[9fans] making better use of ext2fs?

[Aharon Robbins <arnold@skeeve.com>]

Greetings 9fans,

I've been following 9fans for quite a while over the years, and pretty
steadily since the 3rd release.

One thing I've noticed is that people report kfs sometimes gets flaky
when used in a stand-alone configuration.

So, in a thinking-out-loud sort of mode, I'm wondering if maybe it
might be worth investigating use of ext2fs instead of kfs for that
purpose.  This has the non-trivial advantage that, for those 9people
who also use Linux, recovery tools are available just by rebooting.
It also has the potential to make install/bootstrapping easier:

	fdisk	# set up a separate ext2 partition
	newfs /dev/xxx	# put a filesystem on it
	mount /dev/xxx /mnt
	cd /mnt ; tar -xvpzf p9tarball.tgz
	# edit various config files using whatever editor
	# you have under Linux that you like
	umount /mnt
	dd if=p9bootblock of=/dev/xxx bs=512 count=1

	# edit lilo config
	/sbin/lilo
	shutdown -r now

This is, obviously, just an outline of the steps, and there's obviously
a ``non-trivial'' amount of work involved.  OTOH, if making Plan 9 easier
to install and use is an acknowledged---if secondary---goal, then perhaps
this is worth considering?

The reason I suggest it is that the ext2fs server already exists and works
(for some definition of "works" :-), whereas a bsdfs server would probably
have to be written from scratch --- I'm not trying to start a Linux
vs. *BSD (flame-)war here.

In other words, this is a way to provide an additional bootstrapping
mechanism; I'm not suggesting that this replace the current install.

I almost didn't post this, because I hate it when I'm on the receiving
end of "here's a great idea, why don't you do the work?".  OTOH, I
wanted to offer the thought.  And if someone can run with it, great.
If not, maybe one day I'll be able to, and in the meantime we're no
worse off than we are now.

Thanks,

Arnold Robbins
arnold@skeeve.com