From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] Experiences with remote connections?
From: "Russ Cox" <rsc@swtch.com>
Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2007 14:59:22 -0400
In-Reply-To: <8b430184bcf4f020c6aebc95d101b9fb@csplan9.rit.edu>
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> When I read the papers, there's references to systems booting over the
> network and even connecting via dialup. Now, I'm on cable here, and
> unless VMware's NAT system and Qemu's -net nic -net user options
> really suck (do they?), I just can't see the feasibility of such a thing.
> Can anyone else share experiences with connecting to Plan 9 from
> hundreds/thousands of miles away with something other than
> drawterm?

plan 9 is not really intended to boot terminals
off a file server hundreds of miles away unless
you have a really fast connection.

however, there are things you could do to
improve your situation and see if they help.

the main thing is to set up a partition for cfs(4)
to use and then use it.  if you do this, then
directory reads and stats and walks still go
through to the server, but reads of cached files
can be served locally (the qid from the walk
response from the server lets cfs figure out
whether its cache needs to be refreshed).

to do this you need to make a partition for cfs
to use and then set cfs=#S/sdC0/cache (or whatever)
in your plan9.ini.  you also need to boot a terminal
with cfs in /boot.  pcdisk does, pc does not.

before you set up cfs you can test how well it
might work by seeing how much this helps your
lc time:

	ramfs -m /n/ram
	for(i in rc ls mc lc){
		cp /bin/$i /n/ram/$i
		bind /n/ram/$i /bin/$i
	}
	cd; time lc

russ