[9fans] usb9pfs: network booting without the network

[9fans] usb9pfs: network booting without the network

[David Boddie]

In Plan 9 adjacent territory, this talk came to my attention recently but
the video recording didn't appear until today, I think:

https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-6103-usb9pfs-network-booting-without-the-network/

Doing 9p over USB is interesting, though I would have considered using an
existing device class instead of doing something 9p-specific.

It reminded me a bit of u-root.

David



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Re: [9fans] usb9pfs: network booting without the network

[sirjofri]

10.02.2025 23:16:07 David Boddie <david@boddie.org.uk>:
> Doing 9p over USB is interesting, though I would have considered using an
> existing device class instead of doing something 9p-specific.

Kinda related, when I was working on the 9front pinephone port, which has a serial connector on its phone jack, I thought it would be interesting to use this as a 9p interface. Imagine you could rcpu or rimport into the phone using that port.

Since most people nowadays probably use a USB-to-serial adapter, it's pretty similar from the experience.

sirjofri

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Re: [9fans] usb9pfs: network booting without the network

[Thaddeus Woskowiak]

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This isn't the first time this idea has popped up.

There are plenty of microcontrollers with USB device support so why not run
a 9p server on the micro and let it serve it's hardware to a 9 machine
directly, alleviating the user from ever thinking about a driver - the
hardware is the driver. You could even embed a manual page that's just a
file pulled from flash.

Here an idea: Since Wi-Fi chips are a pain I figure why not use an ESP32 to
act as a software Wi-Fi dongle that serves itself as an ether(3) device
doing all the work in the ESP while 9p runs over USB. Instant driverless
Wi-Fi. You could even use them as an access point so there's lots of
potential. Limited to 150Mbps but I believe this is faster than what we
currently have with supported Wi-Fi chips, at least on 9front.

Another thought are USB microcontrollers with various peripherals which
could serve anything attached, uart(3), ether(3), spi bus, CAN, etc. Turn
off the shelf micros into driverless dongles or weird docking stations.

True distributed computing where even the hardware devices are little
servers.

On Mon, Feb 10, 2025, 5:16 PM David Boddie <david@boddie.org.uk> wrote:

> In Plan 9 adjacent territory, this talk came to my attention recently but
> the video recording didn't appear until today, I think:
> 
> https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-6103-usb9pfs-network-booting-without-the-network/
> 
> Doing 9p over USB is interesting, though I would have considered using an
> existing device class instead of doing something 9p-specific.
> 
> It reminded me a bit of u-root.
> 
> David
> 

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Re: [9fans] usb9pfs: network booting without the network

[sirjofri]

10.02.2025 23:46:48 Thaddeus Woskowiak <tswoskowiak@gmail.com>:
> This isn't the first time this idea has popped up. 
>
> There are plenty of microcontrollers with USB device support so why not run a 9p server on the micro and let it serve it's hardware to a 9 machine directly, alleviating the user from ever thinking about a driver - the hardware is the driver. You could even embed a manual page that's just a file pulled from flash. 
>
> Here an idea: Since Wi-Fi chips are a pain I figure why not use an ESP32 to act as a software Wi-Fi dongle that serves itself as an ether(3) device doing all the work in the ESP while 9p runs over USB. Instant driverless Wi-Fi. You could even use them as an access point so there's lots of potential. Limited to 150Mbps but I believe this is faster than what we currently have with supported Wi-Fi chips, at least on 9front. 
>
> Another thought are USB microcontrollers with various peripherals which could serve anything attached, uart(3), ether(3), spi bus, CAN, etc. Turn off the shelf micros into driverless dongles or weird docking stations.

I especially also thought of some hardware factotum, a usb thumb drive which only serves a factotum as a filesystem and can do all the authentication and security stuff without ever leaving the device. We'd need to figure out how to store the secrets without leaving the doors open, but I like the idea. Bonus if you include some hardware button as a second factor.

I'd also like to investigate inferno more. I basically left it back in 2018/9 when I switched from 9legacy to 9front.

sirjofri

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Re: [9fans] usb9pfs: network booting without the network

[Stuart Morrow]

On Mon, 10 Feb 2025 at 23:46, sirjofri <sirjofri+ml-9fans@sirjofri.de> wrote:
> I especially also thought of some hardware factotum, a usb thumb drive
> which only serves a factotum as a filesystem and can do all the authentication
> and security stuff without ever leaving the device. We'd need to figure out
> how to store the secrets without leaving the doors open, but I like the idea.
> Bonus if you include some hardware button as a second factor.

This isn't the first time this idea has popped up:
https://inbox.vuxu.org/9fans/57be799e06e50bb191c61c752bd1d583@telus.net/

I've always thought auth-server-on-a-wristwatch would be a good use for the
Bluetooth stuff Richard Miller seemed to speak about as if he'd
actually written it.

> I'd also like to investigate inferno more. I basically left it back in 2018/9 when I
> switched from 9legacy to 9front.

They should have used it instead of Minix 3 for the Management Engine.

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Re: [9fans] usb9pfs: network booting without the network

[Stuart Morrow]

Oh yeah, the linux.pdf thing should have been Inferno, too.
"Portability" by emulation seems like cheating, but many Linux midwits
will eat it up and believe "Linux is portable / Linux is simple /
everything is a file" through sheer repetition like how many Americans
seem to believe they're a uniquely free country.

Basically, Inferno is conceptually so cool and I feel bad for never using it.

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Re: [9fans] usb9pfs: network booting without the network

[david]

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You can probably use some flavour of Plan 9 on a Pi Zero variant to do the authentication stuff, if you're OK with running that on ARM cores attached to a media processor running a variant of ThreadX. Other similar form factor boards are available.
You could also run Inferno on a smaller system and potentially do something similar. I haven't looked at the Pi Pico port in a while. Maybe it could be persuaded to talk over the USB port instead of a UART. I'm looking at Pico 2-related boards and hope that I can figure out USB device support.
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Re: [9fans] usb9pfs: network booting without the network

[Clout Tolstoy]

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The pi zero has a USB hid gadget mode ( it can be used like a rubber ducky
for bad usb attacks).  Not sure if there is a plan 9 driver for that
interface.

On Tue, Feb 11, 2025, 2:21 PM <david@boddie.org.uk> wrote:

> You can probably use some flavour of Plan 9 on a Pi Zero variant to do the
> authentication stuff, if you're OK with running that on ARM cores attached
> to a media processor running a variant of ThreadX. Other similar form
> factor boards are available.
> You could also run Inferno on a smaller system and potentially do
> something similar. I haven't looked at the Pi Pico port in a while. Maybe
> it could be persuaded to talk over the USB port instead of a UART. I'm
> looking at Pico 2-related boards and hope that I can figure out USB device
> support.
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Re: [9fans] usb9pfs: network booting without the network

[Gorka Guardiola]

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There is an standard called USB On The Go, OTG, supported by many phones
and the Raspberry Pi. This standard lets a USB port act as a device or a
host. In the RPi the power port supports OTG, but the last time I looked
there was no support in the Plan 9 driver.

On Wed, Feb 12, 2025, 04:30 Clout Tolstoy <tolstoyclout@gmail.com> wrote:

> The pi zero has a USB hid gadget mode ( it can be used like a rubber ducky
> for bad usb attacks).  Not sure if there is a plan 9 driver for that
> interface.
>
> On Tue, Feb 11, 2025, 2:21 PM <david@boddie.org.uk> wrote:
>
>> You can probably use some flavour of Plan 9 on a Pi Zero variant to do
>> the authentication stuff, if you're OK with running that on ARM cores
>> attached to a media processor running a variant of ThreadX. Other similar
>> form factor boards are available.
>> You could also run Inferno on a smaller system and potentially do
>> something similar. I haven't looked at the Pi Pico port in a while. Maybe
>> it could be persuaded to talk over the USB port instead of a UART. I'm
>> looking at Pico 2-related boards and hope that I can figure out USB device
>> support.
>>
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Re: [9fans] usb9pfs: network booting without the network

[Gorka Guardiola]

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Forgot the link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_On-The-Go

On Wed, Feb 12, 2025, 16:50 Gorka Guardiola <paurea@gmail.com> wrote:

> There is an standard called USB On The Go, OTG, supported by many phones
> and the Raspberry Pi. This standard lets a USB port act as a device or a
> host. In the RPi the power port supports OTG, but the last time I looked
> there was no support in the Plan 9 driver.
>
> On Wed, Feb 12, 2025, 04:30 Clout Tolstoy <tolstoyclout@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The pi zero has a USB hid gadget mode ( it can be used like a rubber
>> ducky for bad usb attacks).  Not sure if there is a plan 9 driver for that
>> interface.
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 11, 2025, 2:21 PM <david@boddie.org.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> You can probably use some flavour of Plan 9 on a Pi Zero variant to do
>>> the authentication stuff, if you're OK with running that on ARM cores
>>> attached to a media processor running a variant of ThreadX. Other similar
>>> form factor boards are available.
>>> You could also run Inferno on a smaller system and potentially do
>>> something similar. I haven't looked at the Pi Pico port in a while. Maybe
>>> it could be persuaded to talk over the USB port instead of a UART. I'm
>>> looking at Pico 2-related boards and hope that I can figure out USB device
>>> support.
>>>
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Re: [9fans] usb9pfs: network booting without the network

[david]

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I didn't get too far doing things with USB on the Pi. Inferno at least borrows code from 9pi to behave as a USB host, and it's fairly simple to get it to talk to devices.
I've done simple work to make Inferno behave as a USB device on a couple of systems. Hopefully I can make progress with the RP2350 processor in the Pico 2.
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