Re: [9fans] Ken Fileserver problem

Re: [9fans] Ken Fileserver problem

[Wolfgang Kunz]

On Tue, 12 Jan 2010 23:46:21 +0100 erik quanstrom
<quanstro@coraid.com> wrote:
>On Tue Jan 12 17:41:45 EST 2010, akumar@mail.nanosouffle.net
>wrote:
>>  From the inspections of Cinap and I, albeit a while back,
>> Erik's FS does not take NVR from floppy. That's why Erik
>> suggested that you create a small 9fat partition (using
>> the Plan 9 Install/Boot CD) on your primary master HDD
>> and put the NVR on that. I suppose you should also be
>> able to put the rest of your files in that partition and just
>> boot directly from that.
>>
>>
>> Best,
>> ak
>
>working on fixing that.  i was dead sure that nobody'd
>use a floppy.  sorry about that.

I am using the floppy only for testing plan9.ini parameters.
This should be possible with qemu or other emulators too. Later
I will use an IDE disk or IDE flash disk (I would prefer the
second).
So I am not sure whether it makes sense to spend time to make this
possible. I can live wíthout the floppy support.

I would like to ask where are the differences between the original
Ken fileserver and your modifications? Many documents in the web
seems
to be made for the original fileserver. So it would be helpfull for
me to know the differences.

Regards,
Wolfgang

Re: [9fans] Ken Fileserver problem

[erik quanstrom]

> I am using the floppy only for testing plan9.ini parameters.
> This should be possible with qemu or other emulators too. Later
> I will use an IDE disk or IDE flash disk (I would prefer the
> second).
> So I am not sure whether it makes sense to spend time to make this
> possible. I can live wíthout the floppy support.
>
> I would like to ask where are the differences between the original
> Ken fileserver and your modifications? Many documents in the web
> seems
> to be made for the original fileserver. So it would be helpfull for
> me to know the differences.

i'm not sure why you are doing it this way.  typically one puts the
plan9.ini right on the hard drive with everything else.  i added
support for the partitions that plan 9 supports to ken fs.  this is
important when sharing aoe equipment.  so it would be easy to
create a 9fat partition with your plan9.ini and other files.  for
example here is the configuration i had for a testing fileserver
on a soekris box.  i had partitioned h0 as usual for a plan 9
cpu server with a 10mb 9fat.

- erik
-----
[menu]
menuitem=fs, fs
menuitem=cpu, cpu
menudefault=fs,5
menuconsole=0 b19200

[fs]
bootfile=sdC0!9fat!9askafs.gz
ether0=type=83815
ether1=type=83815
dumpctl=off
nvr=ph0"9fat"!fs.nvr

[cpu]
bootfile=sdC0!9fat!9pc.gz
bootfile=ether0!ladd!/386/9pc.gz
bootargs=il
nobootprompt=il

[common]
console=0 b19200
*e820print=1

Re: [9fans] Ken Fileserver problem

[erik quanstrom]

should have explained that my fs accepts 3 partition
layouts.
p(h0)x.y		where x <= y and y <= 100.
	partition by percentage. y% of the disk starting at x.
p(h0)w.z	where z > 100
	partition by block offsets.  w-z blocks of the disk
ph0"name"
	use fdisk/prep partition offsets.  useable space
	is up to two blocks less than one would expect
	since kenfs always does RBUFSIZE-aligned io.

i'd love to get rid of the first two.  the first one is
impractical since very large disks make the math very
fuzzy and the second makes mistakes easy.  in either
case, the difference of one sector can be fatal.

- erik

Re: [9fans] Ken Fileserver problem

[Wolfgang Kunz]

On Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:51:51 +0100 erik quanstrom
<quanstro@quanstro.net> wrote:
>yes.  coraid's fileserver boots from ide flash.

Sound great. I will buy a small IDE flash modul and test it.

Regards,
Wolfgang

Re: [9fans] Ken Fileserver problem

[Wolfgang Kunz]

On Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:31:07 +0100 erik quanstrom
<quanstro@quanstro.net> wrote:
>> I am using the floppy only for testing plan9.ini parameters.

>i'm not sure why you are doing it this way.
> typically one puts
>the plan9.ini right on the hard drive with everything else.  i
added
>support for the partitions that plan 9 supports to ken fs.  this
>is important when sharing aoe equipment.  so it would be easy to
>create a 9fat partition with your plan9.ini and other files.  for
>example here is the configuration i had for a testing fileserver
>on a soekris box.  i had partitioned h0 as usual for a plan 9
>cpu server with a 10mb 9fat.

I found a unused harddrive and an old pc. Is only a P3 but it
should work for testing purposes. To make testing easier I will
try Xen hvm with the file server too.

Many thanks for your samples.

Regards,
Wolfgang

Re: [9fans] Ken Fileserver problem

[erik quanstrom]

> I found a unused harddrive and an old pc. Is only a P3 but it
> should work for testing purposes. To make testing easier I will
> try Xen hvm with the file server too.

until nov 2008 i ran a piii/600 fileserver with 18g scsi
disks.  performance was good, but was limited by
some poor choices when setting up the filesstems,
a poor nic, a small memory cache and by the extra
scsi-to-ide copy from the worm to the cache.

still, a kernel compile was ~15-20s.

have not tried testing the fileserver on xen or any
other virtualizer.  i used a soekris box for testing
last time.

- erk

Re: [9fans] Ken Fileserver problem

[Wolfgang Kunz]

On Tue, 12 Jan 2010 23:39:25 +0100 Akshat Kumar
<akumar@mail.nanosouffle.net> wrote:
>>From the inspections of Cinap and I, albeit a while back,
>Erik's FS does not take NVR from floppy. That's why Erik
>suggested that you create a small 9fat partition (using
>the Plan 9 Install/Boot CD) on your primary master HDD
>and put the NVR on that. I suppose you should also be
>able to put the rest of your files in that partition and just
>boot directly from that.

Many thanks for your answer. I try to find an old IDE harddrive
or so.

Would a IDE-Flash module works too? These modules are not expensive

(20$ for 1GB). Perhaps that works for CPU server and terminal
server too? I ask because I yesterday spend some time with an usb
floppy. No
chance to get working. So I am not sure about flash drives.

Regards,
Wolfgang

Re: [9fans] Ken Fileserver problem

[Akshat Kumar]

On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 10:29 PM, Wolfgang Kunz <woku@hush.com> wrote:
> Many thanks for your answer. I try to find an old IDE harddrive
> or so.
>
> Would a IDE-Flash module works too? These modules are not expensive

The Ken FS (including Erik's version) hardware support is much more limited
than that of Plan 9's, which already is quite limited. Neither USB nor Flash
drive booting work on original Ken FS, and I highly doubt either would work
with Erik's revisions either.

Considering the use cases and purposes of Ken FS, I doubt it's such a good
use of time to work on that.


Best,
ak

Re: [9fans] Ken Fileserver problem

[erik quanstrom]

> Would a IDE-Flash module works too? These modules are not expensive

yes.  coraid's fileserver boots from ide flash.

- erik

[9fans] Ken Fileserver problem

[Wolfgang Kunz]

Hi,

because I don't have a free hard drive I try to but the file server
from floppy with the nvram file on this floppy.

This is my plan9.ini

distname=plan9
bootfile=fd0!dos!9askafs
nvr=fd!0!plan9.nvr

The boot works until:

spurious interrupt 7, lastintr0
config diag: unknown type --<d>
spurious interrupt 7, lastintr0
panic: bad bootdev:fd

I changed the mkfile for this kernel to include fd support.
Perhaps nvr on a floppy doesn't works?

Regards,
Wolfgang

Re: [9fans] Ken Fileserver problem

[Akshat Kumar]

>From the inspections of Cinap and I, albeit a while back,
Erik's FS does not take NVR from floppy. That's why Erik
suggested that you create a small 9fat partition (using
the Plan 9 Install/Boot CD) on your primary master HDD
and put the NVR on that. I suppose you should also be
able to put the rest of your files in that partition and just
boot directly from that.


Best,
ak

On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 11:31 AM, Wolfgang Kunz <woku@hush.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> because I don't have a free hard drive I try to but the file server
> from floppy with the nvram file on this floppy.
>
> This is my plan9.ini
>
> distname=plan9
> bootfile=fd0!dos!9askafs
> nvr=fd!0!plan9.nvr
>
> The boot works until:
>
> spurious interrupt 7, lastintr0
> config diag: unknown type --<d>
> spurious interrupt 7, lastintr0
> panic: bad bootdev:fd
>
> I changed the mkfile for this kernel to include fd support.
> Perhaps nvr on a floppy doesn't works?
>
> Regards,
> Wolfgang
>
>
>

Re: [9fans] Ken Fileserver problem

[erik quanstrom]

On Tue Jan 12 17:41:45 EST 2010, akumar@mail.nanosouffle.net wrote:
>  From the inspections of Cinap and I, albeit a while back,
> Erik's FS does not take NVR from floppy. That's why Erik
> suggested that you create a small 9fat partition (using
> the Plan 9 Install/Boot CD) on your primary master HDD
> and put the NVR on that. I suppose you should also be
> able to put the rest of your files in that partition and just
> boot directly from that.
>
>
> Best,
> ak

working on fixing that.  i was dead sure that nobody'd
use a floppy.  sorry about that.

- erik

Re: [9fans] Ken Fileserver problem

[Lyndon Nerenberg (VE6BBM/VE7TFX)]

>  From the inspections of Cinap and I, albeit a while back,
> Erik's FS does not take NVR from floppy.

So is it worth it to try to nail down a driver that can talk to at
least some of the on-motherboard NVRAM present on today's crop of
x86/amd64 motherboards?

There is anecdotal evidence of past individual success.  Even an
experimental collection of these driver bits would be interesting to
play with.


--lyndon

Re: [9fans] Ken Fileserver problem

[Akshat Kumar]

On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 2:50 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg (VE6BBM/VE7TFX)
<lyndon@orthanc.ca> wrote:
> So is it worth it to try to nail down a driver that can talk to at
> least some of the on-motherboard NVRAM present on today's crop of
> x86/amd64 motherboards?

Our mileages vary: I don't see the problem in my floppy or a 9fat partition
carrying a little more data (i.e., one more file). Also, considering
the input of
time on such a project and the usefulness of its output, I'd not encourage
it.

> There is anecdotal evidence of past individual success.  Even an
> experimental collection of these driver bits would be interesting to
> play with.

But for yourself, it seems you've answered your own question.


Best,
ak

Re: [9fans] Ken Fileserver problem

[erik quanstrom]

On Tue Jan 12 22:39:27 EST 2010, lyndon@orthanc.ca wrote:
> >  From the inspections of Cinap and I, albeit a while back,
> > Erik's FS does not take NVR from floppy.
>
> So is it worth it to try to nail down a driver that can talk to at
> least some of the on-motherboard NVRAM present on today's crop of
> x86/amd64 motherboards?
>
> There is anecdotal evidence of past individual success.  Even an
> experimental collection of these driver bits would be interesting to
> play with.

seems silly.  there are megabytes of unused bios flash.
if you want to go to the effort, why not get a good chunk
of usuable space.  unfortunately, i haven't had any success
getting a map.

- erik