Re: [9fans] So, once I've got the OS up how do I...

Re: [9fans] So, once I've got the OS up how do I...

[Jonathan Sergent]

>Main reason I remember was the story of a fellow grad
>student, George Goebel, who Tom said hacked together
>a dual cpu VAX, essentially adding another cookie
>sheet sized board.

I'm sure some here are already familiar with this, but here is the
reference:
	A Dual Processor VAX-11/780
	George H. Goble, Michael H. Marsh
	http://ghg.ecn.purdue.edu/~ghg/vax/paper.html

See also the rest of GHG's web site, at
	http://ghg.ecn.purdue.edu/
	http://ghg.ecn.purdue.edu/~ghg/ghg2.html
for things like pictures of barbecue grills.


--jss.

Re: [9fans] So, once I've got the OS up how do I...

[Douglas A. Gwyn]

Jonathan Sergent wrote:
>         A Dual Processor VAX-11/780

Yeah, Chuck Kennedy built one of those at BRL.
It was asymmetric; interrupts were all handled on the same
processor.
It's interesting that there was a time period during which
minicomputer speed was essentially topped out (around 1 MIPS),
so it made sense to work on speed-improvement hacks.  But in
later years, processor speed increased while prices dropped
at such a rate that such hackery became uneconomic.

Re: [9fans] So, once I've got the OS up how do I...

[Boyd Roberts]

> Seriously, can anybody explain why a rational person would buy a Real
> Commercial Database?

it's so that you can contract a lot of Real Commercial Database Administrators
and pay them a fortune to live in the 60's and have everything non-automated
by them.  that's what i call 'progress'.

can anyone spell 'cron'?

Re: [9fans] So, once I've got the OS up how do I...

[Boyd Roberts]

> - ye olde codger (what ever happened to VSAM?)

it was alive and well in 1994 on solaris.  that was one ghastly project.

i can remember asking myself, 'but why would you ever want one'?.
setting them up is a major exercise.

i remember some IBM types at basser once in the early '80s.  they
saw piers lauder type:

    ring <someone>

and in under a second the 11/780 had grep'd out the line containing <someone>
from a text file.  the IBM guys were aghast: what is that DBMS? etc etc etc...

we, of course, were laughing ourselves sick.

Re: [9fans] So, once I've got the OS up how do I...

[Douglas A. Gwyn]

geoff@x.bell-labs.com wrote:
> Forgive me for pulling a Boyd or two.  This new-fangled RAM stuff is
> crap; it can't even retain its contents across a power outage of a few
> seconds, let alone hours.  Gimme that old core memory any day; I don't
> need particularly fast memory (or processors).  That was *real*
> technology.

What we have, especially evident these days, is a multi-tiered
cache.  The inner cache will *always* be volatile, e.g. machine
registers.  At some point as one moves away from the inside, a
nonvolatile cache is reached.  That's where stuff has to be
flushed to if you want it to last.

> Seriously, can anybody explain why a rational person would buy
> a Real Commercial Database?

Because it's a lot of work to develop one's own high-quality
DBMS.  DBMSes are in fact necessary for many real applications,
the canonical example being an airline reservation system, but
smaller examples occur a lot.  Unfortunately, researchers often
don't let themselves get involved in big problems like that, so
they miss the experience.

Re: [9fans] So, once I've got the OS up how do I...

[Scott Schwartz]

| I compare DNS, resolver libraries and socket calls to cs, the networking
| devices, and dial(). This sounds great when describing what happens on
| a local machine, but things really kick off when cs and the network
| devices are mounted across the network.

Agreed.  And telco really drives the point home.

Re: [9fans] So, once I've got the OS up how do I...

[kim kubik]

-----Original Message-----
From: rob pike <rob@plan9.bell-labs.com>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Date: Wednesday, February 07, 2001 5:32 PM
Subject: Re: [9fans] So, once I've got the OS up how do I...


>I'm a little disturbed by these questions.  It's not that I doubt
>you'll get asked them, it's that Plan 9 will lose any feature fight.
>What makes the system interesting is how it does things.
>It's a hard sell but it can be done.
>-rob

This sort of reminds me of something one of the physicists
I used to work with said, talking about 'Black
Tuesday' when he was in grad school at Purdue in the
mid-1970s.  That was the day they got their v7 Unix
tape, installed it, and NONE of their v6 programs ran!

Main reason I remember was the story of a fellow grad
student, George Goebel, who Tom said hacked together
a dual cpu VAX, essentially adding another cookie
sheet sized board. (George Goebel was the name of a
1950s TV comedian, Lonesome George, and the Gibson
company made a small guitar for his short stature.
Those rare guitars are now extremely collectable and
worth a small fortune - that's what jogged my memory).

DEC people came out and looked at the hack, returned to
Rte. 128 and made something similar, except in order for
the customers to think they were getting their money's
worth, DEC put the thing in a second refrigerator sized
case, mostly air of course, but then no one could open
it except a certified DEC technician. And almost doubled
the price.

Back to original p9 "hard sell". This story came from
sometime in the later part of the 1970s. Figure p9 will
have to sit "underground" about as long before the nickel
drops as it did with Unix. After all, I think the quote
from the original ACM article on Unix said like, "Unix
can run on hardware costing as little as $40,000"

I've got my credit card ready.

Re: [9fans] So, once I've got the OS up how do I...

[Steve Kilbane]

rob wrote:
> You can help propagate the message by talking about how the system
> works.  Tell stories about how the pieces fit together, how they solve
> problems by design rather than attack by overwhelming features.

I agree. These days, when attempting to explain the appeal of Plan 9,
I compare DNS, resolver libraries and socket calls to cs, the networking
devices, and dial(). This sounds great when describing what happens on
a local machine, but things really kick off when cs and the network
devices are mounted across the network.

steve

Re: [9fans] So, once I've got the OS up how do I...

[nemo]

: Prolog no.  (Someone is going to ask you about Prolog?  Really?)

Errr... What about prolog? ☺

just kidding, I used to use it.

Re: [9fans] So, once I've got the OS up how do I...

[Mike Haertel]

>Seriously, can anybody explain why a rational person would buy a Real
>Commercial Database?  (`Because all the other lemmings are doing it'
>isn't a sufficiently-good answer.)  I've been waiting 25 years for
>such an answer and haven't got one yet.

I have mixed feelings about the utility of both the relational
model and SQL.  Every time I've tried to use the relational model
I've almost immediately wanted to do some kind of query that fell
outside the scope of the model, and the amazingly baroque SQL
"SELECT" statement has always rubbed me the wrong way--the closest
I ever came to happiness with the relational model was when I
implemented a small, clean query language, having nothing whatever
to do with SQL, as a set of Unix shell commands.  Even there I ran
up against fundamental limitations of the relational model, and
haven't messed with any of that stuff for years.

However, the other feature that Real Commercial Databases provide
is atomic transactions, and those are valuable.  If I was, say, a
bank, and I needed to do some kind of double entry bookkeeping,
updating multiple tables for each transaction, I would definitely
want the ability to ensure that either all updates succeeded, or all
failed, with no halfway inconsistent states.

One problem I see with the Real Commercial Databases is that they
typically provide a plethora of features, but to use any single
feature you pretty much have to buy into the whole Real Commercial
Database way of thinking.  So people get confused about what it is
they are really getting out of the Real Commercial Databases, and
why they are using them, and the result is that the whole field is
awash with various poorly founded beliefs about what the costs and
benefits are.  It is also so buzzword-complete that it's sometimes
hard to tell what people are talking about.  Here are some sample
definitions:

buzzword			definition
========			==========
relational model		"good"
ACID guarantees			"good"
client-server			"good"
web-enabled			"good"

Re: [9fans] So, once I've got the OS up how do I...

[geoff]

Forgive me for pulling a Boyd or two.  This new-fangled RAM stuff is
crap; it can't even retain its contents across a power outage of a few
seconds, let alone hours.  Gimme that old core memory any day; I don't
need particularly fast memory (or processors).  That was *real*
technology.

I would hope that we wouldn't saddle Plan 9 with a Real Commercial
Database™.  In thirty years of programming computers, I've never seen
a problem that I thought would be better solved using a database.  The
Real Commercial Databases like Oracle seem to require massive machines
to achieve even mediocre performance, they lock up your data in binary
form, and require you to use some abortion like ODBC or SQL to get at
*your* data.

I can see the utility in using an index to look up a record quickly by
key.  This doesn't require a Real Commercial Database, however.  And
why would I want to have to fight my way through SQL or buy the
largest machine Sun makes or hire a full-time DBA to maintain schema
or pay an enormous licensing fee for the privilege?

Seriously, can anybody explain why a rational person would buy a Real
Commercial Database?  (`Because all the other lemmings are doing it'
isn't a sufficiently-good answer.)  I've been waiting 25 years for
such an answer and haven't got one yet.

- ye olde codger (what ever happened to VSAM?)

Re: [9fans] So, once I've got the OS up how do I...

[Dan Cross]

In article <200102080105.UAA03200@smtp3.fas.harvard.edu> you write:
>	Q3.	Is the Plan 9 <> Linux software reliable?
>
>I don't understand the question.

I won't add much to this, except to state that I've found Drawterm
pretty unreliable.  It's a lot better to run an actual Plan 9 terminal.

>troff, tex, gs, basically what you'd expect.
>I write my presentations in Postscript, but I'm an outlier.

``This is a manly lab, and we write manly papers in a manly page
  description, in a manly way....''

Umm, apologies to the uptown guys at Saturday Night Live.
LES represent.

>Rexx no.

Seriously?  Rexx?  Wow.

>Prolog no.  (Someone is going to ask you about Prolog?  Really?)

Not terribly surprising.  Prolog is kind of cool.

One solution to that is to try and port Terzo, which is an
implementation of Lambda prolog.  It's written in SML, and might come
over with the Moscow ML port....  It probably requires the compiler
component, though, which isn't un Russ' port.  I got it to work on my
system without too much hassle, though (the Moscow ML compiler that is;
I haven't tried to port Terzo, which uses the SML/NJ compilation system,
which I think is included in mosml).

>	Q11.	Is there any sort of effort to move the GNU tools to the
>		Plan 9 reality?
>
>No, for the same reason there is no sort of effort to herd wild water buffalo
>into major metropolitan areas.

:-)

>	Q15.	What sort of RDBMS, especially multimedia, is available?
>
>Someone mentioned something on 9fans about having
>some database up and running.  A friend was interviewing
>at Oracle a few weeks ago and in Oracle's boasts about the
>portability of their server they said they had even brought
>it up on Plan 9 recently.  I doubt this is going to be the cornerstone
>of a new business plan.

Oracle is very portable, but they only release versions for
very specific platforms.  Kenji ported the postgres monitor
onto Plan 9, check out:

	http://basalt.cias.osakafu-u.ac.jp/plan9/p9index.html.

Unfortunately for mere mortals such as I, most of the associated
documentation is in Japanese.  :-)  It's not the whole DBMS, just
the client part, but it might help out.

	- Dan C.

Re: [9fans] So, once I've got the OS up how do I...

[tad]

> Q5.	How do I play my audio CD's and what mp3 player is suggested?
>	Is there any good audio sampling (and pop reduction) software?
>
> someone (tad hunt?) ported mpg123, a free mpeg audio decoder, to
> Plan 9. i use it regularly, and it's reasonably good. it's not as
> good as others i've seen on Unix and Win32, but it plays all the
> .mp3 files i've got.

Yup.

Check out http://vampira.csh.rit.edu/~tad/plan9/

-Tad

Re: [9fans] So, once I've got the OS up how do I...

[rob pike]

I'm a little disturbed by these questions.  It's not that I doubt
you'll get asked them, it's that Plan 9 will lose any feature fight.
What makes the system interesting is how it does things, not how many
programs have been ported to it, how compatible it is with Linux, or
how few picoseconds it takes to do a context switch.

You can help propagate the message by talking about how the system
works.  Tell stories about how the pieces fit together, how they solve
problems by design rather than attack by overwhelming features.  It's
a hard sell but it can be done.

-rob

Re: [9fans] So, once I've got the OS up how do I...

[anothy]

here's my take on a few of the questions.

Q1.	What is the choice with respect to mail mirrors or mailing list
	software like majordomo?

I've seen several such packages which use Perl. given a
working Perl port (see Q10 below), one should be able to get
these working on Plan 9. however, i'd advise getting more
familiar with Upas first. granted my needs were more limited
than many, but i had a pretty easy time writing a simple rc
script, using sed and awk, and plugging that into
/mail/lib/rewrite and letting Upas handle it.

Q2.	What is the usual web server?

Plan 9 ships with an httpd. i presume the majority of people
running web service from Plan 9 use this. see httpd(8).

Q3.	Is the Plan 9 <> Linux software reliable?

what software is that? i use u9fs fairly regularly, and it works
just fine. i also use VNC, and have had no problems. i've even
used the Plan 9 NFS server, with more limited success. someone
(forsyth?) did an ext2fs for mounting linux file systems under
Plan 9, but i've got no linux partitions to try it on.

Q5.	How do I play my audio CD's and what mp3 player is suggested?
	Is there any good audio sampling (and pop reduction) software?

someone (tad hunt?) ported mpg123, a free mpeg audio decoder, to
Plan 9. i use it regularly, and it's reasonably good. it's not as
good as others i've seen on Unix and Win32, but it plays all the
.mp3 files i've got.

there are multiple options for playing CDs. russ cox has written
one for acme, called "acd", which is quite nice provided your CD
drive and audio card are on the same system (as most peoples are,
but mine arn't).

Q10.	What about Perl, Python, Rexx, Tcl/Tk, Java, or Prolog?

check out the archives. people have done work getting Perl and
Python running on Plan 9. Perl includes Plan 9 in the standard
distribution, but results of trying to get it running have been
mixed. see also the link to forsyth's page provided below.

Q11.	Is there any sort of effort to move the GNU tools to the
	Plan 9 reality?

God, i hope not. ☺

Q13.	Assuming there was a group of users who wanted to make available
	a set of file servers. Assume that in this structure are
	multi-media (ie sound, video, text, etc.) files. Are there
	any packages that could be used to manage such a virtual library?

Q14.	Do you think Dreamcast will be helpful to the growth of Plan 9?

this is an opinion question. here's mine: no. i assume you're
refering to the suggestion that showed up on slashdot today
(?) based on Vita Nuova's statement that they are looking to
port their compiler work, and eventually Inferno, to Hitachi's
Supper H [34] chips.

Q16.	Assuming a small group wished to do a custom distribution, how
	would they go about licensing it with Bell Labs? Would it even
	really be necessary under the current license? Would there be
	any advantages/disadvantages either way?

I may not be a lawyer, but i've read the license and paid
attention durring the earlier discussions of the license and
what restrictions it imposed and rights it preserved. my
understanding is that, provided the "small group" in question
agreed to the license themselves, and required everyone they
distributed it to to do the same, they wouldn't need to do any
special licensing.

Charles Forsyth has a nice list of software ported to Plan 9;
this includes, among other things, an mpeg play, java
implementation, perl 4 port, his ext2fs, and vnc viewer. it's
worth checking out, and pointing other interested parties to.

-α.

Re: [9fans] So, once I've got the OS up how do I...

[Russ Cox]

I answered a bunch (and left a bunch unanswered.)

	Q1.	What is the choice with respect to mail mirrors or mailing list
		software like majordomo?

There's no list software as of yet.  It wouldn't be hard to write.

	Q2.	What is the usual web server?

ip/httpd, see httpd(8)

	Q3.	Is the Plan 9 <> Linux software reliable?

I don't understand the question.

	Q4.	What IRC choices (both client and server) are available?

None.  Again, not hard to write.  An Acme IRC would be
really easy to write and really easy to use.

	Q5.	How do I play my audio CD's and what mp3 player is suggested?
		Is there any good audio sampling (and pop reduction) software?

Play audio CDs with acd (see http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~rsc/plan9.html).
Charles Forsyth has an mp3 player port, as does Bruce Ellis, I believe.
Long ago I saw a port of sox for doing more advanced stuff.
There's no audio sampling/pop reduction stuff ported currently.

	Q9.	What sorts of packages such as StarOffice are available, if
		any?

troff, tex, gs, basically what you'd expect.
I write my presentations in Postscript, but I'm an outlier.

I've been using StarOffice on Windows in lieu of Microsoft
Word (only under duress) and I'm not very happy with it.  I'd rather use Word.
I didn't think Microsoft really understood anything about UI
until I tried to use StarOffice.

	Q10.	What about Perl, Python, Rexx, Tcl/Tk, Java, or Prolog?

Perl yes.
Python yes.
Rexx no.
Tcl/Tk no.
Java yes, someone ported Kaffe a while back.
	It's pretty rough.

Prolog no.  (Someone is going to ask you about Prolog?  Really?)

	Q11.	Is there any sort of effort to move the GNU tools to the
		Plan 9 reality?

No, for the same reason there is no sort of effort to herd wild water buffalo
into major metropolitan areas.

	Q15.	What sort of RDBMS, especially multimedia, is available?

Someone mentioned something on 9fans about having
some database up and running.  A friend was interviewing
at Oracle a few weeks ago and in Oracle's boasts about the
portability of their server they said they had even brought
it up on Plan 9 recently.  I doubt this is going to be the cornerstone
of a new business plan.

	Q16.	Assuming a small group wished to do a custom distribution, how
		would they go about licensing it with Bell Labs? Would it even
		really be necessary under the current license? Would there be
		any advantages/disadvantages either way?

I don't think you need to talk to Bell Labs.
I am not a lawyer, but that's what license seems to say.

[9fans] So, once I've got the OS up how do I...

[Jim Choate]

Hi,

I'm putting together some questions for a short talk I'm giving on Plan 9
in a couple of weeks. I know the following are going to be asked and I
would like to have some clue how to answer them.

Thanks ahead of time for making the effort in doing what you can to
address any of them. I will post the answers on the Hangar 18 homepage,

http://einstein.ssz.com/hangar18

Now, on with the show...

Q1.	What is the choice with respect to mail mirrors or mailing list
	software like majordomo?

Q2.	What is the usual web server?

Q3.	Is the Plan 9 <> Linux software reliable?

Q4.	What IRC choices (both client and server) are available?

Q5.	How do I play my audio CD's and what mp3 player is suggested?
	Is there any good audio sampling (and pop reduction) software?

Q6.	Are any TV cards supported? Video conferencing software?

Q7.	What about USB support?

Q8.	What about Firewire support?

Q9.	What sorts of packages such as StarOffice are available, if
	any?

Q10.	What about Perl, Python, Rexx, Tcl/Tk, Java, or Prolog?

Q11.	Is there any sort of effort to move the GNU tools to the
	Plan 9 reality?

Q12.	Has anyone done any 3D or r/t avatar work under Plan 9?

Q13.	Assuming there was a group of users who wanted to make available
	a set of file servers. Assume that in this structure are
	multi-media (ie sound, video, text, etc.) files. Are there
	any packages that could be used to manage such a virtual library?

Q14.	Do you think Dreamcast will be helpful to the growth of Plan 9?

Q15.	What sort of RDBMS, especially multimedia, is available?

Q16.	Assuming a small group wished to do a custom distribution, how
	would they go about licensing it with Bell Labs? Would it even
	really be necessary under the current license? Would there be
	any advantages/disadvantages either way?

    ____________________________________________________________________

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           smaller group must first understand it.

                                           "Stranger Suns"
                                           George Zebrowski

       The Armadillo Group       ,::////;::-.          James Choate
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