Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?

Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?

[rob pike]

With 82GB IDE drives going for about $300, WORMs aren't worth it.
Buy a monster disk drive and configure it as your backup device.
By the time it fills up, buy another; it'll be 500GB for $200 then.

-rob

Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?

[Russ Cox]

had you read his message before dismissing it
for mentioning the L-word, you'd know that 9part
is the mini-partition that he creates on the
hard disk that pretends to be the floppy.
it's really quite cute.

Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?

[Boyd Roberts]

yeah, well, russ i've had a pretty 'rare' day.

i've fought to install plan 9 on 'coma' [my laptop]
and frankly i'm kinda sick of it.  3 thousand unix/linux
commands do not inspire me (coma runs '98).

i would be more than happy to install it on a partition
that jis ust waiting for it, but i don't like using or
fighting windows.

this was my day:

[i am between contracts, on full pay.  it's my company's
job to find me another one]

at 1530 i got called out to a site i'd never seen and
was told to stay there until it was fixed.  an hour later
i was there.  it bordered on (or was) blackmail.

i don't do that shit.  i go for an interview, i sign a
contract, i go to the job.  i am not employed to do
this stuff.

i am gonna fuck this headhunter's shit up.

at least tomorrow i can wear my network police jacket.

funny the [network] problem dissappeared when everyone went home.
so i left.  some massive collision problem on a DHCP class C net
100.?.? -- fucken amateurs.

just got into 'kilgore' mode; stormed around, telling people:

    do this
    do that
    get me this
    get my that
    NOW!

if i'd had the smarts i woulda taken coma.  it has the shit
to find the problem.

funny thing was, even tragically hungover, on no lunch, i knew
how to do thas shit.  hardware i'd never even seen, but it ain't
that hard -- divide and conquer.

boy am i pissed.


so, russ, cut me some slack, tonight.

Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?

[Boyd Roberts]

i'm tired etc...  where do i get 9part?  does it run on '98?

Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?

[Boyd Roberts]

ok, i see.  i guess i could use putimg to smack
down the plan 9 stuff onto d:

my apologies, ain't been my day.

SRV's _tightrope_ might explain it:

Caught up in a whirlwind can't catch my breath
Knee deep in hot water broke out in a cold sweat
Can't catch a turtle in this rat race
Feels like I'm losin' time at a breakneck pace

Afraid of my own shadow in the face of grace
Heart full of darkness spotlight on my face
There was love all around me but I was lookin' for revenge
Thank God it never found me would have been the end

(I was) walkin' the tightrope steppin' on my friends
Walkin' the tightrope (it) was a shame and a sin
Walkin' the tightrope between wrong and right
Walkin' the tightrope both day and night

Lookin' back in front of me in the mirror's a grin
Through eyes of love I see I'm really lookin' at a friend
We've all had our problems that's the way life is
My heart goes out to others who are there to make amends

We've been walkin' the tightrope tryin' to make it right
Walkin' the tightrope every day and every night
Walkin' the tightrope bring it all around
Walkin' the tightrope from the lost to found

Walkin' the tightrope stretched around the world
Walkin' the tightrope save the boys and girls
Walkin' the tightrope let's make it right
Walkin' the tightrope do it do it tonight
Walkin' the tightrope

Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?

[matt heath]

how boyd dreams of chmod

Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?

[Boyd Roberts]

> how boyd dreams of chmod

how boyd dreams of calling up the FAC and calling in a
zuni/hellfire strike.

Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?

[Boyd Roberts]

> how boyd dreams of chmod

sometimes he thinks about calling the airstrike in on
his own position.

Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?

[okamoto]

>It's a Toshiba 3440CT.

Toshiba, damn it!  :-)

I used notebook(laptop) three times, and all the experience was negative.
Only once I thought it's valuable when I brought it to US with linux on it.
It was a Taiwanese 486/SX machine (and was cheap, but not beatiful), though.

My Tecra 720CT looks like very nice machine for Plan 9, because I feel 
craftsmanship from it, once it was found everywhere in my mother country.

Kenji

Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?

[rob pike]

I am typing on a machine with a USB floppy.  To get it* working, JMK
hacked a special 9load that could talk to the on-board ethernet.
Using our existing Plan 9 environment, we used that to establish a
beachhead, using the BIOS's hacks to get the floppy running, then
abandoning the floppy by wiring some stuff into the special 9load.  It
was a little magical.  The critical part is that the floppy booted
9pc, getting everything over the network.  Then I used the
floppy-booting system and RSC's distro stuff to get the hard disk
reworked into a Plan 9 world.  Plan 9 still has no idea how to run the
USB on this machine.  I probably don't have the first steps of this
procedure quite right, since I wasn't around when JMK did them, but
the point is that we needed an existing Plan 9 environment to get over
the problem of having a USB floppy.

It's a Toshiba 3440CT.

-rob

* the machine, not the floppy

Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?

[okamoto]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 193 bytes --]

>i don't think that's possible -- 

I don't think so, because that was my way to install Plan 9 into my Toshiba
notebook which has nonsuitable (for Plan 9) floppy drive in it.  

Kenji


[-- Attachment #2: Type: message/rfc822, Size: 2394 bytes --]

From: "Boyd Roberts" <boyd@planete.net>
To: <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Subject: Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?
Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2001 03:04:02 +0100
Message-ID: <02f601c08029$c3ea4aa0$0ab9c6d4@cybercable.fr>

> I'd love to have USB support in Plan 9.

i'd just like to be able to boot off my USB
floppy and then install using the stuff on c:

i don't think that's possible -- no plan 9
installed, no hacks to get it to boot.

then, i'd attack the USB support.  i have
a half-baked idea to use something like
plumbing to manage peripherals as they
are plugged in.

Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?

[okamoto]

nclude: /mail/fs/mbox/30/raw

How about this. :-)

BIOS can (probably) bootup 9load, and you get your temporal user ID 
in your near Plan 9 site, and get 9pcdisk etc from that through network.  
And do copy all the Plan 9 tree etc. into your local disk.   In this case the
only one requirement is that you must have a small dos partition in your 
local disk, and have plan9.ini there.  It's very simple way I suppose. ^_^
I'd love to have USB support in Plan 9.

Kenji

Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?

[Boyd Roberts]

> I'd love to have USB support in Plan 9.

i'd just like to be able to boot off my USB
floppy and then install using the stuff on c:

i don't think that's possible -- no plan 9
installed, no hacks to get it to boot.

then, i'd attack the USB support.  i have
a half-baked idea to use something like
plumbing to manage peripherals as they
are plugged in.

Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?

[Latchesar Ionkov]

On Wed, Jan 17, 2001 at 03:04:02AM +0100, Boyd Roberts said:
> > I'd love to have USB support in Plan 9.
> 
> i'd just like to be able to boot off my USB
> floppy and then install using the stuff on c:
> 
> i don't think that's possible -- no plan 9
> installed, no hacks to get it to boot.

I believe you can install it without plan9 machine. I never install it that
way, but that's what I am planning to do if I screw the installation on my
usb-floppy-only laptop (I have linux and use it as example. I believe you
can do the same in Windows with the right tools)

1. Download plan9 boot disk and copy it to a floppy disk.
2. Create partition for Plan9 install with the right partition type (0x39)
3. Create Plan9 partition image in a file

	dd if=/dev/zero of=9fat bs=1024 count=1440
	mkdosfs -R 2 9fat
	mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy
	mount -o loop=/dev/loop0 9fat /mnt/9fat
	cp /mnt/floppy/* /mnt/9fat/
	umount /mnt/9fat/
	dd if=/dev/zero of=part9 bs=512 count=1
	(echo part 9fat 0 2880 ; echo part nvram 2880 2881; dd if=/dev/zero bs=1 count=474) > 9ptbl
	cat 9fat /mnt/floppy/plan9.nvr > 9part0
	(dd if=9part0 count=1 ; dd if=9ptbl ; dd if=9part skip=2) > 9part
	
   This should create Plan9 partition with 9fat (size 1440M) and nvram (size
   512 bytes) subpartitions in 9part file. It will also copy all the files
   from the boot floppy to the 9fat subpartition.
   
   Note 1: standard mkdosfs misteriously doesn't recognize -R option even if
   it presents in the man page. You have to modify mkdosfs source (add "R:"
   at in the getopt function at mkdosfs.c:1410)
   
   Note 2: In theory there is no guarantee that copying files from the
   floppy to the newly created FAT filesystem will not fragment the files.
   In practice it doesn't happen -- I don't see any reason files will be
   fragmented if they are copied to a blank filesystem.
   
4. Copy 9part file in the real Plan9 partition

	dd if=9part of=/dev/hdaX
	
5. Modify plan9.ini in the floppy disk to read the kernel and the kfs
   filesystem from 9fat partition

   	bootargs=local!#S/sdC0/9fat
	bootfile=sdC0!9fat!9pcflop.gz

6. Reboot. 

If you are lucky, you'll have running shell. Installation scripts are
designed to work booting from floppy and you have to modify them to continue
the installation. I didn't go that far and I don't guarantee that you can
install that way.
	
I can email you 9part file if you cannot create it using the OS you have.

	Lucho

Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?

[Boyd Roberts]

From: Latchesar Ionkov <lucho@gmx.net>
>
> dd if=/dev/zero of=9fat bs=1024 count=1440
> mkdosfs -R 2 9fat
> mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy
> mount -o loop=/dev/loop0 9fat /mnt/9fat
> cp /mnt/floppy/* /mnt/9fat/
> umount /mnt/9fat/
> dd if=/dev/zero of=part9 bs=512 count=1
> (echo part 9fat 0 2880 ; echo part nvram 2880 2881; dd if=/dev/zero bs=1
count=474) > 9ptbl
> cat 9fat /mnt/floppy/plan9.nvr > 9part0
> (dd if=9part0 count=1 ; dd if=9ptbl ; dd if=9part skip=2) > 9part

as a point of principle i will never run linux, nor do i have it.

i've had a really _rare_ day.

Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?

[Latchesar Ionkov]

On Thu, Jan 18, 2001 at 09:35:49PM +0100, Boyd Roberts said:
> From: Latchesar Ionkov <lucho@gmx.net>
> >
> > dd if=/dev/zero of=9fat bs=1024 count=1440
> > mkdosfs -R 2 9fat
> > mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy
> > mount -o loop=/dev/loop0 9fat /mnt/9fat
> > cp /mnt/floppy/* /mnt/9fat/
> > umount /mnt/9fat/
> > dd if=/dev/zero of=part9 bs=512 count=1
> > (echo part 9fat 0 2880 ; echo part nvram 2880 2881; dd if=/dev/zero bs=1
> count=474) > 9ptbl
> > cat 9fat /mnt/floppy/plan9.nvr > 9part0
> > (dd if=9part0 count=1 ; dd if=9ptbl ; dd if=9part skip=2) > 9part
> 
> as a point of principle i will never run linux, nor do i have it.

then do what it does in windows. or ask me to send you a copy of 9part

	Lucho

Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?

[Boyd Roberts]

> then do what it does in windows. or ask me to send you a copy of 9part

there are a buncha inferno tools that run on windows.  i could
try with them.  9part?

Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?

[jmk]

On Tue Jan 16 14:19:26 EST 2001, miller@hamnavoe.demon.co.uk wrote:
> rob@plan9.bell-labs.com said:
> 
> > With 82GB IDE drives going for about $300, WORMs aren't worth it.
> > Buy a monster disk drive and configure it as your backup device.
> 
> Does fs work with IDE drives now?
> 
> -- Richard Miller
> 

That's the plan.

Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?

[Richard Miller]

rob@plan9.bell-labs.com said:

> With 82GB IDE drives going for about $300, WORMs aren't worth it.
> Buy a monster disk drive and configure it as your backup device.

Does fs work with IDE drives now?

-- Richard Miller

Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?

[Eric Dorman]

Richard Miller wrote:
> rob@plan9.bell-labs.com said:
> > With 82GB IDE drives going for about $300, WORMs aren't worth it.
> > Buy a monster disk drive and configure it as your backup device.
>
> Does fs work with IDE drives now?
>
> -- Richard Miller

Mine does, though I bet jmk's will look much nicer :)   It's a few-hour
hack.  I run 2x3.5G IDEs interleaved in my fs.

--eric

Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?

[jmk]

On Tue Jan 16 12:54:23 EST 2001, boyd@planete.net wrote:
> i've just bought a cd rom burner and the thought ocurred
> to me to build a file-server that used it as the worm.
> at like, 50c for a blank disc is a cheap, reliable solution.
> 
> may need a bit of tweaking though.
> 

The problem with write-once media such as CD-R, DVD-whatever and MO is
the medium only comes in a relatively small chunk, e.g. 650MB, 4+GB
and 5.2GB for the above examples. Backing up even a single 82GB filesytem
without a jukebox becomes painful. If the hard drives are mirrored then
using a single write-once drive for disaster recovery might be an option;
there are cheap mirroring IDE RAID controllers available although I've
never tried them.

Instead of the single write-once drive with mirrored hard drives you might
think of using one of the tape jukeboxes for disaster recovery. Again, I've
never tried this, but they do offer the appearance of a random-access store
like the MO jukeboxes, only slower. I doubt if they're cheap, though.

We're currently in a very active state rewriting the fileserver code and
trying out some new ideas. We don't know yet quite what the result will be
but addressing some of these problems is part of the goal.

> 
> where are we on USB support?
> 
> 

I thought you were doing it.

--jim

Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?

[rob pike]

USB support hasn't budged in a year.  It's like
everything else on the PC: a profusion of incompatible
undocumented chips daunt the sturdiest hacker.

-rob

Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?

[Boyd Roberts]

> USB support hasn't budged in a year.  It's like
> everything else on the PC: a profusion of incompatible
> undocumented chips daunt the sturdiest hacker.

i'd have a hack at it, but because i can't install because
of USB i'm in a bit of quandry.

Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?

[rob pike]

Big fat disk for daily WORM-like backup; a CD-R once in a while
for peace of mind.  Not as automatic but dramatically cheaper and
much easier to assemble.

-rob

Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?

[nigel]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 196 bytes --]

The capacity may exponentially exceed requirements, but will the
lifetime?

One thing which makes WORM worthwhile is the increased confidence it
gives that the data will be there tomorrow.


[-- Attachment #2: Type: message/rfc822, Size: 1262 bytes --]

From: "rob pike" <rob@plan9.bell-labs.com>
To: 9fans@plan9.bell-labs.com
Subject: Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 09:39:14 -0500
Message-ID: <20010116143917.047AD199EA@mail.cse.psu.edu>

With 82GB IDE drives going for about $300, WORMs aren't worth it.
Buy a monster disk drive and configure it as your backup device.
By the time it fills up, buy another; it'll be 500GB for $200 then.

-rob

Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?

[Boyd Roberts]

i've just bought a cd rom burner and the thought ocurred
to me to build a file-server that used it as the worm.
at like, 50c for a blank disc is a cheap, reliable solution.

may need a bit of tweaking though.

where are we on USB support?

Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?

[William K. Josephson]

On Tue, Jan 16, 2001 at 06:52:20PM +0100, Boyd Roberts wrote:
> i've just bought a cd rom burner and the thought ocurred
> to me to build a file-server that used it as the worm.
> at like, 50c for a blank disc is a cheap, reliable solution.

For what it is worth, Russ and I have been working on something to do
dumpfs-like dumps to an ISO 9660 image.  Supports both Plan 9 and
POSIX system-use extensions (and of course Joliet, if you want it).
Still needs to banged on a bit, but it might do the trick for backups,
even though it isn't the "real thing".

 -WJ

Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?

[forsyth]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 518 bytes --]

i haven't seen any cost-effective low end jukeboxes.

we used one or more big ultrabuzzword2 scsi discs with a pseudo-worm.
i still do that at home:  http://www.caldo.demon.co.uk/home9.html.
it's not foolproof but it does well.

choose the same block size as you'd like to use on a real worm jukebox (when you
get one).  it's possible to copy the pseudo-worm to a real one (i used a specially-modified
file server kernel for that), so that if you get something fancy later you needn't lose all the history.


[-- Attachment #2: Type: message/rfc822, Size: 1575 bytes --]

To: 9fans <cse.psu.edu!9fans>
Subject: [9fans] WORM recomendations?
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 08:06:41 -0600
Message-ID: <3A645571.2C0E55B5@mailbag.com>

I am tired of kfs. Time to move up.

Any suggestions for a low-end WORM?
It is for a basic three machine setup (one user).

[9fans] WORM recomendations?

[Ed]

I am tired of kfs. Time to move up.

Any suggestions for a low-end WORM?
It is for a basic three machine setup (one user).