faking a plan9 network

[miller@hamnavoe.demon.co.uk miller@hamnavoe.demon.co.uk]

Russ Cox <rsc@research.att.com> said:

> I copied the il17007
> file and made it il17008.  Even if I take the -a
> out of the exportfs command line, I get authentication
> errors from the 386 trying to boot, and it just 
> prints out the standard hex dump and hangs.

The protocol for connecting to an exportfs (il17007) service
is slightly different from the protocol for connecting to
9fs (il17008).  It is possible for a Plan 9 terminal to use
the kfs from another terminal (via exportfs) as its root,
but a few changes are needed in /sys/src/9/boot to make the
initial connection.

I found that approach unsatisfactory, though: the client
doesn't get proper authentication on its root (permissions
are always wrt the userid it booted with), performance is
not great because of the extra level of indirection, and the
exportfs server tends to run out of resources.

What I ended up doing was modifying kfs so that it listens
on il17008 and serves (authenticated) 9fs remotely as well
as serving the local root.

With either approach, you still need an auth server (listening
on il566) and a keyfs server (started at boot time).  Both can
run on a terminal with a local kfs (with judicious use of
'disk/kfscmd allow' while setting things up).

-- Richard Miller