restructure
On Thu, Feb 02, 2006 at 02:39:00PM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is if we need that extra...push over > the cliff...you know what we do? Hey, this is Spinal Tap, baby! - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] Re: Stitch and EFIS
On Wed, Feb 01, 2006 at 06:08:36PM -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I gave Dan Cross our 3rd edition stitch/ovfs code a while ago. Dan, > any progress getting it running on 4e? I know you've been busy. Sorry, negative. I haven't had a chance to look at anything in ... months! Too many groups and rings going through my head - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] revision control
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > See yesterday(1) and history(1). As Ron said, that's not really sufficient. You loose a lot with the dump filesystem; log messages, branching, granularity, etc. It's an answer, but not a universally good one. But, more to the point, snappy one-liners like the above just smack of elitism and don't convey any real information. Just because it's not the fashionable way to do something in the Plan 9 world doesn't mean it may not be necessary due to circumstances beyond an individual's control. Yeah, I've done enough elitist bitching in my time, too, but ultimately, did anyone benefit? Not really. On Mon, Jan 23, 2006 at 04:18:36PM -0700, Ronald G Minnich wrote: > CVS is ok. > > The xen guys use mercurial now, which is written in python, and seems to > work well. Could this python system be ported to python on plan 9? I like Subversion; it's a decent tool and has a textual on-disk representation reminescent of RCS files. It appears to be, ``CVS done right.'' Sure, some things are suboptimal, but on the whole, it's pleasant enough to work with. But it requires the Apache runtime, which I guess would be non-trivial to port (because it's big and requires more patience than I have). Personally, I'd like to see ports of unison and subversion to Plan 9. That'd make me a happy guy. Of course, I'd also like to have a machine running Plan 9 again. That'd also make me a happy guy. Oh yeah, and time to mess with it, too. And time to reply to people who try and help me out of 9fans (hi, Erik!). Mainly, it's a time thing. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] fuse bashing
On Mon, Jan 23, 2006 at 01:33:35PM -0700, Ronald G Minnich wrote: > The big complaints I know of so far on 9P are > > - there is no posix file locking (sorry, but people want it) although > the 'only allow one open at a time' is a pretty damned good substitute > > - no ACLs (I'm convinced that the stat and wstat could be trivially > extended to support this --- 9p2000.acl) > > - doesn't fit linux vfs semantics too well (just a joke, son, but true >too -- sometimes you have to fit a good thing onto a broken thing) > > That's about all I've hit so far. I spent about 5 years hacking on nfs, > and I have to say 9p is a way better protocol. I'm sure some crackhead somewhere has added ``doesn't do readlink or symlink'' to that list. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] After replica/pull update?
On Sat, Jan 21, 2006 at 09:14:13PM +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > Does oen have to rgenerate all the executables > > of they are already part of update? > No 17. (To answer the original question, they are part of the updates.) - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] acme mail on unix
On Thu, Jan 19, 2006 at 11:24:36AM -0500, Russ Cox wrote: > Eventually I might replace the mh programs with code from > Plan 9 (still leaving the mh disk layout) but I don't expect to > do that any time soon. Personally, I'd rather that wasn't the case. I'd rather see a version of the MH utilities (or a subset of the useful ones) that know how to deal with Maildir or IMAP (given the discrete nature of the MH commands, the latter might be hard and/or slow). - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] WRT54G Port?
On Mon, Jan 16, 2006 at 01:00:19PM +1100, Bruce Ellis wrote: > burning? never thought of that. mr shredder had trouble. We need some homage to Boyd in this thread. How about a Mk-19 heavy machine gun? Or I'll settle for a .50 cal. - Dan `Reaches...' C.
Re: [9fans] The mother-of-all-gnot?
On Tue, Jan 03, 2006 at 12:25:55PM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > The question is why would they do that? Which part? Their own PC, or their own operating system? - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] authentication by LDAP?
On Tue, Jan 03, 2006 at 03:20:46PM +0100, Pawe? Lasek wrote: > It looks like it will be the first job in our 'Hack club' :D The first rule of Hack Club is...You don't talk about Hack Club! - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] 21st century calling MST3K video
On Thu, Dec 22, 2005 at 08:38:31AM -0500, Dan Cross wrote: > Hey, if it'll help, I'll give you an account on one of my systems. I'm > considering purchasing a new machine (alas, running Unix) to be a personal > mail/web server type box, but also have brahma and a Sun running OpenBSD > in colo. Let me know if you're interested. Whoops. Bit once again by the reply-to: bug. Sorry, that should have gone to Andrey only. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] 21st century calling MST3K video
On Thu, Dec 22, 2005 at 02:23:44PM +0200, andrey mirtchovski wrote: > ucalgary is notorious for its monthly/weekly maintenances. they > haven't shut my account off yet but may do so without notice. i have > moved all relevant software to /contrib on sources.cs.bell-labs and > have a mirror of the site waiting to be put up when/if i figure out > which co-lo to use. Hey, if it'll help, I'll give you an account on one of my systems. I'm considering purchasing a new machine (alas, running Unix) to be a personal mail/web server type box, but also have brahma and a Sun running OpenBSD in colo. Let me know if you're interested. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] More Microsoft bashing
On Thu, Dec 15, 2005 at 11:33:46PM -0600, erik quanstrom wrote:
> you've got to take you're math cap off, and put your cs cap on.
This has nothing to do with it. You're looking for a single definitive
definition of something that has no single definitive definition.
> the motivation for defining MOD and DIV is so you can do somethign
> like this
>
> row = size DIV columns
> col = size MOD columns
Well, one would hope so! But then you have to wonder why `size' would
have occasion to be negative in such an example. And even if it was,
why you couldn't work with absolute values and keep track of the signs
yourself. Like what Bruce said.
> the pseudo-mathematics is applied ex post facto. clearly you have to
> get a single value out of the operation but that value is never going to
> be a member of Z. it's going to be a n-bit binary integer. also,
n-bit binary *integers* are members of Z (where Z is the set of all
integers: their representation doesn't matter). But that's beside the
point. In either case, you will get a single value back. The question
is whether that value represents a congruence class or a single integer.
If you restrict your domain to non-negative integers, in this context,
it doesn't matter; you get something that's more or less the same thing
for your purposes. If you allow negative integers, that's when the
differences become significant. As Bruce said, I think it best to avoid
the situation.
> ; cat > /tmp/fu.c
> int main(void){
> int x;
>
> x = 1 % 0;
> }
> /tmp/fu.c: In function `main':
> /tmp/fu.c:4: warning: division by zero
Well, at least one compiler is sane.
- Dan C.
Re: [9fans] More Microsoft bashing
On Thu, Dec 15, 2005 at 10:53:06PM -0600, erik quanstrom wrote: > | Please note that this definition of DIV and MOD differs from the > | definition given in [M. Reiser, N. Wirth. Programming in Oberon. p. > | 36]: > | x = (x DIV y) * y + (x MOD y), and > | 0 <= (x MOD y) < y ^^ > | > | So, what *is* -5 MOD 3? > | > > -2 Are you sure? It looks to me more than it'd be +1. Wirth's definition above would tend to indicate that x MOD y is always positive, unless I'm reading it wrong, or that's not the whole story (and I confess I'm too lazy to look up the definitions in context). If I'm right, that would also imply that x DIV y tends more wards negative infinity than zero for negative numerators. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] More Microsoft bashing
On Thu, Dec 15, 2005 at 11:51:15PM -0500, Dan Cross wrote: > On Thu, Dec 15, 2005 at 08:04:02PM -0800, Jack Johnson wrote: > > So, what *is* -5 MOD 3? > > Well, in general, it depends. > > Do you care whether the result a set or an integer? The definitions due > to Wirth et al are the former, while the MS definition appears to be the > latter. Hmm, I guess on further reflection I ought to explain what I mean by this before someone jumps all over me. The definition as per Wirth et al gives you a positive generator for an equivalence class on Z, whereas the microsoft definition gives you the definition of the division function extended to all of Z, which yields an integer; the former definition is probably more comfortable for a mathematician, and more what one would expect. The latter is more comfortable for someone who just wants to write a program. In neither case does this have much to do with the actual implementation (that is to say, it's not like DIV actually gives you back an object representing the set of all integers congruent to 0 modulo some integer in Pascal), but only how that language interprets the definitions. > Regardless, all these definitions are problematic. No where does it say > they're defined only on Z*; what if Y is 0? This is still a problem. You really want a function f: Z x Z* -> Z, not f: Z x Z -> Z; that is, for f(x, y) = x div y, y should be non-zero. Otherwise, it would be an absurdity. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] More Microsoft bashing
On Thu, Dec 15, 2005 at 08:04:02PM -0800, Jack Johnson wrote: > So, what *is* -5 MOD 3? Well, in general, it depends. Do you care whether the result a set or an integer? The definitions due to Wirth et al are the former, while the MS definition appears to be the latter. Regardless, all these definitions are problematic. No where does it say they're defined only on Z*; what if Y is 0? - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] "Absent friends" of Boyd list so far ...
On Mon, Jul 18, 2005 at 02:11:01PM -0400, Wes Kussmaul wrote: > maybe i'll just stick to shooting 9mm 'cos that is a lot easier > on the carpal tunnel (as long as you fire single action). Reaches - Dan C. (Sorry, I couldn't resist)
Re: [9fans] Possibility of a lift to Boyd's wake ...
On Fri, Jul 15, 2005 at 07:29:31PM +0100, Dave Lukes wrote: > Devon/Andrey/Steve/Anyone else, > With your permission, I'll put together a list of "absent friends" to > be read out out at the wake. > > So far, from 9fans, I've got: > > Steve Simon > Devon O'Dell > Andrey Mirtchovski > > Anyone else who wishes to be included, please email me. Please add my name to that list. Though I have to say I think Boyd would be, while undoubtedly somewhat flattered by the attention, also somewhat taken aback by all this sadness. I could imagine him saying something along the lines of, ``Bollocks; drink some red and go shoot something instead of sitting around crying about it.'' Dave, you knew him better than I did; what do you think his reaction would be? - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] #!/bin/foo
On Fri, Jul 15, 2005 at 06:09:11AM +0900, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > A file with a executable bit and a starting line > #!/bin/foo > is executable if foo is executable binary. > But the file fails execution if foo is a script. > Isn't this inconvenient? It is, but it's to prevent an endless loop Imagine if you had a script named /usr/someone/blah that started, ``#!/usr/someone/blah''. It would try to recursively start itself as a script, and the kernel would (potentially) go into an endless loop. Of course, it would be silly and pathological for someone to do something as simple as this on purpose, but one could imagine a circular graph being inadventantly created out of a chain of interpreters that did the same thing (e.g., interp1 calls interp2 that calls interp3 that calls interp1 again). You could try and prevent it by setting a counter in the kernel of the number of times you've invoked an interpreter when trying to run a program, but that could potentially break down, so it was probably deemed easier to just prevent the whole practice. Under Unix, you could probably get around it by doing something like, #!/usr/bin/env script-to-use-as-interpreter. Some similar wrapper could probably be written for Plan 9 to achieve the same effect. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] standalone auth/cpu server and fossil?
On Thu, Jul 14, 2005 at 12:28:46PM -0400, Russ Cox wrote: > Unless you want to see errors. Does anyone actually *want* to see errors? - Dan C. :-)
Re: [9fans] Boyd
On Mon, Jul 11, 2005 at 12:27:47PM +0100, Dave Lukes wrote: > A wake and memorial will be forthcoming in some form. How awful. I liked Boyd. He was quite a character Boyd was very into military things; he wore cammies and picked up various military type gadgets. He often chose the names of characters from war movies as his IRC handles (I remember, `Master Gunnery Sergeant Hartman', a promotion of the crazy Drill Instructor character played by R. Lee Ermey in Stanley Kubrick's, `Full Metal Jacket': `I am Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, your Senior Drill Instructor...'). When I was still on active duty in the US Marine Corps, Boyd took a trip to Normandy for the 60th Anniversary of D-Day. He sent me a stone he'd picked up from Omaha Beach. I was very touched by the gesture. I believe Bruce saw him recently and spent some time at his flat. Despite his bravado, which put people off at times, I think he was fundamentally a good guy. This is a shame and a big loss. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] the futility of #plan9 on irc
On Thu, May 26, 2005 at 07:04:24AM +0300, McLone wrote: > /msg memoserv help I have no idea what that does. Evidently, it sends a help request message to some sort of `bot' that can serve memos (that much is obvious); perhaps you're implying that you can use this as a way to implement a FAQ listing. Regardless, I don't see how it addresses my point: In the IRC model, if you get bad data, you have significantly less chance of getting a correction if you don't stick around and monitor future traffic to pick it out. If someone who doesn't know the answer isn't monitoring, you have no chance of getting a correction, unless people sit around and read IRC logs and go back and post corrections to questions asked in the past and unrelated to the current topic(s) of discussion in the channel (that's another thing about IRC: you don't get threading in the robust way you do with a mailing list or even, God Forbid, USENET Newsgroups). And then you're back to waiting around until someone who knows what they're talking about sees the request, which is the same situation you have with 9fans. Or somebody says, ``ask the bot'' and you spend time figuring out how, but even then the bot may not be programmed with the answer to YOUR question. You might as well read the Wiki instead. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] the futility of #plan9 on irc
On Wed, May 25, 2005 at 07:07:21AM +1000, Chris Collins wrote: > Of course, if you had actually bothered to hang around and listen, you > would have had heard the prior case (SCSI support) corrected at the > very least. (I was online to see that one myself). The thing is, there's a temporal quality to information in a medium like IRC that affects the total accumulation of data. Unlike a mailing list, where you can be relatively assured the subject will receive updates to incorrect information, IRC has no such guarantee. One might answer a question incorrectly, and the person who asked might say, ``great, thanks, bye!'' and immediately log off. Then, it doesn't matter if the correction gets made. Because the data isn't accumulated over time, the damage done by the bad data remains done. The correction is never applied. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] the futility of #plan9 on irc
On Mon, May 23, 2005 at 07:03:07PM -0500, Eric Van Hensbergen wrote: > What's the solution then? Having a more interactive venue to > coordinate development activities is a really nice thing, particularly > with such a sparse group. For individuals folks have personality > conflicts with, /ignore is a wonderful thing. Of course that doesn't > help the newbies. Writefs on 9grid. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] the futility of #plan9 on irc
On Tue, May 24, 2005 at 03:44:28AM +1000, Bruce Ellis wrote: > i think it was rob that once said "netnews is like standing up in > a crowded cinema and shouting ANYONE WANNA BUY A > USE CAR". that's why i avoid stuff like IRC. You know what I'm going to do that the next time I go to a movie, just to see what happens. > [...] > every beer in my body apologizes. now off to fight the ... > oh stop it. Hmm. I have a few ex-girlfriends who might buy that as an adequate substitute for an apology. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] nvram
On Thu, May 12, 2005 at 09:47:39AM -0700, Skip Tavakkolian wrote: > > SMBUS is a 2-wire bus that is incredibly bad. > > a TukTuk? Those have three wheels, anyway. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] Sleep-complexity
On Sun, May 08, 2005 at 02:56:15PM -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > because long and int are the same so it really doesn't matter. > > > > That's not a terribly great assumption to make, is it? > > It would take a lot of work get get Plan9 to work on a > machine where that isn't the case, and I don't see anyone > jumping up to do it. That's true, but I still wouldn't go as far as sanctioning the practice. Also, a fair amount of Plan 9 code is now running under various other platforms where that's not necessarily the case via plan9ports. Charles's point about the subtleness of type-sizing not withstanding (in the original case, someone was passing an int in place of a long, which would be promoted automatically), it's still something one should be careful about. All the world is no longer a 32-bit 386. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] Sleep-complexity
On Sun, May 08, 2005 at 12:50:58PM -0400, Russ Cox wrote: > > Why 'n' not defined as long? > > because long and int are the same so it really doesn't matter. That's not a terribly great assumption to make, is it? - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] watch command
Lucio De Re <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > That would be the key, wouldn't it? If one could hook into the > fileserver to detect mtime changes, one would have the mechanism for > notification. Possible? I should think that the difficult part is to > stick to the Plan 9 way to do things. Anything is possible. You're right that the ultimate challenge is to keep it in the `Plan 9 way' of doing things. A way to get out-of-band notification of interesting file changes would be nice. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] Common code - isatty
Bruce Ellis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Dan! Stop being so blunt and correct! Sorry, I just got out of the Marine Corps (hooray! And there was much rejoicing...). It'll take me a few months before I can do the former. The latter is a new phenomenon. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] Common code - isatty
Bruce Ellis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > sure, strcmp() is great for implementing isatty(). > let's have a "best hack" bake-off. Ever use a spent 7.62mm round to short out a blown resister? Where's Boyd - Dan ``Reaches...'' C.
Re: [9fans] Common code - isatty
"Ronald G. Minnich" writes: > On Wed, 13 Apr 2005, Russ Cox wrote: > > i'm hesitant to put it in a library because most programs (e.g., ls) > > should not behave differently when running on a console. if it's there, > > it may be overused like in unix. > > good call. don't do it. We're fighting a lot of isatty() stupidity on our > clusters, and it's a nightmare. I agree that it would get overused ... Or put it into libidiot.h just so there's only one copy of it. Oh, you think I'm joking? - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] page fault with lock held
Tim Newsham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > I like the idea of having a way to hook into the bottom of sd from user > > land! > > What about the /dev/sd??/raw file? For scsi devices at least (sdscsi.c) > this calls through to scsirio which directly performs a scsi operation. Isn't that pushing the protocol the opposite direction? You want a way to tell the kernel, ``here's a file descriptor to a SCSI device; talk to it and hook it into devsd.'' Not to send a SCSI command to an existing device that already appears under /dev/sdwhatever. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] page fault with lock held
Russ Cox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > I had wanted to see an sdloopback device (devsdloop was I suppose > > what I called it) that could speak SCSI to a file descriptor that > > could come from anywhere. Then things like this might not need to > > be in the kernel at all. > > sd has little to do with scsi. > in particular, these devices don't speak scsi. Maybe I'm confused; it's been a while. I thought that AoE was ATA over Ethernet or something like that, and that ATA was basically the SCSI protocol over different electronics. I was originally looking at this in terms of a digital camera that connected via USB, which did speak SCSI. Regardless, the salient point was that there should some way to hook into the devsd framework from userland. - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] page fault with lock held
I had wanted to see an sdloopback device (devsdloop was I suppose what I called it) that could speak SCSI to a file descriptor that could come from anywhere. Then things like this might not need to be in the kernel at all. - Dan C.
