From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-Id: <200006101822.OAA18509@smtp2.fas.harvard.edu>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] third edition, installation experiences
From: "Russ Cox" <rsc@plan9.bell-labs.com>
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 14:18:38 -0400
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Topicbox-Message-UUID: b4f3e7da-eac8-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025

  My cdrom is recognized (cat sdD0/ctl looks sensible), but
  the data file is all zeros.

See if cdfs(4) is any better than the kernel.
Every once in a while it is.

  /dev/draw seems slower than /dev/bitblt.  I wonder if the difference is
  from not doing runtime code generation.

Yes, that's much of it; the code already has many
special checks to handle the common cases, but
the general case is indeed slower than it ought
to be.  I have a runtime code generator started (and stopped,
for the time being), but mostly as an experiment to see what
might be gained.  I expect that the problems in keeping the
instruction and data caches up to date on non-x86
and non-Intel x86 chips will make it not practical,
but maybe the win will be enormous.  I don't know.

  Plumbing is... interesting.  I normally like to have several editors
  running, keeping different work in different contexts.  The new system
  makes that difficult, because when one editor opens a file, the
  others want to open it too.

Run plumber in the window before starting the editor,
and it will be in its own ``plumbing space''
if you will.

Russ