[9fans] Plan 9/Inferno Birds of a Feather at OSDI: Summary

[9fans] Plan 9/Inferno Birds of a Feather at OSDI: Summary

[Eric Van Hensbergen]

Okay, I'm a really bad person and didn't take any sort of good notes
on things.  I apologize in advance for omissions and
misinterpretations.

There was maybe a dozen or so people that attended the BoF, but we
were fortunate to have lots of folks who have worked or are actively
working on Plan 9.

As far as new stuff, I think the most exciting piece was Ron's
discussion (and demonstration) of his Xen Plan 9 port.  Overall it
seems much snappier than vmware and Ron is actively working to get the
code released.  In addition to the discussion and demo, there was some
discussion on hypervisors, para-virtualization and why this is a good
thing for Plan 9.

I talked a bit about progress with v9fs (Linux support for 9P2000),
and it seemed like the general consensus that this combined with Russ'
plan9port applications are a really good thing.

I also talked a bit about the stuff that I'm doing as part of my
research - namely looking at using 9P to share resources between
para-virtualized partitions.

Ron Minnich talked a bit about 9grid along with talking about the
status of DOE funding for 64-bit compilers and a 64-bit Opteron port. 
The short summary is there has been a bureaucratic snag with the funds
- but hopefully it'll be straighted out real soon now and things can
really get going.

The general consensus on the 9grid stuff is it really needs someone to
step up and kinda take ownership of doing some of the logistical
overhead (setting up accounts, answering setup questions, etc.)

Geoff told us a bit about 9netics and what they are working on. 
Sounds like he, Brucee, and Skip have found a way to be paid for
working on Plan 9 stuff.

As far as core Plan 9 progress goes - there seems to be a steady
stream of patches and fixes going into the code.  There are mechanisms
to see what changes are going in on a day to day basis, but there is
not always a good description of why the changes went in.  I'm going
to work on trying to come up with some sort of automated digest of the
changes and post them to the plan9dev mailing list on a weekly basis.

One of the biggest problem with the code at this point is that it has
drifted out of sync with the documentation.  If people are looking to
help out, going over the documentation, man pages, and wiki and
aligning them with reality would be a great service to the community.

There was a little discussion on what happens when Lucent shuts off
the lights.  There seems to be a high level of confidence that all the
vital pieces have been replicated by enough folks that we could have
core community services (web, wiki, and more importantly sources) back
up within a few days.

We talked a bit about the FOAF/web-of-trust authentication model.  And
it seemed that folks thought that this was a bad idea.  We really need
to try using the existing centralized authentication facilities as a
community.  Let's not create problems that may or may not exist.

That's about it.  There was some other discussions, but memory is
fuzzy.  Other folks that were there please feel free to fill in any of
the details I might have missed or misinterpreted.

          -eric

Re: [9fans] Plan 9/Inferno Birds of a Feather at OSDI: Summary

[Jack Johnson]

On Tue, 7 Dec 2004 11:30:16 -0600, Eric Van Hensbergen <ericvh@gmail.com> wrote:
> One of the biggest problem with the code at this point is that it has
> drifted out of sync with the documentation.  If people are looking to
> help out, going over the documentation, man pages, and wiki and
> aligning them with reality would be a great service to the community.

My coding skills are sketchy at best and I don't have a ton of free
time, but I would be more than willing to put in some time on the
documentation, as long as someone else could follow behind me and
ensure that I don't blaspheme or outright lie.

Profanity is OK, though.

-Jack

Re: [9fans] Plan 9/Inferno Birds of a Feather at OSDI: Summary

[Vester Thacker]

On Tue, 7 Dec 2004 15:49:49 -0800, Jack Johnson <knapjack@gmail.com> wrote:
<cut>
> but I would be more than willing to put in some time on the
> documentation, as long as someone else could follow behind me and
> ensure that I don't blaspheme or outright lie.

Count me in. I would like to help with documentation.

-vester

Re: [9fans] Plan 9/Inferno Birds of a Feather at OSDI: Summary

[Christopher Nielsen]

That is my long-term goal, yes.

On Thu, Dec 09, 2004 at 12:39:41PM +0900, Kenji Okamoto wrote:
> 
> By the way, are you going to create movie/sound editting software
> for Plan 9?   I suppose it must be a very big project...

-- 
Christopher Nielsen
"They who can give up essential liberty for temporary
safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Benjamin Franklin

Re: [9fans] Plan 9/Inferno Birds of a Feather at OSDI: Summary

[Kenji Okamoto]

> Actually, it doesn't. It can decode and parse an mp4
> stream, but it cannot create or modify an mp4 container.
> 
> The only libraries I've seen are libmp4v2 from mpeg4ip,
> which is what faac uses, and quicktime4linux, which
> while written in C is a really ugly interface.

By the way, are you going to create movie/sound editting software
for Plan 9?   I suppose it must be a very big project...

Kenji

Re: [9fans] Plan 9/Inferno Birds of a Feather at OSDI: Summary

[Christopher Nielsen]

On Thu, Dec 09, 2004 at 10:55:05AM +0900, Kenji Okamoto wrote:
> > I've poked around for a reasonable mp4 library in C
> > and didn't find one, so I may write a native plan9
> > version.
> 
> MPlayer-1.0pre5 has it.

Actually, it doesn't. It can decode and parse an mp4
stream, but it cannot create or modify an mp4 container.

The only libraries I've seen are libmp4v2 from mpeg4ip,
which is what faac uses, and quicktime4linux, which
while written in C is a really ugly interface.

-- 
Christopher Nielsen
"They who can give up essential liberty for temporary
safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Benjamin Franklin

Re: [9fans] Plan 9/Inferno Birds of a Feather at OSDI: Summary

[Kenji Okamoto]

> Quicktime for Windows, available as a free download from www.apple.com, 
> will let you play MP4 files on WinXP.

I checked it, too, and found two versions for free and product.
And then, I avoided them.  Next I tried Inter Video DVD(?) which works as
a plugin for Windows Media Player.   I chose it.   This is because I'd like 
to be most lazy for WinXP, which means one soft for one kind of task.☺

Kenji

Re: [9fans] Plan 9/Inferno Birds of a Feather at OSDI: Summary

[Andrew Simmons]

>Anyway, I had thought WinXP must have everything what we can do
>on PC, however, that's MediaPlayer could not do it, then, I tried Linux,
>and either could not.   Then, I tired the newest version of MPlayer, and
>then, I could see that Rob's movie on mt Linux box...
>
>Kenji

Quicktime for Windows, available as a free download from www.apple.com, 
will let you play MP4 files on WinXP.

Re: [9fans] Plan 9/Inferno Birds of a Feather at OSDI: Summary

[Kenji Okamoto]

> I've poked around for a reasonable mp4 library in C
> and didn't find one, so I may write a native plan9
> version.

MPlayer-1.0pre5 has it.
I know this because I had to play around to see Vester's movie of Rob
at Tokyo.☺   He must have used Mac to produce that mp4 movie.
I tried first my T42, Oh! saddly it's going not the product of IBM, but
someone in China.  If I knew it before, I never bought T42!
Anyway, I had thought WinXP must have everything what we can do
on PC, however, that's MediaPlayer could not do it, then, I tried Linux,
and either could not.   Then, I tired the newest version of MPlayer, and
then, I could see that Rob's movie on mt Linux box...

Kenji

Re: [9fans] Plan 9/Inferno Birds of a Feather at OSDI: Summary

[Christopher Nielsen]

I've been working on porting codecs and multimedia in
general. It is mostly just audio, at this point, but I
will probably be starting on video in the near future.

Currently ported:
libogg-1.1.2
libvorbis-1.1.0
flac-1.1.1
bladeenc-0.94.2
faac-1.24
oggenc

I've poked around for a reasonable mp4 library in C
and didn't find one, so I may write a native plan9
version.

When I ripped and encoded my CD collection, I decided
to use FLAC because it's lossless, so my music library
is made up of whole CDs ripped and encoded in FLAC. As
you can imagine, that's very cumbersome. I've been
going through the process of splitting the albums into
tracks, re-encoding them in ogg, and tagging the
files. I have a (currently) rough rc script that does
all of this automagically based on data from a cue
sheet. I intend to add cddb/freedb support and
parallelise it a bit such that you can give it a list
of cpu servers and it will spread the encoding process
across them.

I also have plans for a streaming audio server akin to
icecast or shoutcast. The nice part is it can probably
be easily written as an rc script.

I have quite a few other works-in-progress, but I
don't really feel they're worth mentioning until I
have more code.

On Tue, Dec 07, 2004 at 11:30:16AM -0600, Eric Van Hensbergen wrote:
> 
> 
> Okay, I'm a really bad person and didn't take any sort of good notes
> on things.  I apologize in advance for omissions and
> misinterpretations.
> 
> There was maybe a dozen or so people that attended the BoF, but we
> were fortunate to have lots of folks who have worked or are actively
> working on Plan 9.
> 
> As far as new stuff, I think the most exciting piece was Ron's
> discussion (and demonstration) of his Xen Plan 9 port.  Overall it
> seems much snappier than vmware and Ron is actively working to get the
> code released.  In addition to the discussion and demo, there was some
> discussion on hypervisors, para-virtualization and why this is a good
> thing for Plan 9.
> 
> I talked a bit about progress with v9fs (Linux support for 9P2000),
> and it seemed like the general consensus that this combined with Russ'
> plan9port applications are a really good thing.
> 
> I also talked a bit about the stuff that I'm doing as part of my
> research - namely looking at using 9P to share resources between
> para-virtualized partitions.
> 
> Ron Minnich talked a bit about 9grid along with talking about the
> status of DOE funding for 64-bit compilers and a 64-bit Opteron port.
> The short summary is there has been a bureaucratic snag with the funds
> - but hopefully it'll be straighted out real soon now and things can
> really get going.
> 
> The general consensus on the 9grid stuff is it really needs someone to
> step up and kinda take ownership of doing some of the logistical
> overhead (setting up accounts, answering setup questions, etc.)
> 
> Geoff told us a bit about 9netics and what they are working on.
> Sounds like he, Brucee, and Skip have found a way to be paid for
> working on Plan 9 stuff.
> 
> As far as core Plan 9 progress goes - there seems to be a steady
> stream of patches and fixes going into the code.  There are mechanisms
> to see what changes are going in on a day to day basis, but there is
> not always a good description of why the changes went in.  I'm going
> to work on trying to come up with some sort of automated digest of the
> changes and post them to the plan9dev mailing list on a weekly basis.
> 
> One of the biggest problem with the code at this point is that it has
> drifted out of sync with the documentation.  If people are looking to
> help out, going over the documentation, man pages, and wiki and
> aligning them with reality would be a great service to the community.
> 
> There was a little discussion on what happens when Lucent shuts off
> the lights.  There seems to be a high level of confidence that all the
> vital pieces have been replicated by enough folks that we could have
> core community services (web, wiki, and more importantly sources) back
> up within a few days.
> 
> We talked a bit about the FOAF/web-of-trust authentication model.  And
> it seemed that folks thought that this was a bad idea.  We really need
> to try using the existing centralized authentication facilities as a
> community.  Let's not create problems that may or may not exist.
> 
> That's about it.  There was some other discussions, but memory is
> fuzzy.  Other folks that were there please feel free to fill in any of
> the details I might have missed or misinterpreted.
> 
>           -eric
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Christopher Nielsen
> "They who can give up essential liberty for temporary
> safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Benjamin Franklin

-- 
Christopher Nielsen
"They who can give up essential liberty for temporary
safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Benjamin Franklin