[9fans] Publicly Accessible Plan 9 System?

[9fans] Publicly Accessible Plan 9 System?

[James]

> i don't think the existing licence, although its terms are broad,
> allows providing access to people outside an organisation that has got
> a licence or a member with a licence.  you might be able to try the 4
> diskette demo system, but that typically isn't easy to install on an
> already partitioned PC (and you might not have one to spare anyhow).

When I first read the above, I thought to myself "wait, was it just the
source code? Or was it everything?" -- Looking up the license again,
it does indeed seem to be EVERYTHING. So according to the license, in
fact one may not let people even log in to the system if they are not
a license holder. How sad. :(

	1. LICENSE. Lucent Technologies Inc. (LUCENT) grants you, the LICENSEE, a
	personal, non-transferable and non-exclusive license to use the enclosed
	software programs, documentation, and other materials (collectively
	SOFTWARE), subject to the terms and restrictions of this Agreement. The
	term SOFTWARE includes any works derived or modified from the enclosed
	materials, but does not include your original works, even though they
	conform to specifications included in the SOFTWARE provided such works
	are not derived or modified from the SOFTWARE.
	
	[...]
	
	This SOFTWARE may be used by you or by an organization of which you are a
	member or employee solely for research or educational purposes. Without
	executing an applicable sublicense with LUCENT, no part of the SOFTWARE
	may be published, sold, or offered for sale, nor may any part of the
	SOFTWARE be made available on a computer network external to you or your
	organization, nor may commercial services utilizing this SOFTWARE be sold
	or offered for sale. You may transmit derived or modified portions of
	this SOFTWARE specifically to other LICENSEES of LUCENT who are bound
	by the terms of this Agreement solely for their internal research or
	educational purposes.

[9fans] Publicly Accessible Plan 9 System?

[forsyth]

i don't think the existing licence, although its terms are broad,
allows providing access to people outside an organisation that
has got a licence or a member with a licence.
you might be able to try the 4 diskette demo system,
but that typically isn't easy to install on an already partitioned
PC (and you might not have one to spare anyhow).

in the particular case of read(1), here's an example:

	while(x=`{read})
		echo $x

it reproduces each line of a unicode file.  no doubt amongst other things
read(1) can be used by rc scripts to read a little data from files, and
to prompt for input (as in /rc/bin/termrc):

		echo -n 'Mouse port is (ps2, 0 (DOS''s COM1), 1 (DOS''s COM2)):'
		mouseport=`{read}
		switch($mouseport){
		case ps2 0 1
			if(~ $monitor '') monitor=vga
			aux/vga -l $vgasize
			aux/mouse -dC $mouseport
		case *
			echo Cannot recognize mouse type "$"mouseport"
		}

or in a self-contained command following an example
for the Bourne Shell in Kernighan & Pike's The Unix Programming Environment
(as it then was).

% cat pick.rc
#!/bin/rc
# pick -- echo selected items to the standard output
fn ask {
	echo -n $1^'? ' >/dev/cons
	x=`{read </dev/cons}
	switch($x) {
	case [yY]*
		echo $1
	case [xX]* [qQ]*
		exit ''
	}
}
switch($#*){
case 0
	# standard input
	while(a=`{read})
		ask $a
case *
	for(a)
		ask $a
}

note that inside `ask' echo and read are redirected to /dev/cons, so that
the user is prompted even when pick's standard input and output
are redirected (as is commonly the case).  by contrast, in case 0
read isn't redirected because it's intended to read lines from the standard input.

here are simple examples of pick:
% pick /bin/*	# interactively select arguments
/bin/2a? y
/bin/2a
/bin/2c? n
/bin/2l? n
/bin/5a? q

% ls /bin | pick	# interactively select lines from standard input
/bin/2a? y
/bin/2a
/bin/2c? n
/bin/2l? y
/bin/2l
/bin/5a? n
/bin/5c? q

% echo `{ls | pick}	# compose with other commands

[9fans] Publicly Accessible Plan 9 System?

[James]

Are there any publicly accessible Plan 9 systems? I was reading through
the man pages and some of the commands just don't seem to make sense
(read(1) for instance). I'd like to try these out in an operational
environment. Does anyone know of or have such a set up?

Thanks, Jamie