Re: [9fans] Fifth Edition

[Mark Tuson <markfptuson@gmail.com>]

On Sep 20, 12:59 pm, st...@quintile.net (Steve Simon) wrote:
> > Playing with it and reading the manual (which I printed off in its
> > entirety at my college's library), I notice that it hasn't been
> > updated for eight years or so. So I'm curious; is Plan 9, Fourth
> > Edition going to be the last? Or is there a Fifth Edition on its way
> > at some point?
>
> A common misconception. Editions refer to major overhalls of the system,
> and to a lesser extent printed (i.e. paper) editions of the manual.
>
> Plan9 is continuously updated, changes often happening several times a week.
>
> You can update your installation to the latest provided on bell labs servers
> by running the pull script in glenda's bin directory.
>
>         /usr/glenda/bin/rc/pull
>
> Note, the user who you perform pull as must be in group sys
> to have the rights to overwrite "system" files.
>
> -Steve

I understand how that works, with the edition not changing, but still,
will there ever be a Fifth Edition?

I've tried pull (copied pull from Glenda's account to mine) but it
didn't work. Can't remember the exact error message, but it couldn't
find the files, apparently. Even after I'd spent ages figuring out how
to do networking. Is there a no way to update from a source other than
the 'net? Like download a repository and install it from there? I'm
perfectly happy updating over the 'net on my box, but it's a laptop
that isn't on the supported list, so I have to be prepared for the
network hardware not being fully supported, so if I can find a way to
get the files onto it, I hope I can to do it from a local source, if
need be.

How up-to-date is the image on the Plan 9 site? I heard about the
nightlies, but they don't seem to be around, so I'm assuming that the
ISO on the site is the newest version.

And are there any old versions of Plan 9 around that I could install
in, say, QEMU? I know Third Edition was out there, but it's gone - I'd
ask if anyone knows about First and Second, but that might not be
wise, considering First was internal only and Second was purchase
only. But still - ?