standalone plan9

standalone plan9

[Bob]

    From:	quanstro@epsilon.eecs.nwu.edu (Erik Quanstrom)
    Date:	Mon, 1 Nov 1993 23:26:08 -0500
    To:	<9fans@cse.psu.edu>
    Subject: standalone plan9
    
    i know that rob et. al. were spotted at a recent usenix
    conference sporting [34]86 laptops (or so i've heard).
    so i'd like to know 
    o is this included on the cd?
yes
    o is anybody using this
yes
    o this implies that the laptop is running the 
      fileserver, cpuserver and terminal software. is this
      possible to pull off on a sun or sgi?
yes
    
The cpu & terminal server versions of Plan9 are essentially the same.
You can have a local disk on your terminal and run kfs to get local
files. We have done this with a Sun 3/50 with 70meg disk.

I have a Compaq LTE/25E laptop. This is has a full 486 (low power
version), 12meg memory, 209meg disk, ethernet, serial, parallel and PS/2
mouse port. It also has an active matrix mono screen that is excellent - it 
added $AUS2k to the price :-(

I chose the machine after a long evaluation of the contenders and the
choice was based mainly on the screen quality.

I have a small DOS partition on the hard disk and the rest is for plan 9
using kfs for the files. It was learning experience to configure the
system that I recommend - not difficult but lots of "ah ha!". I now
understand the system much better.

I carry the machine in to work, plug into the ethernet and then can
mount our main file server and cpu to our main cpu server.  I attended
INET93 and Interop in San Francisco a month or so ago and was able to
plug into the ethernet in the terminal room and use it *exactly* as if
I was in my office at home in Australia: mounting the file server,
running cpu etc!

Bob 

standalone plan9

[Gary]

I am using a desktop PC as a standalone
plan 9 machine a lot of the time now.
The file system it uses is kfs (ken's file
system) which I think is on the distribution.

It's pretty neat, with 486/66, 8M I get a
reasonably useful system for software dev.,
and I use SLIP/carrying floppies to stay
consistent with our usual file server.

(I'm writing this from home, btw).

I see no reason why it wouldn't be possible
to do similar with a sun or sgi, it's just
that for portables, the x86 machines are cheaper,
more likely to be at home.

Cheers,
Gary.

standalone plan9

[Gary]

I am using a desktop PC as a standalone
plan 9 machine a lot of the time now.
The file system it uses is kfs (ken's file
system) which I think is on the distribution.

It's pretty neat, with 486/66, 8M I get a
reasonably useful system for software dev.,
and I use SLIP/carrying floppies to stay
consistent with our usual file server.

(I'm writing this from home, btw).

I see no reason why it wouldn't be possible
to do similar with a sun or sgi, it's just
that for portables, the x86 machines are cheaper,
more likely to be at home.

Cheers,
Gary.

standalone plan9

[mike]

>i know that rob et. al. were spotted at a recent usenix
>conference sporting [34]86 laptops (or so i've heard).
>so i'd like to know 
>o is this included on the cd?

Yes.

>o is anybody using this

Yes; I have it running on a 486 box.

>o this implies that the laptop is running the 
>  fileserver, cpuserver and terminal software.

No.  It is just running the terminal software.  The "file
server" in this case is just an ordinary user level process
that speaks 9P to the kernel and maintains a file system on
a raw disk partition.  It's slow, and according to the
documentation, susceptible to crashes, although I haven't
had any (yet).

There is no need for a cpu server to run Plan 9, unless you
want to run daemons that accept calls from the outside world,
for instance for mail delivery or remote logins.  There is
no real difference between a terminal and a cpu server; a
cpu server is essentially the same kernel with a different
startup script that starts various daemons.

The file server is a radically different kernel and cannot
coexist on the same machine with the terminal or cpu kernels.
However, you don't need to use the standard file server.

>Is this
>  possible to pull off on a sun or sgi?

Of course.  However, it is not supported in the system as
distributed; you have to do a bit of work...

standalone plan9

[Erik]

i know that rob et. al. were spotted at a recent usenix
conference sporting [34]86 laptops (or so i've heard).
so i'd like to know 
o is this included on the cd?
o is anybody using this
o this implies that the laptop is running the 
  fileserver, cpuserver and terminal software. is this
  possible to pull off on a sun or sgi?

erik