Re: [9fans] VMware and 9atom

[erik quanstrom <quanstro@labs.coraid.com>]

> Sorry about the confusion. I was looking for any current information
> on how to successfully install 9atom on vmware. What I've found via
> google is very sparse and not recent. From what I am able to gather,
> it sounds like the vmware ATA hardware emulation is severely lacking
> and doesn't agree with what's in 9atom's sdata.c. It's a starting
> point, though. Does that help?

http://9atom.org has some information.

9atom is the system we use every day.  it should be the same as sources,
except when that's not possible.  obviously there is a little skew, too.
this is generally because we need more hardware support, or additional
programs.  but it also leads 9atom to have full support for amd64.
(it's the default platform here.)  and lead 9atom to have full 21-bit rune
support in 2010.

the reason 9atom is out there is to help people use plan 9.  more hardware
support is better, so patches are welcome.  new ideas are good, too.  but
since 9atom is the basis for production systems, care is necessary.

all changes (except binaries) are submitted through patches.  if you're
curious, add this to 9fs.  (9fs -a forces authentication; useful for sources.
nflag is its converse, which is the default.)


	nflag=-n
	if(~ $1 -a){
		shift
		nflag=()
	}
	if(~ $1 -m)
		shift
	switch($1){
[...]
	case atom
		# import -E ssl atom.9atom.org /n/atom /n/atom
		srv $nflag -q tcp!atom.9atom.org atom &&
			mount $nflag /srv/atom /n/atom atom
	case atomdump
		# mount $nflag
		9fs atom && mount /srv/atom /n/atomdump atomdump
[...]

the atom patch programs are then in /n/atom/plan9/rc/bin/apatch.
the interface is very similar to sources patches.  so patch(1) will be
a good overview.

- erik