Re: [9fans] one reason ideas from Plan 9 didn't catch on

[presotto@closedmind.org]

In the very recent past, I've installed Windows 98, Red Hat, and Plan 9.  I haven't
tried Debian yet so I can't say anything about it.

I must say, the hardest was Plan 9 although procedurally it was the easiest (less
questions, more ability to screw around if things did go wrong) although that
only helps if you have a basic familiarity with Plan 9.

The main problem was that the pre-patch system that's out there just doesn't go with
any hardware I could find at Avaya.  Everything I had was supported but only after
patches.  I ended up building a new kernel and 9load at bell labs, sticking them
onto the install floppy, along with an edited vgadb and going around the cycle
3 or 4 times till I got it right.  I couldn't build a kernel or 9load that would
work more generally because one with all the drivers is too big (to fit in 64k, to
fit compressed on a 1.4meg floppy, ...).  I know that precious few people could
have done the same.

The startup kernel for next release isn't going to fit on a floppy if we
don't change things.  We're (jmk and I mostly) considering suggestions
for what to do.
- One possibility is to build a kernel on the fly for people
downloading and have it contain the right drivers.  We get enough info from
the little question and answer session to set up plan9.ini.  That could keep
us going for a number of generations since it considerably reduces kernel size.
- Another is to have dynamicly linked drivers though that too would require
a prebuild since not all the drivers would fit on the floppy and drivers
with linkage info are larger.
- We could just give everyone login access to
a machine on the net and have them do their builds there and copy stuff
out as they see fit.
- We could also just start releasing CDROM's again where size wouldn't matter
as much.  We'ld need someone willing to make them.
- ???

Once I got a kernel/9load that worked, things went well till I wanted
to connect out.  Plan 9 is really crappy to customize once you've got a
stand-alone system up and running.  If noone else has done it, I'm about to start
on a GUI based configuration tool, sort of a collision between X86Config,
winipcnfig, and Wavelanconfig, ...  It needs to switch on something
(I'm assuming $menuitem) to pick a configuration; my laptop normally
wakes up tio find itself in any of 2 corporate networks and 3 ISP's.
DHCP/ppp/v6-resource-discovery doesn't provide enough info and often
has to be overriden so just depending on that isn't enough, you have
to be able to override/supplement.

Setting up plan 9 authentication is like giving birth through your eye ball.
That's all my fault.  Rsc, ehg, and I have been working on a new security architecture that
makes ssh, ssl, private passwords, etc. easier to keep track of and use,
sort of sshagent++, in addition to fixing the plan9 authentication.  I want
to get that out but it depends on getting the new system out which depends
on figuring out how to do a release better...

Finally, we just can't get releases put together fast enough.  We're now
a whole protocol behind so that we can't even send diffs out.  Part of that
is that this is a sideline for all of us.  We either need people as decicated
at putting releases together as linus and friends or we need a better way.  Perhaps
we should keep a machine on the internet with our more or less current
sources.  It wouldn't be as consistent as a release (man pages slightly out of
date, some things that might not build) but would be someplace to grab new
stuff from to try out.  I'ld prefer that to CVS since the bulk of the stuff
is still done at the labs without CVS.

All suggestions welcome.  Sorry for the long message.