[9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[Alex Jordan]

Hi,
After a number of months of lurking on this list, I've finally gotten
a computer set up to be a dedicated Plan 9 installation (as part of a
grid, of course).
At this point, I need to choose between vanilla Plan 9 or one of the
flavors (9front or 9atom). I have read the "9front vs. 9atom" thread;
prevailing wisdom seems to say to go with 9atom unless you need the
hardware support of 9front - please correct me if this is wrong.
That being said, the thread didn't talk about the vanilla Plan 9
distribution from Bell Labs. The computer I'm installing it on is ~15
years old, so I doubt it will have all that many hardware support
issues. Basically, would you guys recommend I try the Bell Labs
distribution of Plan 9, 9front, or 9atom as my first installation?
I've also done a cursory search of the list archives without finding
anything; if this has been covered before, please accept my apologies.
Thanks for your time,
Alex Jordan

Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[Alex Jordan]

On Mon, Dec 30, 2013 at 6:02 PM, Alex Jordan <alexander3223098@gmail.com> wrote:
> At this point, I need to choose between vanilla Plan 9 or one of the
> flavors (9front or 9atom).
There is also 9legacy, which I forgot about.

Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[erik quanstrom]

On Mon Dec 30 21:03:24 EST 2013, alexander3223098@gmail.com wrote:
> Hi,
> After a number of months of lurking on this list, I've finally gotten
> a computer set up to be a dedicated Plan 9 installation (as part of a
> grid, of course).
> At this point, I need to choose between vanilla Plan 9 or one of the
> flavors (9front or 9atom). I have read the "9front vs. 9atom" thread;
> prevailing wisdom seems to say to go with 9atom unless you need the
> hardware support of 9front - please correct me if this is wrong.
> That being said, the thread didn't talk about the vanilla Plan 9
> distribution from Bell Labs. The computer I'm installing it on is ~15
> years old, so I doubt it will have all that many hardware support
> issues. Basically, would you guys recommend I try the Bell Labs
> distribution of Plan 9, 9front, or 9atom as my first installation?
> I've also done a cursory search of the list archives without finding
> anything; if this has been covered before, please accept my apologies.

well let me know if i can answer any questions or fix anything.  funny how we all get
pigeon holed.  i thought i did 9atom to support more hardware.  :-)

- erik

Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[Alex Jordan]

On Mon Dec 30 21:03:24 EST 2013, alexander3223098@gmail.com wrote:
> Basically, would you guys recommend I try the Bell Labs
> distribution of Plan 9, 9front, or 9atom as my first installation?
Since no one seems to have an opinion on this, I'm going with the Bell
Labs distribution. We'll see how it goes.

On Mon, Dec 30, 2013 at 8:33 PM, erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net> wrote:
> well let me know if i can answer any questions or fix anything.  funny how we all get
> pigeon holed.  i thought i did 9atom to support more hardware.  :-)
Will do, thanks!

Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[Patryk Laurent]

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Hi Alex,

I just joined the list, and so I missed your question.  But I also opted for going with the vanilla distribution.  Enjoy -- it's been pretty fun so far!

Patryk



> On Jan 5, 2014, at 15:54, Alex Jordan <alexander3223098@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Mon Dec 30 21:03:24 EST 2013, alexander3223098@gmail.com wrote:
>> Basically, would you guys recommend I try the Bell Labs
>> distribution of Plan 9, 9front, or 9atom as my first installation?
> Since no one seems to have an opinion on this, I'm going with the Bell
> Labs distribution. We'll see how it goes.
> 
>> On Mon, Dec 30, 2013 at 8:33 PM, erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net> wrote:
>> well let me know if i can answer any questions or fix anything.  funny how we all get
>> pigeon holed.  i thought i did 9atom to support more hardware.  :-)
> Will do, thanks!
> 

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Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[Steven Stallion]

On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 6:03 PM, Patryk Laurent <plaurent@me.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Alex,
>
> I just joined the list, and so I missed your question.  But I also opted for going with the vanilla distribution.  Enjoy -- it's been pretty fun so far!
>
> Patryk
>
>
>
>> On Jan 5, 2014, at 15:54, Alex Jordan <alexander3223098@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon Dec 30 21:03:24 EST 2013, alexander3223098@gmail.com wrote:
>>> Basically, would you guys recommend I try the Bell Labs
>>> distribution of Plan 9, 9front, or 9atom as my first installation?
>> Since no one seems to have an opinion on this, I'm going with the Bell
>> Labs distribution. We'll see how it goes.
>>
>>> On Mon, Dec 30, 2013 at 8:33 PM, erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net> wrote:
>>> well let me know if i can answer any questions or fix anything.  funny how we all get
>>> pigeon holed.  i thought i did 9atom to support more hardware.  :-)
>> Will do, thanks!

There are a few of us that still hold out hope for the Labs
distribution. I use a locally modified version (you can find my
patches under contrib/stallion/patch in sources - some are applied,
some not). I'm fairly happy with it since I tend to hack on ARM more
than anything else these days.

HTH,

Steve

Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[Lyndon Nerenberg]

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On Jan 5, 2014, at 8:03 PM, Steven Stallion <sstallion@gmail.com> wrote:

> There are a few of us that still hold out hope for the Labs
> distribution.

But realistically, for how much longer?  The past year has shown the love is gone.  I haven't been able to run a labs distribution on physical hardware for years.  Nor on virtual hardware.  It's time to choose a new king ...

--lyndon


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Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[Steven Stallion]

On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 10:36 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon@orthanc.ca> wrote:
>
> On Jan 5, 2014, at 8:03 PM, Steven Stallion <sstallion@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> There are a few of us that still hold out hope for the Labs
>> distribution.
>
> But realistically, for how much longer?  The past year has shown the love is gone.  I haven't been able to run a labs distribution on physical hardware for years.  Nor on virtual hardware.  It's time to choose a new king ...

Works fine for me on a variety of x86 hardware. At the moment I use
Pineview D525 boards with no trouble at all. If I happen to run into
hardware that's not supported, I write a driver. Honestly, it's the
same business you get with any other distribution. I don't
particularly care for kings myself, I like using what works for me.

Steve

Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[Lyndon Nerenberg]

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> Works fine for me on a variety of x86 hardware. At the moment I use
> Pineview D525 boards with no trouble at all. If I happen to run into
> hardware that's not supported, I write a driver. Honestly, it's the
> same business you get with any other distribution. I don't
> particularly care for kings myself, I like using what works for me.

"... what works for me."

That's the part that frustrates me these days.  No sharing.  Inside or out.

In the case of 'The Labs' these days, sharing seems to be an anathema.  Acceptance of outside code?  Never.

For the rest of us, share my code by accepting what I wrote - verbatim - or just peer at my work on the pedestal I constructed over here?  Feh.

What the fuck ever happened to 'community' ...

--lyndon


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Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[Steven Stallion]

On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 10:53 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon@orthanc.ca> wrote:

> "... what works for me."
>
> That's the part that frustrates me these days.  No sharing.  Inside or out.

I'd suggest taking a look at contrib/stallion (particularly patch and
src) before adding yet more vitriol to the list.

> In the case of 'The Labs' these days, sharing seems to be an anathema.  Acceptance of outside code?  Never.

I'm not certain this is a completely fair criticism. The Labs is quite
a bit smaller than it used to be these days. Patience helps.

> For the rest of us, share my code by accepting what I wrote - verbatim - or just peer at my work on the pedestal I constructed over here?  Feh.

I submit patches for everything I work on that touches sources. There
are a number of others that do the same, regardless of whether they
get rejected or not.

> What the fuck ever happened to 'community' ...

Indeed.

Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[Lyndon Nerenberg]

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On Jan 5, 2014, at 9:01 PM, Steven Stallion <sstallion@gmail.com> wrote:

>> In the case of 'The Labs' these days, sharing seems to be an anathema.  Acceptance of outside code?  Never.
> 
> I'm not certain this is a completely fair criticism. The Labs is quite
> a bit smaller than it used to be these days. Patience helps.

I get it. I really do.  And I weep for the loss of what was.

But the reality is: the labs are no more.  No funding, no interest, no anything.  Geoff and Jim are due for retirement from this mailing list.  (Jim left ages ago, in fact.)  Let's let them go in peace.

--lyndon



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Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[andrey mirtchovski]

devmnt is all that's needed to have community. somebody, somewhere,
will reinvent it badly.

Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[Steven Stallion]

On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 11:13 PM, andrey mirtchovski
<mirtchovski@gmail.com> wrote:
> devmnt is all that's needed to have community. somebody, somewhere,
> will reinvent it badly.

I couldn't help but chuckle. I think anyone who has ever had to
navigate and deal with bugs in devmnt would quite agree!

Steve

Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[Patryk Laurent]

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On Jan 05, 2014, at 09:09 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon@orthanc.ca> wrote:

But the reality is: the labs are no more. No funding, no interest, no anything. Geoff and Jim are due for retirement from this mailing list. (Jim left ages ago, in fact.) Let's let them go in peace.
 
I'm fairly new here, but it seems that so long as the /n/sources/contrib mechanism exists, we can go on providing patches to the plan9 user community indefinitely...  Although, it seems that Geoff and Jim were the ones who authorized creating files in contrib.  Is their retirement going to be a showstopper for contrib?

 (The archives at http://9fans.net/archive/ don't seem to be working, so I'm not able to check for recent mentions of this on the mailing list.)

Thank you,
Patryk


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Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[Bruce Ellis]

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Welcome to what is becoming something indistinguishable from the thousands
of "linux blame-game mailing lists. Grow up. Read a good book. Go to the
beach.

brucee


On 6 January 2014 16:01, Steven Stallion <sstallion@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 10:53 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon@orthanc.ca>
> wrote:
>
> > "... what works for me."
> >
> > That's the part that frustrates me these days.  No sharing.  Inside or
> out.
>
> I'd suggest taking a look at contrib/stallion (particularly patch and
> src) before adding yet more vitriol to the list.
>
> > In the case of 'The Labs' these days, sharing seems to be an anathema.
>  Acceptance of outside code?  Never.
>
> I'm not certain this is a completely fair criticism. The Labs is quite
> a bit smaller than it used to be these days. Patience helps.
>
> > For the rest of us, share my code by accepting what I wrote - verbatim -
> or just peer at my work on the pedestal I constructed over here?  Feh.
>
> I submit patches for everything I work on that touches sources. There
> are a number of others that do the same, regardless of whether they
> get rejected or not.
>
> > What the fuck ever happened to 'community' ...
>
> Indeed.
>
>

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Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[a]

// In the case of 'The Labs' these days, sharing seems to be
// an anathema.  Acceptance of outside code?  Never.

Look, we've got enough problems without you making things
up which are trivially false:

	: root; pwd
	/n/sources/patch/applied
	: root; for (i in `{ls -rt | tail}) {echo -n $i':	' ; sed 's/@.+//' < $i/email}
	ndb-authdom-hamnavoe:	miller
	bcm-firmware-date:	miller
	5c-nan-cmp:	miller
	5l-incfloat:	miller
	acme-disk-read:	nemo
	fdisk-64-bit-table:	quanstro
	southbridge-8086-1c44:	davide+p9
	ether8169-macv34:	davide+p9
	file-aac-audio:	steve
	ape-cc-objtype:	lunaria21

That is not what "Never" looks like. This is not to say that there
are no issues with patch evaluation or sources' management;
there are. But creating a caricature of the issue is remarkably
unhelpful, at best.

// For the rest of us, share my code by accepting what I wrote -
// verbatim - or just peer at my work on the pedestal I
// constructed over here?  Feh.

Also, obviously false. Both mainline and 9atom have a patch
repository (and Erik's done a particularly good job making it extra
useful by using that for his own 9atom changes), and the 9front
guys have everything in a hg repo on Google Code (say what you
will about hg and/or Google Code, but it pretty much eliminates
the sorts of complaints you're making here). Lots of people make
patches available in contrib. What "pedestal" are you talking
about? Who's fought their code being reused elsewhere?

// What the fuck ever happened to 'community' ...

Ours has always been small, and never helped by people going
out of their way to trash the efforts of others, nor by inventing
issues to complain about.

Anthony

Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[Aram Hăvărneanu]

> and the 9front guys have everything in a hg repo
> on Google Code

9front exists precisely because the 9front authors considered Plan 9
closed. Using it as an example of openness is the ultimate in
hypocrisy.

-- 
Aram Hăvărneanu

Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[Anthony Sorace]

On Jan 6, 2014, at 11:40 , Aram Hăvărneanu <aram.h@mgk.ro> wrote:

>> and the 9front guys have everything in a hg repo
>> on Google Code
> 
> 9front exists precisely because the 9front authors considered Plan 9
> closed. Using it as an example of openness is the ultimate in
> hypocrisy.

That is not what hypocrisy means.

I'm not (here) making any assertions as to the motivations behind 9front,
nor am I attempting to analyze them. The point is that all three systems
have methods for submitting changes, tracking what's changed in the
system, and pulling bits out. The post I responded to claimed Bell Labs
never took outside changes and that 9atom and 9front required some sort
of all-or-nothing buy-in. All of that is false.

Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[lucio]

> That is not what hypocrisy means.

I thought I was missing something...

++L

Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[tlaronde]

On Mon, Jan 06, 2014 at 05:40:50PM +0100, Aram H?v?rneanu wrote:
>
> 9front exists precisely because the 9front authors considered Plan 9
> closed. Using it as an example of openness is the ultimate in
> hypocrisy.
>

It's easier to correct one whole defined "wrong" direction than to
correct a source code with no direction at all (demonstrated more
than once; for example, for me, with GRASS and TeX: I have managed
to take _alone_ GRASS because I started from the last CERL version,
sending more than 10 years of community "improvements" to /dev/null;
the same applies for TeX: I have not fixed TeXlive...).

As stated more than once, for example by Erik, Plan9 is small. This
means that it is still maintainable i.e. "holding in one's hand".
And I'm still convinced that the future belongs to such a small
system due to a world chaos and a general distrust about the huge
beasts everyone is relying upon at the moment (the hypocritical
equivalent of "closed" source been "open" giga-source: yes, one "could"
read all; except that one will never finish reading it during her
live's length and it is more than easy to write puzzling code...).

PS: how many have had the curiosity to look, for example, of an Intel
NIC specification? Does anyone have any certainty about what such a
peripheral can or could do on its own? I don't know how one can be sure
of any device one has build from minerals by hand... That's good for
someone like me who does nothing "secret", but for people dealing with
critical data why don't they go back to paper alone?

--
        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                      http://www.kergis.com/
              http://www.renaissance-francaise.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[lucio]

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Very good points, every one of them.  Thanks, Thierry, I could have
not put them half as nicely.

++L

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From: tlaronde@polynum.com
To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net>
Subject: Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?
Date: Mon, 6 Jan 2014 18:09:26 +0100
Message-ID: <20140106170926.GA680@polynum.com>

On Mon, Jan 06, 2014 at 05:40:50PM +0100, Aram H?v?rneanu wrote:
>
> 9front exists precisely because the 9front authors considered Plan 9
> closed. Using it as an example of openness is the ultimate in
> hypocrisy.
>

It's easier to correct one whole defined "wrong" direction than to
correct a source code with no direction at all (demonstrated more
than once; for example, for me, with GRASS and TeX: I have managed
to take _alone_ GRASS because I started from the last CERL version,
sending more than 10 years of community "improvements" to /dev/null;
the same applies for TeX: I have not fixed TeXlive...).

As stated more than once, for example by Erik, Plan9 is small. This
means that it is still maintainable i.e. "holding in one's hand".
And I'm still convinced that the future belongs to such a small
system due to a world chaos and a general distrust about the huge
beasts everyone is relying upon at the moment (the hypocritical
equivalent of "closed" source been "open" giga-source: yes, one "could"
read all; except that one will never finish reading it during her
live's length and it is more than easy to write puzzling code...).

PS: how many have had the curiosity to look, for example, of an Intel
NIC specification? Does anyone have any certainty about what such a
peripheral can or could do on its own? I don't know how one can be sure
of any device one has build from minerals by hand... That's good for
someone like me who does nothing "secret", but for people dealing with
critical data why don't they go back to paper alone?

--
        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                      http://www.kergis.com/
              http://www.renaissance-francaise.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[Kurt H Maier]

Quoting Aram Hăvărneanu <aram.h@mgk.ro>:

>> and the 9front guys have everything in a hg repo
>> on Google Code
>
> 9front exists precisely because the 9front authors considered Plan 9
> closed. Using it as an example of openness is the ultimate in
> hypocrisy.
>

Nobody considers plan 9 closed.  9front exists because cinap and aiju and
taruti and everyone were cranking out code faster than was reasonable to
expect geoff could vet and consider.  Rather than shitting up his inbox
with code he may or may not even be interested in, taruti dumped it all
onto google code and we got to work.

It's not some kind of idealistic schism; it was just practicality.  Stuff
like this is the reason DVCS exists as a concept.

khm

Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[balaji]

+1

On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 8:36 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon@orthanc.ca> wrote:
>
> On Jan 5, 2014, at 8:03 PM, Steven Stallion <sstallion@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> There are a few of us that still hold out hope for the Labs
>> distribution.
>
> But realistically, for how much longer?  The past year has shown the love is gone.  I haven't been able to run a labs distribution on physical hardware for years.  Nor on virtual hardware.  It's time to choose a new king ...
>
> --lyndon
>

Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[Kurt H Maier]

Quoting Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon@orthanc.ca>:

> On Jan 5, 2014, at 8:03 PM, Steven Stallion <sstallion@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> There are a few of us that still hold out hope for the Labs
>> distribution.
>
> But realistically, for how much longer?  The past year has shown the
> love is gone.  I haven't been able to run a labs distribution on
> physical hardware for years.  Nor on virtual hardware.  It's time to
> choose a new king ...
>
> --lyndon

Systems development is not a zero-sum game


khm

Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[Alex Jordan]

On Jan 5, 2014, at 8:03 PM, Steven Stallion <sstallion@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 6:03 PM, Patryk Laurent <plaurent@me.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi Alex,
>> 
>> I just joined the list, and so I missed your question.  But I also opted for going with the vanilla distribution.  Enjoy -- it's been pretty fun so far!
>> 
>> Patryk
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On Jan 5, 2014, at 15:54, Alex Jordan <alexander3223098@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> On Mon Dec 30 21:03:24 EST 2013, alexander3223098@gmail.com wrote:
>>>> Basically, would you guys recommend I try the Bell Labs
>>>> distribution of Plan 9, 9front, or 9atom as my first installation?
>>> Since no one seems to have an opinion on this, I'm going with the Bell
>>> Labs distribution. We'll see how it goes.
>>> 
>>>> On Mon, Dec 30, 2013 at 8:33 PM, erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net> wrote:
>>>> well let me know if i can answer any questions or fix anything.  funny how we all get
>>>> pigeon holed.  i thought i did 9atom to support more hardware.  :-)
>>> Will do, thanks!
> 
> There are a few of us that still hold out hope for the Labs
> distribution. I use a locally modified version (you can find my
> patches under contrib/stallion/patch in sources - some are applied,
> some not). I'm fairly happy with it since I tend to hack on ARM more
> than anything else these days.
> 
> HTH,
> 
> Steve
Not to derail the discussion that this has now turned into, but it seems that the Ethernet card in the aforementioned server is too old, too esoteric, or simply hasn't had anyone around to bother writing a driver for it, and so wasn't recognized by the Bell Labs distribution or 9atom (both images downloaded today/yesterday - 1/5/14 - depending on your timezone). Do I have any other options, besides replacing the card with something known to work?
I've been considering going with 9front, to see if that helps, but I'd rather stick with something as close to the Bell Labs distribution as I can get, e.g. I'd really rather use Fossil+Venti, rather than whatever 9front has.
(I'd write a driver myself, but I am neither competent enough with C nor Plan 9 nor hardware interfaces to do so.)
Unfortunately, I'm at my dad's house, and the affected server is at my mom's house, so I can't give more information on the specific card. But I can give details, run commands, etc. after I get home from school tomorrow. I have a full installation on the affected box, so I can run Plan 9 tools; I just can't connect to the network.
Thanks.

Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[cinap_lenrek]

instead of randomly switching distributoins, why not investigate
what hardware is actually supported and install such hardware?

you can easily move drivers from 9atom or labs or 9front
any way arround. it doesnt matter.

rules of acquisition:

get a intel gigabit nic for example. look in the driver
what models are supported. buy it somewhere.

this would solve the problem much chaper than getting your
hardware to someone willing to write a driver for it. the
great nagus will agree.

--
cinap

Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[Alex Jordan]

On Jan 5, 2014, at 11:39 PM, cinap_lenrek@felloff.net wrote:

> instead of randomly switching distributoins, why not investigate
> what hardware is actually supported and install such hardware?
If you'll read my email again, you'll note that I mentioned this. I don't want to buy a new piece of hardware when I could fix the issue by using a different software stack, but if necessary, that's what I'll end up doing (buying the hardware).

Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[Paul Clark]

On Sun, Jan 05, 2014 at 11:49:49PM -0800, Alex Jordan wrote:
> If you'll read my email again, you'll note that I mentioned this. I don't want to buy a new piece of hardware when I could fix the issue by using a different software stack, but if necessary, that's what I'll end up doing (buying the hardware).
>

As someone also new to Plan 9 I have found the Raspberry Pi a
brilliant system to learn. I believe it is very close to the Vanilla
system. The entire computer cost less than the last network card I
bought. Although to be fair that was some years ago.

Paul Clark

P.S. Thank you Richard Miller.

Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[Dave Eckhardt]

> I mentioned this. I don't want to buy a new piece of hardware when
> I could fix the issue by using a different software stack, but if
> necessary, that's what I'll end up doing (buying the hardware).

Very frequently the problem is nothing more than missing case arms
in a couple of switch() statements.  The most recent one I submitted
was:

  http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sources/patch/applied/ether8169-macv34/

If you have a detailed PCI-device listing (obtainable via a BSD or
Linux live CD), it is pretty easy to figure out which driver should
be supporting your card and whether the reason it isn't is missing
case arms.  If you've been around the block a few times it takes
an hour or two to diagnose, patch, test, and submit the patch to
Bell Labs.

However, if you're just getting started it can take you a week or
two of fussing, which may compare unfavorably with picking up a
known-good Ethernet card for $5 from eBay/NewEgg/etc.  Having
a working Ethernet makes it easier for you to get started, and
once you're started you can go back and figure out what's wrong
with the built-in Ethernet.

Dave Eckhardt

Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[Richard Miller]

> get a intel gigabit nic for example.

or a cheap USB ethernet adapter - eg http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000Q6JRB6
works for me.

Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[erik quanstrom]

> Not to derail the discussion that this has now turned into, but it
> seems that the Ethernet card in the aforementioned server is too old,
> too esoteric, or simply hasn't had anyone around to bother writing a
> driver for it, and so wasn't recognized by the Bell Labs distribution
> or 9atom (both images downloaded today/yesterday - 1/5/14 - depending
> on your timezone).  Do I have any other options, besides replacing the
> card with something known to work?  I've been considering going with
> 9front, to see if that helps, but I'd rather stick with something as
> close to the Bell Labs distribution as I can get, e.g.  I'd really
> rather use Fossil+Venti, rather than whatever 9front has.  (I'd write
> a driver myself, but I am neither competent enough with C nor Plan 9
> nor hardware interfaces to do so.) Unfortunately, I'm at my dad's
> house, and the affected server is at my mom's house, so I can't give
> more information on the specific card.  But I can give details, run
> commands, etc.  after I get home from school tomorrow.  I have a full
> installation on the affected box, so I can run Plan 9 tools; I just
> can't connect to the network.  Thanks.

the output of "pci | grep net" should be enough.

- erik

Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[Alex Jordan]

On Jan 6, 2014, at 5:29 AM, erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net> wrote:
> the output of "pci | grep net" should be enough.
>
> - erik
term% pci | grep net
2.9.0:  net  02.00.00 1282/9102   3 0:0000d801 256 1:feaffc00 256
term%

Thanks, Erik. You've been very helpful and friendly. :)

Alex

[9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[Andrés Domínguez]

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El lunes, 6 de enero de 2014, Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon@orthanc.ca> escribió:
>
> But realistically, for how much longer?  The  past year has shown the
love is gone.  I haven't been able to run a labs distribution on physical
hardware for years.  Nor on virtual hardware.  It's time to choose a new
king ...

The Raspberry Pi is well supported and AFAIK changes are integrated in the
Labs distribution (thanks Richard). With x86 do as with any other OS, look
what's supported and buy it.

Andres

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Re: [9fans] Vanilla Plan 9 or one of the flavors?

[erik quanstrom]

> On Jan 6, 2014, at 5:29 AM, erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net> wrote:
> > the output of "pci | grep net" should be enough.
> >
> > - erik
> term% pci | grep net
> 2.9.0:  net  02.00.00 1282/9102   3 0:0000d801 256 1:feaffc00 256
> term%
>
> Thanks, Erik. You've been very helpful and friendly. :)
>

minooka; pci -v 1282/9102
1282/9102
	Davicom Semiconductor, Inc. 	21x4x DEC-Tulip compatible 10/100 Ethernet

ok, this is just a matter of adding a few bits to the existing tulip driver.
there are three bits that could be guessed at with hardware, but i'll see
if i can find a datasheet or something.

- erik