[9fans] plan 9 wiki experiment

[9fans] plan 9 wiki experiment

[Russ Cox]

I have set up a Plan 9 wiki.

A wiki is a web server that anyone on the 
internet can edit, traditionally by using 
a web browser.  The one I have set up is a 
bit different from the others since it can
be accessed either using a web browser or
using an Acme client.  The wiki itself is
provided by a file system (what else?) that
runs underneath the web server or underneath
the Acme client.  This means that it is equally
accessible to Plan 9 and non-Plan 9 users.

I have seeded the wiki with the contents of
the Plan 9 "Getting Started" document, but my
hope is that various readers of this list will
find it worth their while to fix up or add 
whatever they feel is wrong, unclear, or missing.
I think that collectively we can do a good job
of presenting useful information in an accessible
manner.  Recent converts especially may have a much
better feel for what needs more explanation than
is currently there.

There is, of course, a huge potential for abuse.
Please don't.  If the server fills with various
objectionable material, we'll take it down, and
I really don't want to do that.

The web interface is at 
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9,
and you can download the Acme client from
the usual updates page.

Enjoy.

Russ

Re: [9fans] plan 9 wiki experiment

[Quinn Dunkan]

> I have set up a Plan 9 wiki.

Darn you!  That was going to be my project :)
Oh well, I'm sure you did it better than I could have.

Although a random nit is that, for the web interface, the generated links
point to

http://plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/14

instead of

http://plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/14/

or

http://plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/14/index.html

which forces the browser to do a 301 Moved Permanently redirect to get the
real address every time you follow a link.

Very cool, though.

> There is, of course, a huge potential for abuse.
> Please don't.  If the server fills with various
> objectionable material, we'll take it down, and
> I really don't want to do that.

I guess that means the transvestite angora fetish ascii porn is out...

[ dmr ]
> similar points.  I'm more the let-a-hundred-flowers-bloom kind of guy.

How about let-a-hundred-weeds-overgrow? :)  It's still better than monoculture
or toxic wasteland (although I guess you could say the current field has
aspects of both).  It's still possible to find or make beautiful things in a
toxic wasteland, even if it's not as much fun.

Re: [9fans] plan 9 wiki experiment

[Dan Cross]

In article <200102010808.AAA00583@tammananny.tiger> you write:
>It's still possible to find or make beautiful things in a
>toxic wasteland, even if it's not as much fun.

You know, I was going to say:

	Yeah, just look at Bell Labs: They're in New Jersey, but they
	still make some pretty beautiful software.

But then I realized that that wouldn't be funny except outside of
New Jersey.

(okay, okay, I'm avoiding the rotten fruit now and getting ready to
get on an airplane.  Apologies all around for the off-topic pot shot
at Jersey, but, hey---it was too hard to resist....  :-)

	- Dan C.

Re: [9fans] plan 9 wiki experiment

[Tom Duff]

> You know, I was going to say:
>
> 	Yeah, just look at Bell Labs: They're in New Jersey, but they
> 	still make some pretty beautiful software.
>
> But then I realized that that wouldn't be funny except outside of
> New Jersey.
>
> (okay, okay, I'm avoiding the rotten fruit now and getting ready to
> get on an airplane.  Apologies all around for the off-topic pot shot
> at Jersey, but, hey---it was too hard to resist....  :-)


You know, I was at Murray Hill for twelve years, but every time someone
brings up the suburban horrors of New Jersey, I'm forced to remember
the first time I visited Bell Labs (July 1975.)  The directions we were given
were `From New York, get onto Route 22, go to the first MacDonalds, turn
right just past the arches, go right at the tee, up the hill to Mountain
Ave, etc.'  Now, the first MacDonalds was about a 20 mile drive through
the worst of strip-mall New Jersey, but after those two quick rights (past
the unmentioned cement quarry), we were in the beautiful woods of the
Watchung Reservation.  It was like something out of The Divine Comedy,
as we passed from the inferno to paradise...

The area has been built up a bit since then, but still, especially
when the leaves are falling in October, you can still get a little feeling
of entering a magic place as you climb the Watchung mountains to Murray
Hill.  (Of course, the gebrauchsarchitektur of the liquid nitrogen plant
and the lab buildings at MH pretty much destroy the illusion, but you miss
those if you go through the front door.)

Re: [9fans] plan 9 wiki experiment

[Dan Cross]

In article <10102011138.ZM43426@marvin> you write:
>You know, I was at Murray Hill for twelve years, but every time someone
>brings up the suburban horrors of New Jersey, I'm forced to remember
>the first time I visited Bell Labs (July 1975.)  The directions we were given
>were `From New York, get onto Route 22, go to the first MacDonalds, turn
>right just past the arches, go right at the tee, up the hill to Mountain
>Ave, etc.'  Now, the first MacDonalds was about a 20 mile drive through
>the worst of strip-mall New Jersey, but after those two quick rights (past
>the unmentioned cement quarry), we were in the beautiful woods of the
>Watchung Reservation.  It was like something out of The Divine Comedy,
>as we passed from the inferno to paradise...
>
>The area has been built up a bit since then, but still, especially
>when the leaves are falling in October, you can still get a little feeling
>of entering a magic place as you climb the Watchung mountains to Murray
>Hill.  (Of course, the gebrauchsarchitektur of the liquid nitrogen plant
>and the lab buildings at MH pretty much destroy the illusion, but you miss
>those if you go through the front door.)

Hmm....  The one and only time I was at Murray Hill was many years
ago.  I remember being particularly impressed with the stairs outside;
they looked like they'd be a lot of fun to skateboard on.

While I'm sure that New Jersey has some nice parts, the places I see
most frequently are pretty depressing (Hoboken, Newark, etc).  I must
admit, however, that my friend's place in Weehawken (opposite 42nd St)
is pretty nice and has a stunning view of Manhattan; better, indeed,
than any view one can get from Manhattan itself.

When I was at Penn State, one could avail oneself of some pretty
spectacular scenery.  I always thought that the campus itself was very
beautiful, as well.  I don't know how much it's changed since I left,
though.  Scott?

	- Dan C.

[9fans] KFS Crash

[Mark C. Otto]

I had bad addresses and 9p message start filling the screen.  Rio locked up, and
I didn't see any way to get out of it, so I rebooted.  Unfortunately, I couldn't
even boot up, not even with my boot floppy.


kfs...boot: nop...File system main inconsistent
Would you like to ream it (y/n)?        tag = <badtag>;Tdir
kfs init 5: FID1 attach to root
boot: read nop: file does not exist
panic: boot process died: unknown
ktrace /kernel/path 8010649e 8026bdb4
8026bd54=801063a3 8026hd64=80171915
...
cpu0: exiting

Looks like I am going to have to reinstall the system, unless my terminal is
just trying to be sympathetic with Russ's. :-(  I have the following questions:

1. If rio crashes is there a way to kill rio and get back to the shell?
2. Given that I could, what diagnostics could I run to identify the problem?
3. Is there a way to repair the disk at this point?
4. Given that you don't have much faith in kfs and some of us are using it
exclusively on our standalone terminals, what sort of maintainance, such as
disk/kfscmd check, should we be doing?

Mark

Re: [9fans] KFS Crash

[Scott Schwartz]

> Would you like to ream it (y/n)?        tag = <badtag>;Tdir

It's kinda bad that it doesn't give you a chance to answer the question.
A kfs on a rescue floppy would at least let you check the filesystem
and maybe recover something.

[9fans] PS2 vs Com1 Mouse Problems

[Mark C. Otto]

I made the mistake of having a PS2 mouse and a serial mouse hooked up at
different times during the install process (indecision and a dearth of 3-button
mice).  My setup seems confused about which it has.  If I run echo $mouseport, I
get the proper ps2, but aux/mouse -n $mouseport returns

aux/mouse: can't open #t/eiapsctl - file does not exist

 From reading uart(3) p. 438, it seems to be treating the mouse as a serial
device and expecting $mouseport to be 0 or 1 in

bind -a #t/eia^$mouseport^ctl /dev

Not having a mouse or rio, this is hard to see where to correct this.  Thanks
for any help.

Mark

Re: [9fans] PS2 vs Com1 Mouse Problems

[Mark C. Otto]

At Russ's suggestion, I tried

aux/mouse ps2

which set the mouse.  My brain fart was using

mouseport=ps

instead of

mouseport=ps2

in my plan9.ini.  That fixed my problems with the mouse, vga, and rio (see
[9fans] Rio on Install but Not on Boot, Thu, 22 Feb 2001 08:04:22 -0500).  The
install went very smoothly otherwise.

Thanks Russ.

Mark

Re: [9fans] KFS Crash

[Russ Cox]

	1. If rio crashes is there a way to kill
	   rio and get back to the shell?

Not really.

	2. Given that I could, what diagnostics
	   could I run to identify the problem?
	3. Is there a way to repair the disk at this point?

I rarely see kfs get that hosed.  Are you sure
the root is from: got the right file system?

I'd try booting an install floppy and using it
as a rescue disk: ignore the install process,
draw yourself a new window, and try to start kfs
manually:

	disk/kfs -f /dev/sdC0/fs
	mount /srv/kfs /n/kfs

and maybe you'll get a bit farther.

There's almost always a way to repair the disk, depending
on how much energy you're willing to devote to it.
I have a clumsy C program that tries to pull
out textual data from broken kfs file systems
if you need something that wasn't backed up.

	4. Given that you don't have much faith
	   in kfs and some of us are using it
	   exclusively on our standalone terminals,
	   what sort of maintainance, such as
	   disk/kfscmd check, should we be doing?

One method is to set up two file systems and run
check say once a month.  When you start getting
things like bad tags, ream the other file system
and copy your data over; repeat.

For the most part, kfs is stable.  It gets unstable
fairly fast if you frequently don't "disk/kfscmd halt"
before shutting down, or if you crash your kernels a lot
(implies the first, but usually a bigger problem
since you can die during heavy disk i/o).

Nothing's set in stone but I think one hope for the
fabled file server rewrite is to have kfs build
from the same sources, which may at least exercise it
more.

Russ

Re: [9fans] KFS Crash

[Mark C. Otto]

Booting up with the install disk, I was able to get a window under rio.  I could
not start kfs though:

% disk/kfs -f /dev/sdC0/fs
File system main inconsistent
Would you like to ream it (y/n)?  hell no. tag = <badtag>; expected Tdir
kfs init 496: FID1 attach to root

# The root of the problem is at the root.  Russ is right:  at least it asks
before
# wiping out your file system.

mount /srv/kfs /n/kfs
mount: sys: write on closed pop pc=0x00003abe

I can get to the 9fat file system.  I can probably reconstruct most of what I
lost expect for a few mail messages and my plan9 wish list.  I'm sure all the
important things will come back to me. :)

For the autopsy, I have always run disk/kfscmd halt to shut the system down
except for the few times the system locked up.  I have never run disk/kfscmd
check.  I have 500mb disk and had just installed wiki and pq.  (I didn't install
TeX for space reasons.)  That may have nearly filled the disk.  I haven't run
Russ's df in a while, so I won't be able to confirm that.  It did get some 9p
and bad address errors before it locked up.  I should have had a plan before I
rebooted the final time.  Next time I might use Rob's rio crash fall back
procedure.


To debug rio after it's crashed:
1. If you have a shell prompt, hit carriage return until every one gets you a
shell prompt; that means the rio process holding the keyboard open has filled
its
buffer.  Then, although echo will still be off, the shell is all yours.
2. Type
     kill rio|rc
and you'll get echo back and you can restart rio or whatever else
you want to do.

3. After that run the disk diagnostics and rebuild the disk

 disk/kfscmd -r check
 disk/kfscmd -fdtw check  # I'm guessing at the options from kfscmd(8)


Guess this is the kick to usurp another old pc for a cpu/auth server, set up
dhcpd(8), and u9fs on my linux box.  Unfortunately, I have JMK's disliked
Adaptec SCSI controllers (AHA-2940U2/AHA-2940U2W PCI and AIC-7880 PCI), so I
can't set up a real file server yet.

Russ, Rob, and Scott thanks for helping me at least find out what state my
system is in.

Mark

Re: [9fans] KFS Crash

[Russ Cox]

	It's kinda bad that it doesn't give you a chance to answer the question.
	A kfs on a rescue floppy would at least let you check the filesystem
	and maybe recover something.

At least it assumes a negative answer rather
than reformatting your file system right then
and there.

Russ

Re: [9fans] KFS Crash

[rob pike]

> 	1. If rio crashes is there a way to kill
> 	   rio and get back to the shell?
>
> Not really.

Yes really, although it's not pretty.

On bad rio days (I have them more than most people, I suspect,
although still not very often) I need to debug rio after it's crashed.
If you have a shell prompt, you're golden but it takes a little work.
Hit carriage return until every one gets you a shell prompt; that
means the rio process holding the keyboard open has filled its
buffer.  Then, although echo will still be off, the shell is all yours.
Type
	kill rio|rc
and you'll get echo back and you can restart rio or whatever else
you want to do.

There, isn't that disgusting?  But I helped track down a corrupt
network interface on an IRIX machine a little while ago so I'm in
a debugging, sharing mood.

-rob