Re: [9fans] Plan9 topology

[John Floren <slawmaster@gmail.com>]

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On 01/13/2011 12:24 PM, Duke Normandin wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Jan 2011, John Floren wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>> If you only have one computer available and have to dual-boot, you can
>> actually do pretty good with a simple, standalone terminal (this is what
>> gets installed by default). You can then get an account at one or two of
>> the public Plan 9 servers and connect from your terminal.
>
> Do you mean the Plan 9 terminal that you mention below? Roughly, what
> does this installation include?
>

Yes. You just stick in the CD and do a basic install. When you're done,
you get all the programs that ship with Plan 9; it's very usable, you
can connect to various Plan 9 servers or FTP to move files around and stuff.

Used to be, when I'd visit home and get stuck on dialup, I'd use my
laptop as a standalone terminal and just dial up and connect to my
server when I needed to grab a file or push one up.

>> If you have a second computer available that you can devote to Plan 9 (a
>> Pentium II with 128 MB of RAM will perform admirably), I recommend that
>> you find the instructions on the wiki for setting up a standalone CPU
>> server
>> (http://www.plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/Configuring_a_standalone_CPU_server/index.html)
>> and follow them. You will end up with a Plan 9 cpu/auth/file server all
>> on one box, to which you can then connect from a Plan 9 terminal, 9vx on
>> Linux, or drawterm on Linux/OS X/Windows.
>
> I see! Plan 9 is essential a "server" OS. That's it!  That's all! It
> can't be run as a client and server all on one box.
>

You *can* sit down at a cpu/auth/file server and work, but it's just not
very usable--consider it an administration console.


>> Personally, I've run at least half a dozen Plan 9 servers over the
>> years, always installing a full cpu/auth/file server, usually on any PC
>> I can scrape together out of the parts bin or the loading dock. Then I
>> just connect from my desktop using drawterm, or I use the Thinkpad with
>> Plan 9 installed as a terminal.
>
> Been there; done that! with FreeBSD. :)
>
>> Good luck; Plan 9 is a very fun system.
>
> Sounds like it might be. Thanks for the input!

I think you mentioned in another message that you have a headless box
available; I recommend temporarily hooking that up to a monitor,
keyboard, and mouse, then installing a standalone cpu/auth/file server
on it. Once you're done, you can try using drawterm from Windows or
Linux or whatever you have to test the configuration.

If the configuration is good, you can go ahead and install Plan 9 as a
terminal on your spare partition, or just keep working from drawterm,
which is what I usually do (the graphics performance is better).


John
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