[9fans] 9atom vs 9front

[9fans] 9atom vs 9front

[Kyle Laracey]

Hello

I've been trying for about two days to get the stock Plan9 from Bell
Labs to install with Networking under Virtual Box / QEMU, and by now
I have just given up. Maybe I will try again later.

I still want to use Plan9 though, and so I was wondering what the
difference between 9atom and 9Front are. They both seem to have more
hardware support, more software, but I can't really understand what
the differences between the two are.

Neither have a very extensive description on their homepages.

Thanks
Kyle

Re: [9fans] 9atom vs 9front

[erik quanstrom]

> Neither have a very extensive description on their homepages.

hmm.  what kind of description are you expecting?

- erik

Re: [9fans] 9atom vs 9front

[Kyle Laracey]

On Monday, March 11, 2013 12:36:25 PM UTC-4, erik quanstrom wrote:
> > Neither have a very extensive description on their homepages.
>
>
>
> hmm.  what kind of description are you expecting?
>
>
>
> - erik

Sorry. I guess 9atom does explain that it adds specific hardware functionality and software, but 9front on the other hand just explains that it is a fork of Plan9. Any other differences?

Re: [9fans] 9atom vs 9front

[Richard Miller]

> I've been trying for about two days to get the stock Plan9 from Bell
> Labs to install with Networking under Virtual Box

Bell Labs Plan 9 and networking works well in virtualbox 3.1.8 using
Am79C973 virtual ethernet adapter in bridged mode, chipset PIIX3
selected and "Enable IO APIC" turned off.  (Maybe not the only usable
settings but these work for me.)

Some newer versions of virtualbox have been reported as problematic.
You can search for "virtualbox old builds" on the web.

Re: [9fans] 9atom vs 9front

[David du Colombier]

> > I've been trying for about two days to get the stock Plan9 from Bell
> > Labs to install with Networking under Virtual Box
>
> Bell Labs Plan 9 and networking works well in virtualbox 3.1.8 using
> Am79C973 virtual ethernet adapter in bridged mode, chipset PIIX3
> selected and "Enable IO APIC" turned off.  (Maybe not the only usable
> settings but these work for me.)
>
> Some newer versions of virtualbox have been reported as problematic.
> You can search for "virtualbox old builds" on the web.

I agree with Richard and I can confirm Plan 9 works
fine in VirtualBox 4.1.24 (2012-12-19).

It can be downloaded here:

http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/4.1.24/

However, as Richard said, VirtualBox 4.2 is known
not to work with Plan 9 from Bell Labs.

--
David du Colombier

Re: [9fans] 9atom vs 9front

[balaji]

On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 12:50 PM, David du Colombier <0intro@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > I've been trying for about two days to get the stock Plan9 from Bell
>> > Labs to install with Networking under Virtual Box
>>
>> Bell Labs Plan 9 and networking works well in virtualbox 3.1.8 using
>> Am79C973 virtual ethernet adapter in bridged mode, chipset PIIX3
>> selected and "Enable IO APIC" turned off.  (Maybe not the only usable
>> settings but these work for me.)
>>
>> Some newer versions of virtualbox have been reported as problematic.
>> You can search for "virtualbox old builds" on the web.
>
> I agree with Richard and I can confirm Plan 9 works
> fine in VirtualBox 4.1.24 (2012-12-19).
>
> It can be downloaded here:
>
> http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/4.1.24/
>
> However, as Richard said, VirtualBox 4.2 is known
> not to work with Plan 9 from Bell Labs.
>
confirmed working with the same setup (bridged/Am79C973), IDE primary
drive and DHCP.

Re: [9fans] 9atom vs 9front

[Bakul Shah]

On Mon, 11 Mar 2013 20:50:07 BST David du Colombier <0intro@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I've been trying for about two days to get the stock Plan9 from Bell
> > > Labs to install with Networking under Virtual Box
> >
> > Bell Labs Plan 9 and networking works well in virtualbox 3.1.8 using
> > Am79C973 virtual ethernet adapter in bridged mode, chipset PIIX3
> > selected and "Enable IO APIC" turned off.  (Maybe not the only usable
> > settings but these work for me.)
> >
> > Some newer versions of virtualbox have been reported as problematic.
> > You can search for "virtualbox old builds" on the web.
>
> I agree with Richard and I can confirm Plan 9 works
> fine in VirtualBox 4.1.24 (2012-12-19).
>
> It can be downloaded here:
>
> http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/4.1.24/

I too am using Bell Labs Plan9 but on 4.1.22.
Settings that work for me:
  system: chipset PIIX3, enable IO APIC, enable PAE/NX, Enable VT-x/AMD-V,
     enable nested paging
  Storage: IDE controller, PIIX4, use host io-cache, cd-rom secondary master
  Network: bridged adapter, Intel Pro/1000 MT Server
  Ports: Enable USB controller, Enable USB2.0 controller

IIRC you need to install matching virtual box extension pack
for USB to work.

Note: if your host uses wifi but no ethernet, bridged
adapter won't work.

Re: [9fans] 9atom vs 9front

[Matthew Veety]

On Mar 11, 2013, at 16:36, Bakul Shah <bakul@bitblocks.com> wrote:

> Note: if your host uses wifi but no ethernet, bridged
> adapter won't work.

That's card dependent. It needs to support promisc mode AFAIK. Not all cards support it.

Re: [9fans] 9atom vs 9front

[Bakul Shah]

On Mon, 11 Mar 2013 16:47:45 EDT Matthew Veety <mveety@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Mar 11, 2013, at 16:36, Bakul Shah <bakul@bitblocks.com> wrote:
>
> > Note: if your host uses wifi but no ethernet, bridged
> > adapter won't work.
>
> That's card dependent. It needs to support promisc mode AFAIK. Not all cards
>  support it.

Just discovered that at least on the MBP you can get bridged
mode to work by using en1: Wi-Fi (AirPort).

Re: [9fans] 9atom vs 9front

[Lyndon Nerenberg]

> Settings that work for me:

It would be tres cool if this information was getting mirrored in the
Wiki.

Re: [9fans] 9atom vs 9front

[a]

// It would be tres cool if this information was getting
// mirrored in the Wiki.

I've been copying over some of the more concise and
complete reports, but yes: people with working setups
should add their experiences there.

For those who have not used the wiki, editing existing
pages is pretty easy. In Acme acme on Plan 9¹, run
	Local 9fs wiki
which will connect to the wiki and mount it at /mnt/wiki
within a running acme. Next, run
	Wiki
to launch the client, which will read the files in there
and give you a much nicer interface. On the main page
there, you can right-click on
	[Wiki index]
to get a list of all the pages on the wiki. Type in your
changes and execute "Put" in the tag when done.

For details, see the pages "Acme wiki instructions" and
"Wiki syntax"². Note in particular that the syntax is like a
*very* minimalistic version of the sort of markdown
used on many other wikis.

Anthony

¹ I'm told this is doable somehow on p9p, but I don't
how and can't confirm that.

² It'd be neat if someone would work out how to get the
plumber to handle /mnt/wiki paths (or some conventional
mapping thereof) so we could pass them around as
pseudo-hotlinks.

Re: [9fans] 9atom vs 9front

[erik quanstrom]

> ² It'd be neat if someone would work out how to get the
> plumber to handle /mnt/wiki paths (or some conventional
> mapping thereof) so we could pass them around as
> pseudo-hotlinks.

just need to mount wikifs in the namespace of the plumber
with Local.

- erik

Re: [9fans] 9atom vs 9front

[a]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 252 bytes --]

Not unless I'm missing something. That makes the paths
plumbable, sure, but it doesn't hand them to Wiki (the acme
program), so you just get the directory that Wiki reads,
which isn't really the best situation.

Shouldn't be much to it.
Anthony

[-- Attachment #2: Type: message/rfc822, Size: 3007 bytes --]

From: erik quanstrom <quanstro@labs.coraid.com>
To: 9fans@9fans.net
Subject: Re: [9fans] 9atom vs 9front
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 16:55:34 -0400
Message-ID: <163bf14d9d1433a4678556107abc9a93@coraid.com>

> ² It'd be neat if someone would work out how to get the
> plumber to handle /mnt/wiki paths (or some conventional
> mapping thereof) so we could pass them around as
> pseudo-hotlinks.

just need to mount wikifs in the namespace of the plumber
with Local.

- erik

Re: [9fans] 9atom vs 9front

[Kyle Laracey]

On Monday, March 11, 2013 4:36:38 PM UTC-4, Bakul Shah wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Mar 2013 20:50:07 BST David du Colombier wrote:
> 
> > > > I've been trying for about two days to get the stock Plan9 from Bell
> 
> > > > Labs to install with Networking under Virtual Box
> 
> > > 
> 
> > > Bell Labs Plan 9 and networking works well in virtualbox 3.1.8 using
> 
> > > Am79C973 virtual ethernet adapter in bridged mode, chipset PIIX3
> 
> > > selected and "Enable IO APIC" turned off.  (Maybe not the only usable
> 
> > > settings but these work for me.)
> 
> > > 
> 
> > > Some newer versions of virtualbox have been reported as problematic.
> 
> > > You can search for "virtualbox old builds" on the web.
> 
> > 
> 
> > I agree with Richard and I can confirm Plan 9 works
> 
> > fine in VirtualBox 4.1.24 (2012-12-19).
> 
> > 
> 
> > It can be downloaded here:
> 
> > 
> 
> > http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/4.1.24/
> 
> 
> 
> I too am using Bell Labs Plan9 but on 4.1.22.
> 
> Settings that work for me:
> 
>   system: chipset PIIX3, enable IO APIC, enable PAE/NX, Enable VT-x/AMD-V, 
> 
>      enable nested paging
> 
>   Storage: IDE controller, PIIX4, use host io-cache, cd-rom secondary master
> 
>   Network: bridged adapter, Intel Pro/1000 MT Server
> 
>   Ports: Enable USB controller, Enable USB2.0 controller
> 
> 
> 
> IIRC you need to install matching virtual box extension pack
> 
> for USB to work.
> 
> 
> 
> Note: if your host uses wifi but no ethernet, bridged
> 
> adapter won't work.

Oh so if my laptop (host) uses Wifi for internet, then I cannot get networking to work in Plan9 under VirtualBox? I have gotten it installed, and snoopy shows packets arriving (many arps), but ip/ipconfig timeouts with "ipconfig: no success with dhcp". Is there any way to use wifi or no?

Re: [9fans] 9atom vs 9front

[hiro]

the difference about 9front is that it also works on real hardware, so
you don't need to mess with these VMs.

Re: [9fans] 9atom vs 9front

[erik quanstrom]

On Thu Mar 14 09:06:51 EDT 2013, 23hiro@gmail.com wrote:
> the difference about 9front is that it also works on real hardware, so
> you don't need to mess with these VMs.

i think you misspelled "similarity".

i'm sure you can point to some instances of hardware not working
in plan 9 and working in 9front.  that's fine.  but if i understand
correctly, 9front has taken the decision to not send in patches.
that's totally fine in my book.  but it seems a little less than helpful
to not send patches and then criticize.

- erik

Re: [9fans] 9atom vs 9front

[Kurt H Maier]

On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 09:38:26AM -0400, erik quanstrom wrote:
> On Thu Mar 14 09:06:51 EDT 2013, 23hiro@gmail.com wrote:
> > the difference about 9front is that it also works on real hardware, so
> > you don't need to mess with these VMs.
>
> i think you misspelled "similarity".
>
> i'm sure you can point to some instances of hardware not working
> in plan 9 and working in 9front.  that's fine.  but if i understand
> correctly, 9front has taken the decision to not send in patches.
> that's totally fine in my book.  but it seems a little less than helpful
> to not send patches and then criticize.
>
> - erik
>

All of 9front is public in the hg repository.  Not sure what the value
is in "sending in patches" of stuff we wrote because we wanted it, and
not necessarily to solve some larger problem.  If anyone wants the code,
he can just take it.

I don't think hiro was criticizing 9front as much as the fact that 9fans
seems to discuss p9p and vbox on osx more than any other software.

khm

[9fans] 9front Acme unresponsive to key presses

[Steffen Daode Nurpmeso]

Kurt H Maier <khm-9@intma.in> wrote:
 |I don't think hiro was criticizing 9front as much as the fact that 9fans
 |seems to discuss p9p and vbox on osx more than any other software.

I also installed 9front in the meanwhile (python, pfff), and
learned that the (broken) hostname setup can be skipped during
installation, and how easy it is to set the german keyboard
layout!  That is really great (and it would be so easy to adjust
it as necessary!) design!

Acme in 9front doesn't respond to keypresses and starts hanging
around; i'd have a (rather useless though) 13997 bytes screenshot
of what happens on the controlling tty during this, in case noone
else has seen this and the behaviour is of interest -- it's just
that you place the cursor, hold down a key, and nothing visual
happens, but at times something comes back and then it seems as if
something has been queued somewhere, but not necessarily the key
that has been pressed (in fact the screenshot shows "bad character
in filename", which *definitely* not happened).  But maybe it's VM
related anyway, which might be true since i had to turn to VESA
which is not needed for Plan9 from Bell Lapps, which also doesn't
show the mentioned behaviour.

 |khm

--steffen

Re: [9fans] 9atom vs 9front

[Bakul Shah]

On Mar 14, 2013, at 6:05 AM, hiro <23hiro@gmail.com> wrote:

> the difference about 9front is that it also works on real hardware, so
> you don't need to mess with these VMs.

A VM is far more convenient and portable for me.

Re: [9fans] 9atom vs 9front

[Kyle Laracey]

On Monday, March 11, 2013 4:47:45 PM UTC-4, Matthew Veety wrote:
> On Mar 11, 2013, at 16:36, Bakul Shah wrote:
>
>
>
> > Note: if your host uses wifi but no ethernet, bridged
>
> > adapter won't work.
>
>
>
> That's card dependent. It needs to support promisc mode AFAIK. Not all cards support it.

I think if I remember correctly I have gotten Linux to work under VirtualBox, without promiscuous mode -- I don't think that the network card in Mac's is capable of promiscuous mode.

Re: [9fans] 9atom vs 9front

[Kyle Laracey]

On Monday, March 11, 2013 4:56:16 PM UTC-4, Bakul Shah wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Mar 2013 16:47:45 EDT Matthew Veety <mveety@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > 
> 
> > 
> 
> > On Mar 11, 2013, at 16:36, Bakul Shah <bakul@bitblocks.com> wrote:
> 
> > 
> 
> > > Note: if your host uses wifi but no ethernet, bridged
> 
> > > adapter won't work.
> 
> > 
> 
> > That's card dependent. It needs to support promisc mode AFAIK. Not all cards
> 
> >  support it.
> 
> 
> 
> Just discovered that at least on the MBP you can get bridged
> 
> mode to work by using en1: Wi-Fi (AirPort).

Really? I have the same setup as you mentioned, with Bridged Adapter, en1: Wifi (AirPort), and Promiscuous Mode set to {Deny, Allow VMs, Allow All}, but for each of those three options for Promsicuous mode, ip/ipconfig still times out with "ipconfig: no success with dhcp".

Re: [9fans] 9atom vs 9front

[Matthew Veety]

On Mar 14, 2013, at 11:43, Kyle Laracey <kalaracey@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Monday, March 11, 2013 4:56:16 PM UTC-4, Bakul Shah wrote:
>> On Mon, 11 Mar 2013 16:47:45 EDT Matthew Veety <mveety@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On Mar 11, 2013, at 16:36, Bakul Shah <bakul@bitblocks.com> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>>> Note: if your host uses wifi but no ethernet, bridged
>> 
>>>> adapter won't work.
>> 
>> 
>>> That's card dependent. It needs to support promisc mode AFAIK. Not all cards
>> 
>>> support it.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Just discovered that at least on the MBP you can get bridged
>> 
>> mode to work by using en1: Wi-Fi (AirPort).
> 
> Really? I have the same setup as you mentioned, with Bridged Adapter, en1: Wifi (AirPort), and Promiscuous Mode set to {Deny, Allow VMs, Allow All}, but for each of those three options for Promsicuous mode, ip/ipconfig still times out with "ipconfig: no success with dhcp".
> 

So the card itself needs to support it. The little promisc thing in vbox doesn't really do shit if your card doesn't support it. 
Also try setting the ip and other net info manually.

Re: [9fans] 9atom vs 9front

[Bakul Shah]

On Mar 14, 2013, at 4:43 AM, Kyle Laracey wrote:

> On Monday, March 11, 2013 4:56:16 PM UTC-4, Bakul Shah wrote:
>> Just discovered that at least on the MBP you can get bridged
>> 
>> mode to work by using en1: Wi-Fi (AirPort).
> 
> Really? I have the same setup as you mentioned, with Bridged Adapter, en1: Wifi (AirPort), and Promiscuous Mode set to {Deny, Allow VMs, Allow All}, but for each of those three options for Promsicuous mode, ip/ipconfig still times out with "ipconfig: no success with dhcp".


This works for me on the last 2011 model (the one before the 
"Retina" display MBPs) and it works on a 6 year old MBP. Your  
problem may be card dependent as Matthew says or it may be
some config issue. Try debugging with tcpdump on the host. See
if DHCP provides a working IP address for other VMs (Linux for
instance) on the same laptop when connected via en1. See if
manually setting the IP address allows you use the net.

Re: [9fans] 9atom vs 9front

[Kyle Laracey]

On Tuesday, March 12, 2013 4:53:04 PM UTC-4, a...@9srv.net wrote:
> // It would be tres cool if this information was getting
> 
> // mirrored in the Wiki.
> 
> 
> 
> I've been copying over some of the more concise and
> 
> complete reports, but yes: people with working setups
> 
> should add their experiences there.
> 
> 
> 
> For those who have not used the wiki, editing existing
> 
> pages is pretty easy. In Acme acme on Plan 9¹, run
> 
> 	Local 9fs wiki
> 
> which will connect to the wiki and mount it at /mnt/wiki
> 
> within a running acme. Next, run
> 
> 	Wiki
> 
> to launch the client, which will read the files in there
> 
> and give you a much nicer interface. On the main page
> 
> there, you can right-click on
> 
> 	[Wiki index]
> 
> to get a list of all the pages on the wiki. Type in your
> 
> changes and execute "Put" in the tag when done.
> 
> 
> 
> For details, see the pages "Acme wiki instructions" and
> 
> "Wiki syntax"². Note in particular that the syntax is like a
> 
> *very* minimalistic version of the sort of markdown
> 
> used on many other wikis.
> 
> 
> 
> Anthony
> 
> 
> 
> ¹ I'm told this is doable somehow on p9p, but I don't
> 
> how and can't confirm that.
> 
> 
> 
> ² It'd be neat if someone would work out how to get the
> 
> plumber to handle /mnt/wiki paths (or some conventional
> 
> mapping thereof) so we could pass them around as
> 
> pseudo-hotlinks.

I would love to help, as I have a good install, but I have no networking.

[9fans] 9atom vs 9front

[Kyle Laracey]

Hello

I've had difficulty installing the vanilla Plan9 from Bell Labs in
VirtualBox / QEMU, and now I am going to try one of the forks, 9atom
or 9Front, which both seem to have more hardware support / software.

However, the descriptions on their homepages are brief; could
someone please point out some of the differences between them /
strengths and weaknesses?

Thanks!  Kyle