[9fans] plan 9 for linux users

[9fans] plan 9 for linux users

[ron minnich]

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Based on the response to my note re: things that act like strace, I'm going
to start accumulating a "plan 9 for linux users" doc. It helps to have a
guide it seems.

It's going to be .ms, not quite sure the right place to have it,
suggestions welcome.

The next suggestion, btw, is "Go read the factotum document". Don't make it
a superficial read. That was my mistake, years ago. Make very sure you
understand the magic trick it plays, because there's nothing like it in the
unix world, and it's very, very nice.

When I say "understand", I mean, "understand what happens in the kernel as
well as in factotum"

that paper rewards a careful read. I made the mistake of not doing that
careful read for far too long.

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Re: [9fans] plan 9 for linux users

[Ori Bernstein]

perhaps:

        https://shithub.us/garden/wiki.9front.org/HEAD/unix2plan9.md/f.html

Which is the source for:

        http://wiki.9front.org/unix2plan9

Everything under the garden/ user in shithub is
the community garden; everyone with an account
has sufficient access to fertilize any repo there
(by committing, of course) 

On Thu, 20 Feb 2025 09:09:31 -0800
ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:

> Based on the response to my note re: things that act like strace, I'm going
> to start accumulating a "plan 9 for linux users" doc. It helps to have a
> guide it seems.
> 
> It's going to be .ms, not quite sure the right place to have it,
> suggestions welcome.
> 
> The next suggestion, btw, is "Go read the factotum document". Don't make it
> a superficial read. That was my mistake, years ago. Make very sure you
> understand the magic trick it plays, because there's nothing like it in the
> unix world, and it's very, very nice.
> 
> When I say "understand", I mean, "understand what happens in the kernel as
> well as in factotum"
> 
> that paper rewards a careful read. I made the mistake of not doing that
> careful read for far too long.


-- 
Ori Bernstein <ori@eigenstate.org>

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[9fans] Re: plan 9 for linux users

[Alyssa M via 9fans]

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On Thursday, February 20, 2025, at 5:09 PM, ron minnich wrote:
> The next suggestion, btw, is "Go read the factotum document".
D'you mean this paper?
http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/auth ("Security in Plan 9")
I confess, I've only given it a superficial read - which may be why I don't really understand Plan 9 security. :)
Security stuff tends to make my head spin, but if it's really worth the effort, I'll have a go.

BTW,
I think cat-v has been feeling unwell for a few days...

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Re: [9fans] Re: plan 9 for linux users

[Matt Wilbur]

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On Thu, Feb 20, 2025 at 9:24 PM Alyssa M via 9fans <9fans@9fans.net> wrote:

> On Thursday, February 20, 2025, at 5:09 PM, ron minnich wrote:
>
> The next suggestion, btw, is "Go read the factotum document".
>
> D'you mean this paper?
> http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/auth ("Security in Plan 9")
> I confess, I've only given it a superficial read - which may be why I
> don't really understand Plan 9 security. :)
> Security stuff tends to make my head spin, but if it's really worth the
> effort, I'll have a go.
>

It’s a really good paper imho



>
> BTW,
> I think cat-v has been feeling unwell for a few days...
>
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Re: [9fans] Re: plan 9 for linux users

[Rob Pike]

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Happy to brag that the article won the best paper award at the 2002 Usenix
Security Symposium. Thank you, Ron, for calling out the uniqueness of
factotum. It's one piece of Plan 9 that, despite the recognition then,
hasn't migrated to the mainstream. SSH (or ssh-agent) has never felt as
good to me.

-rob


On Fri, Feb 21, 2025 at 6:24 AM Alyssa M via 9fans <9fans@9fans.net> wrote:

> On Thursday, February 20, 2025, at 5:09 PM, ron minnich wrote:
>
> The next suggestion, btw, is "Go read the factotum document".
>
> D'you mean this paper?
> http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/auth ("Security in Plan 9")
> I confess, I've only given it a superficial read - which may be why I
> don't really understand Plan 9 security. :)
> Security stuff tends to make my head spin, but if it's really worth the
> effort, I'll have a go.
>
> BTW,
> I think cat-v has been feeling unwell for a few days...
>
> *9fans <https://9fans.topicbox.com/latest>* / 9fans / see discussions
> <https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans> + participants
> <https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/members> + delivery options
> <https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription> Permalink
> <https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/Tabc159d56e7ead54-M4234e542d5bf48315b73cc37>
>

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Re: [9fans] plan 9 for linux users

[Dworkin Muller]

On Thu, 20 Feb 2025 09:09:31 -0800, ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:
rminnich> Based on the response to my note re: things that act like strace, I'm going
rminnich> to start accumulating a "plan 9 for linux users" doc. It helps to have a
rminnich> guide it seems.

Something that would be really helpful would be an explanation/
enumeration of the #<foo> namespace.  It took quite a while for me to
kind of get a handle on Unix' two-character device names, but there
was at least a relatively logical mapping to physical hardware names,
so knowing DEC's names for disk controllers and such usually made for
some mnemonic value.  Plan 9's mostly single-character names, with no
apparent connection to what they correspond to, have completely
flummoxed me more times than I care to count.  Yes, using the source
works.  It's not exactly convenient, however, especially when you have
no idea that there's one you need for some task rather than using the
ones you already know about....

Thanks.

Dworkin

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Re: [9fans] plan 9 for linux users

[Anthony Sorace]

On Feb 20, 2025, at 16:17, Dworkin Muller <dlm-9fans@weaselfish.com> wrote:
> 
> Plan 9's mostly single-character names, with no
> apparent connection to what they correspond to, have completely
> flummoxed me more times than I care to count.

A listing with a sentence or two per device and pointers to the corresponding man pages could certainly be helpful, also /dev/drivers, which is usually enough point in the right direction.

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Re: [9fans] plan 9 for linux users

[Alyssa M via 9fans]

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This might also help:
cd /sys/src/9
grep devattach */*.c | sed 's/(.*):.*attach\(L?''(.)'',.*;/\2 \1/' | sort
though it misses a few.
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Re: [9fans] plan 9 for linux users

[Shawn Rutledge]

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There’s also https://9p.io/wiki/plan9/Unix_to_Plan_9_command_translation/index.html FWIW; it doesn’t seem to be editable AFAICT.  Maybe it’s worthwhile to merge anything interesting from there into the garden wiki.

> On Feb 20, 2025, at 19:33, Ori Bernstein <ori@eigenstate.org> wrote:
> 
> perhaps:
> 
>        https://shithub.us/garden/wiki.9front.org/HEAD/unix2plan9.md/f.html
> 
> Which is the source for:
> 
>        http://wiki.9front.org/unix2plan9
> 
> Everything under the garden/ user in shithub is
> the community garden; everyone with an account
> has sufficient access to fertilize any repo there
> (by committing, of course) 
> 
> On Thu, 20 Feb 2025 09:09:31 -0800
> ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com <mailto:rminnich@gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>> Based on the response to my note re: things that act like strace, I'm going
>> to start accumulating a "plan 9 for linux users" doc. It helps to have a
>> guide it seems.
>> 
>> It's going to be .ms, not quite sure the right place to have it,
>> suggestions welcome.
>> 
>> The next suggestion, btw, is "Go read the factotum document". Don't make it
>> a superficial read. That was my mistake, years ago. Make very sure you
>> understand the magic trick it plays, because there's nothing like it in the
>> unix world, and it's very, very nice.
>> 
>> When I say "understand", I mean, "understand what happens in the kernel as
>> well as in factotum"
>> 
>> that paper rewards a careful read. I made the mistake of not doing that
>> careful read for far too long.
> 
> 
> --
> Ori Bernstein <ori@eigenstate.org <mailto:ori@eigenstate.org>>

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Re: [9fans] plan 9 for linux users

[Stuart Morrow]

On Fri, 21 Feb 2025 at 00:17, Dworkin Muller <dlm-9fans@weaselfish.com> wrote:
> Plan 9's mostly single-character names, with no
> apparent connection to what they correspond to,
> have completely flummoxed me more times

How is it different from flags?

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Re: [9fans] plan 9 for linux users

[Rodrigo G. López]

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enumeration? like the one on /dev/drivers?


-rodri

On Fri, Feb 21, 2025, 01:17 Dworkin Muller <dlm-9fans@weaselfish.com> wrote:

> On Thu, 20 Feb 2025 09:09:31 -0800, ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> rminnich> Based on the response to my note re: things that act like
> strace, I'm going
> rminnich> to start accumulating a "plan 9 for linux users" doc. It helps
> to have a
> rminnich> guide it seems.
> 
> Something that would be really helpful would be an explanation/
> enumeration of the #<foo> namespace.  It took quite a while for me to
> kind of get a handle on Unix' two-character device names, but there
> was at least a relatively logical mapping to physical hardware names,
> so knowing DEC's names for disk controllers and such usually made for
> some mnemonic value.  Plan 9's mostly single-character names, with no
> apparent connection to what they correspond to, have completely
> flummoxed me more times than I care to count.  Yes, using the source
> works.  It's not exactly convenient, however, especially when you have
> no idea that there's one you need for some task rather than using the
> ones you already know about....
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Dworkin

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Re: [9fans] plan 9 for linux users

[Dworkin Muller]

On Fri, 21 Feb 2025 12:21:45 +0000, Stuart Morrow <morrow.stuart@gmail.com> wrote:
morrow.stuart> How is it different from flags?

Well, typically flags are specific to some command, and are documented
somewhere.  Also, these get used as the first element in a path, and
are (or seem to be) used mostly in contexts where you're talking about
device-like things but before you have the usual devices per se
available.  I.e., I seem to run into them when dealing with trying to
figure out how to tell the boot environment what it should be looking
at.  That whole context really isn't very well documented, or at least
the documentation for it isn't available in any obvious place.  Very
much in the You Just Gotta Know(TM) category....

Caveat: it's been a couple of years since I last got excessively
frustrated with cruft like that and put Plan 9 aside in my attempts at
regular use.  I'm slowly getting around to making another attempt, but
things like that were major pain points for me.

Dworkin

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Re: [9fans] plan 9 for linux users

[Jacob Moody]

On 2/21/25 14:45, Dworkin Muller wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Feb 2025 12:21:45 +0000, Stuart Morrow <morrow.stuart@gmail.com> wrote:
> morrow.stuart> How is it different from flags?
> 
> Well, typically flags are specific to some command, and are documented
> somewhere.  Also, these get used as the first element in a path, and
> are (or seem to be) used mostly in contexts where you're talking about
> device-like things but before you have the usual devices per se
> available.  I.e., I seem to run into them when dealing with trying to
> figure out how to tell the boot environment what it should be looking
> at.  That whole context really isn't very well documented, or at least
> the documentation for it isn't available in any obvious place.  Very
> much in the You Just Gotta Know(TM) category....

This is not quite the case though, /dev/drivers gives you a mapping of the
single character names to their "full" names. This name then corresponds to
their entry within section 3 of the manual pages. Where you'll find specific
documentation of the device interface.


Thanks,
moody


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Re: [9fans] Re: plan 9 for linux users

[Dave Eckhardt]

> Thank you, Ron, for calling out the uniqueness of factotum.

I met factotum, and read that paper, after a couple years of
slogging through multi-layered authentication implemented as
dynamic libraries in C, including the fun of trying to point
a debugger at static functions inside dynamically-loaded
pluggable protocol modules, in code bases "managed" via
libtool, etc.

To my eyes it is one of the clearest examples of how being able
to ask the right question is more important than being able to
strap more thrust onto the nearest brick.

Dave Eckhardt

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Re: [9fans] plan 9 for linux users

[Skip Tavakkolian]

This topic was brought up a few years ago and some helpful suggestions
were made:

https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/Tc21478a4dc8e2df1-M53e7a145d7e726e30dd4bbed

On Thu, Feb 20, 2025 at 4:17 PM Dworkin Muller <dlm-9fans@weaselfish.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 20 Feb 2025 09:09:31 -0800, ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:
> rminnich> Based on the response to my note re: things that act like strace, I'm going
> rminnich> to start accumulating a "plan 9 for linux users" doc. It helps to have a
> rminnich> guide it seems.
> 
> Something that would be really helpful would be an explanation/
> enumeration of the #<foo> namespace.  It took quite a while for me to
> kind of get a handle on Unix' two-character device names, but there
> was at least a relatively logical mapping to physical hardware names,
> so knowing DEC's names for disk controllers and such usually made for
> some mnemonic value.  Plan 9's mostly single-character names, with no
> apparent connection to what they correspond to, have completely
> flummoxed me more times than I care to count.  Yes, using the source
> works.  It's not exactly convenient, however, especially when you have
> no idea that there's one you need for some task rather than using the
> ones you already know about....
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Dworkin

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Re: [9fans] plan 9 for linux users

[Dworkin Muller]

On Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:03:11 -0600, Jacob Moody <moody@posixcafe.org> wrote:
moody> This is not quite the case though, /dev/drivers gives you a mapping of the
moody> single character names to their "full" names. This name then corresponds to
moody> their entry within section 3 of the manual pages. Where you'll find specific
moody> documentation of the device interface.

Sure.  Once you have a system up and running, great (and I'm not sure
I've actually seen that described in any intro document).

However, I'm talking about the scenario where you know absolutely
nothing because you want to find out what this Plan 9 thing, and are
starting from scratch trying to get an initial installation booted on
hardware that may or may not be completely supported in the first
place, and have no idea what you're doing, but the few follow-by-rote
walkthroughs aren't quite working, and everything uses the #<foo>
names.

Dworkin

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Re: [9fans] plan 9 for linux users

[Dworkin Muller]

skip.tavakkolian@gmail.com wrote:
: This topic was brought up a few years ago and some helpful suggestions
: were made:

You may note that I'm the one that brought it up that time, too....

``Helpful'' is kind of relative.  They're great once you have a
functional enough system to be able to look through the source, etc,
but not so much when you're trying to figure out how to get your first
system to boot and install in the first place.  The context of the current
thread was essentially ``how to help people who don't know the Plan 9
universe'', not ``tell people who're trying to modify the system where
to find something''.  Very different contexts.

Dworkin

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Re: [9fans] plan 9 for linux users

[Jacob Moody]

On 2/21/25 17:14, Dworkin Muller wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:03:11 -0600, Jacob Moody <moody@posixcafe.org> wrote:
> moody> This is not quite the case though, /dev/drivers gives you a mapping of the
> moody> single character names to their "full" names. This name then corresponds to
> moody> their entry within section 3 of the manual pages. Where you'll find specific
> moody> documentation of the device interface.
> 
> Sure.  Once you have a system up and running, great (and I'm not sure
> I've actually seen that described in any intro document).
> 
> However, I'm talking about the scenario where you know absolutely
> nothing because you want to find out what this Plan 9 thing, and are
> starting from scratch trying to get an initial installation booted on
> hardware that may or may not be completely supported in the first
> place, and have no idea what you're doing, but the few follow-by-rote
> walkthroughs aren't quite working, and everything uses the #<foo>
> names.
> 

What do you mean everything uses these # names?
Can you provide some context on what parts of the terminal installation
process you felt like required knowledge of sharp paths?
What guides are you referring to?

If you have specific examples of sections where you felt lost while getting
the system setup for the first time, or where things were not exactly clear.
I'd be happy to take a look and see if we need to add some more context.


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Re: [9fans] plan 9 for linux users

[Dworkin Muller]

On Fri, 21 Feb 2025 22:45:54 -0600, Jacob Moody <moody@posixcafe.org> wrote:
moody> What do you mean everything uses these # names?
moody> Can you provide some context on what parts of the terminal installation
moody> process you felt like required knowledge of sharp paths?
moody> What guides are you referring to?

I vaguely recall I was either dealing with something where I had to
type paths into some sort of boot-shell like thing, or needing to hack
one of the early-boot rc scripts.  Unfortunately, it's been a few
years.  When I get back around to dinking with a Plan 9 system, I'll
try to keep better notes.

Dworkin

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Re: [9fans] plan 9 for linux users

[tlaronde]

On Fri, Feb 21, 2025 at 02:31:04PM -0800, Skip Tavakkolian wrote:
> This topic was brought up a few years ago and some helpful suggestions
> were made:
> 
> https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/Tc21478a4dc8e2df1-M53e7a145d7e726e30dd4bbed
> 

The keyboard is assigned L'b' (for pc and sgi), and in ppc/devirq.c,
the device is assigned 'b'.

But it is the same character 'b', no?

Depending on the archs, the character assignment may differ?

Could the characters be defined, uniquely, in a machine independent
header file via defines? Or is there a technical reason---these are
supposed to be manipulated by the kernel for initial mounting, and not
by user so better not be too advertized, or there are more arch
dependent devices than common ones, so it would be much ado about
nothing, the majority of definitions being of no interest for the
code---that prevents this to be done?


> On Thu, Feb 20, 2025 at 4:17?PM Dworkin Muller <dlm-9fans@weaselfish.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, 20 Feb 2025 09:09:31 -0800, ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:
> > rminnich> Based on the response to my note re: things that act like strace, I'm going
> > rminnich> to start accumulating a "plan 9 for linux users" doc. It helps to have a
> > rminnich> guide it seems.
> > 
> > Something that would be really helpful would be an explanation/
> > enumeration of the #<foo> namespace.  It took quite a while for me to
> > kind of get a handle on Unix' two-character device names, but there
> > was at least a relatively logical mapping to physical hardware names,
> > so knowing DEC's names for disk controllers and such usually made for
> > some mnemonic value.  Plan 9's mostly single-character names, with no
> > apparent connection to what they correspond to, have completely
> > flummoxed me more times than I care to count.  Yes, using the source
> > works.  It's not exactly convenient, however, especially when you have
> > no idea that there's one you need for some task rather than using the
> > ones you already know about....
> > 
> > Thanks.
> > 
> > Dworkin

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

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Re: [9fans] plan 9 for linux users

[Frank D. Engel, Jr.]

I view these driver identifier characters as being roughly the 
equivalent of the major device numbers used in UNIX/Linux systems behind 
the scenes, commonly accessed via the files under the /dev heirarchy.

I don't think those numbers are really standardized either.


On 2/22/25 04:10, tlaronde@kergis.com wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 21, 2025 at 02:31:04PM -0800, Skip Tavakkolian wrote:
>> This topic was brought up a few years ago and some helpful suggestions
>> were made:
>>
>> https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/Tc21478a4dc8e2df1-M53e7a145d7e726e30dd4bbed
>>
> The keyboard is assigned L'b' (for pc and sgi), and in ppc/devirq.c,
> the device is assigned 'b'.
>
> But it is the same character 'b', no?
>
> Depending on the archs, the character assignment may differ?
>
> Could the characters be defined, uniquely, in a machine independent
> header file via defines? Or is there a technical reason---these are
> supposed to be manipulated by the kernel for initial mounting, and not
> by user so better not be too advertized, or there are more arch
> dependent devices than common ones, so it would be much ado about
> nothing, the majority of definitions being of no interest for the
> code---that prevents this to be done?
>
>
>> On Thu, Feb 20, 2025 at 4:17?PM Dworkin Muller <dlm-9fans@weaselfish.com> wrote:
>>> On Thu, 20 Feb 2025 09:09:31 -0800, ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> rminnich> Based on the response to my note re: things that act like strace, I'm going
>>> rminnich> to start accumulating a "plan 9 for linux users" doc. It helps to have a
>>> rminnich> guide it seems.
>>>
>>> Something that would be really helpful would be an explanation/
>>> enumeration of the #<foo> namespace.  It took quite a while for me to
>>> kind of get a handle on Unix' two-character device names, but there
>>> was at least a relatively logical mapping to physical hardware names,
>>> so knowing DEC's names for disk controllers and such usually made for
>>> some mnemonic value.  Plan 9's mostly single-character names, with no
>>> apparent connection to what they correspond to, have completely
>>> flummoxed me more times than I care to count.  Yes, using the source
>>> works.  It's not exactly convenient, however, especially when you have
>>> no idea that there's one you need for some task rather than using the
>>> ones you already know about....
>>>
>>> Thanks.
>>>
>>> Dworkin

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Re: [9fans] plan 9 for linux users

[ori]

'#' paths aren't namespaceable, so they should be used very rarely in
the system. 

Quoth Dworkin Muller <dworkin@weaselfish.com>:
> On Fri, 21 Feb 2025 22:45:54 -0600, Jacob Moody <moody@posixcafe.org> wrote:
> moody> What do you mean everything uses these # names?
> moody> Can you provide some context on what parts of the terminal installation
> moody> process you felt like required knowledge of sharp paths?
> moody> What guides are you referring to?
> 
> I vaguely recall I was either dealing with something where I had to
> type paths into some sort of boot-shell like thing, or needing to hack
> one of the early-boot rc scripts.  Unfortunately, it's been a few
> years.  When I get back around to dinking with a Plan 9 system, I'll
> try to keep better notes.
> 
> Dworkin

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Re: [9fans] plan 9 for linux users

[ron minnich]

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One thing we've discussed, many times over the years,  is creating a small
box that would bootstrap a network of Plan 9 systems, i.e. "9 in a box". It
would use coraid ether console (CEC), so no need to find a serial port
adapter.

You would get the box, put it on your network, connect to its console over
ethernet, and use it to bootstrap an fs, cpu servers, and then a term. The
box itself would be the auth server.

Plan 9 makes light use of file systems. I remember at lsub in 2011, they
had a 32G coraid, and, their previous 10 years work was not close to
filling it up.

32G is tiny nowadays, it's a small fraction of an SD card. The
bootstrap box could easily hold the storage needed to get a full multi-host
network going.

The device itself could be one of the many rpi or other boards. I just
bought a $40 board with 32G DS, 4G memory --  this would  be ideal.

This might get around the "I have this USB stick, now what" "first mile"
problem.

On Sat, Feb 22, 2025 at 8:32 AM <ori@eigenstate.org> wrote:

> '#' paths aren't namespaceable, so they should be used very rarely in
> the system.
>
> Quoth Dworkin Muller <dworkin@weaselfish.com>:
> > On Fri, 21 Feb 2025 22:45:54 -0600, Jacob Moody <moody@posixcafe.org>
> wrote:
> > moody> What do you mean everything uses these # names?
> > moody> Can you provide some context on what parts of the terminal
> installation
> > moody> process you felt like required knowledge of sharp paths?
> > moody> What guides are you referring to?
> >
> > I vaguely recall I was either dealing with something where I had to
> > type paths into some sort of boot-shell like thing, or needing to hack
> > one of the early-boot rc scripts.  Unfortunately, it's been a few
> > years.  When I get back around to dinking with a Plan 9 system, I'll
> > try to keep better notes.
> >
> > Dworkin

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Re: [9fans] plan 9 for linux users

[Alyssa M via 9fans]

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On Friday, February 21, 2025, at 11:14 PM, Dworkin Muller wrote:
> However, I'm talking about the scenario where you know absolutely
nothing because you want to find out what this Plan 9 thing, and are
starting from scratch trying to get an initial installation booted on
hardware that may or may not be completely supported in the first
place, and have no idea what you're doing, but the few follow-by-rote
walkthroughs aren't quite working, and everything uses the #<foo>
names.
Perhaps start with something easier?

The Raspberry Pi is very cheap and available and runs Plan 9 from a standard binary image with no need to mess with anything more than copying the image onto a memory stick and plugging it in.
I think I got from switch-on to typing in a window without having to do anything more than maybe press ENTER once.
I have a couple on my desk: a RPi2 running Richard Miller's classic Plan 9, and a RPi4 running 9front. 
I didn't have to do anything involving #<foo> names to get these running.
(Blessings to the people who made this possible!)

I don't know whether Richard Miller's Edition will run on the later (64bit) RPis, or whether 9front works on the RPi5 yet. You'd have to ask someone who knows. The 9front images are on the releases page of 9front.org.

When you've got used to that for a while it may be easier to get it working on the hardware of your choice.
I don't think I've reached that point myself yet...
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Re: [9fans] plan 9 for linux users

[Jacob Moody]

On 2/22/25 15:45, Alyssa M via 9fans wrote:
> On Friday, February 21, 2025, at 11:14 PM, Dworkin Muller wrote:
>> However, I'm talking about the scenario where you know absolutely nothing because you want to find out what this Plan 9 thing, and are starting from scratch trying to get an initial installation booted on hardware that may or may not be completely supported in the first place, and have no idea what you're doing, but the few follow-by-rote walkthroughs aren't quite working, and everything uses the #<foo> names.
> Perhaps start with something easier?
> 
> The Raspberry Pi is very cheap and available and runs Plan 9 from a standard binary image with no need to mess with anything more than copying the image onto a memory stick and plugging it in.
> I think I got from switch-on to typing in a window without having to do anything more than maybe press ENTER once.
> I have a couple on my desk: a RPi2 running Richard Miller's classic Plan 9, and a RPi4 running 9front.
> I didn't have to do anything involving #<foo> names to get these running.
> (Blessings to the people who made this possible!)
> 
> I don't know whether Richard Miller's Edition will run on the later (64bit) RPis, or whether 9front works on the RPi5 yet. You'd have to ask someone who knows. The 9front images are on the releases page of 9front.org.

9front does not run on the rpi5 and there hasn't been anyone interested so far in doing the port work.
In general I advise against using a pi as the introduction, modern pis are quite expensive compared to what you're getting
and 9front community members which have worked on the rpi have had a consistent stream of frustration and flakiness in their
performance and documentation.

Once upon a time the pi was fairly cheap and easier to get compared to usable amd64 machine but I don't think that is the
case anymore. You can grab pretty much any used thinkpad off ebay, many of which you'll find cheaper compared to the price of
a pi4 or pi5, and you'll get much better bang for your buck.

Or better, if you're just exploring use a VM and connect via drawterm. That's fairly consistent and you don't have to deal with
potentially incompatible hardware. Hardware accelerated VMs are really quite good these days.

At this point I would only suggest getting a pi if you either want to use Richard Miller's distribution or have a particular interest/need
for arm or arm64 9front. Not worth the headache if you actually want to use it for something.


Thanks,
moody


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Re: [9fans] plan 9 for linux users

[Shawn Rutledge]

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> On Feb 23, 2025, at 01:07, Jacob Moody <moody@posixcafe.org> wrote:
> 
> 9front does not run on the rpi5 and there hasn't been anyone interested so far in doing the port work.

That’s a bummer, but I understand.  It has to be interesting to someone who knows where to start.  And they do have the reputation for not being open enough.

But there are so many other ARM boards to choose from!  Just pick the one that has the most complete docs I guess?  (Board, CPU, GPU etc)

Surely the pinephone must be inevitable at some point?

I’d like to be able to use one of the Risc V boards.  I have a VisionFive 2 and a Banana Pi, and am not getting much use out of either one so far.  (Linux runs fine, but most of the time there’s no particular reason compelling me to turn it on.  They do not outperform the pi’s.)  I thought maybe I’d try to work with the assembler at some point, but keep putting it off… no compelling reason except to understand the architecture better.

What about the risc-v version of this https://www.clockworkpi.com/product-page/uconsole-kit-r-01

Or the MNT Pocket Reform… I haven’t been able to think of a good enough reason why I should get one, but it looks nice.

I’ve gotten plenty of use from the pi 3 and 4 though: it’s great to have 9front on them.


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Re: [9fans] plan 9 for linux users

[Kurt H Maier via 9fans]

On Sun, Feb 23, 2025 at 08:20:29PM +0100, Shawn Rutledge wrote:
> What about the risc-v version of this
> https://www.clockworkpi.com/product-page/uconsole-kit-r-01
          
I own this.  I have not been able to get anything but linux to run on   
it.
          
> Or the MNT Pocket Reform… I haven’t been able to think of a good
> enough reason why I should get one, but it looks nice.
          
The original MNT Reform with the imx8mq chip runs 9front very well and  
is my daily driver.  I don't think anyone has tried a Pocket.
          
khm

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Re: [9fans] plan 9 for linux users

[Anthony Sorace]

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On Feb 23, 2025, at 11:43, Shawn Rutledge <lists@ecloud.org> wrote:
> 
> Surely the pinephone must be inevitable at some point?

Someone’s actively working on a 9front port: 

https://github.com/driusan/9front-A64

He was making good progress but seems to have broken his power button which might slow things down. I think I’ve seen him post on here, but I wouldn’t swear to it. I haven’t had a chance to try on mine yet.

I’ve run Richard's port on lots of different pi with good results, but it doesn’t do the 5, either. The 4 makes a really wonderful terminal. 
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