From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <47396E4D.6020005@kix.in>
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2007 14:58:45 +0530
From: Anant Narayanan <anant@kix.in>
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To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
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Subject: [9fans] Glendix?
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Hi All,

I picked this idea from the GSoC07 Wiki page: porting the Plan 9
userspace to the Linux kernel.

I am aware that Plan9Port is something very close to the goal, but I
think we can eliminate all of the GNU and X dependencies and have a pure
Linux/Plan9 setup. Why Linux? Simply because it supports a wide-range of
hardware, is one of the most documented free kernels out there, and
already has the support of many developers.

I think there are 3 ways in which we can do this:

1) Modify the Linux kernel to present a 9P interface to itself (too
hard, almost like re-writing several important parts of the kernel)
2) Modify the Plan 9 userspace to work with POSIX (Yuck, and Plan9Port
already does this)
3) Create a custom INIT process which will be responsible for providing
all the "plan 9 kernelish" features that userspace programs expect (for
eg. providing the /net directory), so that all of them can run unmodified.

I am of the opinion that (3) is the best way to go about it. With the
KenCC port to Linux (a result of Kris' work for this year's summer of
code), we can generate ELF executables. Recompiling all of Plan 9's
userspace should then do the trick, if we get the INIT process right.

Am I on the right track?

--
Anant

P.S. I will be doing this project as a final-year undergraduate thesis
at my university, which means I will have time and resources to attempt
this - about 4 months of it :)