[9fans] more silly fossil questions

[9fans] more silly fossil questions

[andrey mirtchovski]

how are you running your fossils? do you have a standalone fossil machine
that boots off the fossil partition? do you boot off a kfs/9fat/floppy and
then start fossil somehow?

is 'auth/cpu/fossil' possible the same way 'auth/cpu/kfs' is?

i'm asking because i reached 'Congratulations! You have a fossil!' and am
now staring at 'Booting a standalone fossil system', which claims to be
'complicated and clunky'...

if nobody's booting fossil standalone, then what's your network
configuration then?

andrey

Re: [9fans] more silly fossil questions

[Andrew]

fwiw I currently do the standalone fossil setup. It seems to work
reasonably well except you are kinda screwed if you mess up the boot
scripts or something. I had to reload from a seperate system with kfs. The
system does cpu/fossil, i have a seperate auth server.

Basically what happens is the files you need to boot up get on the network
and run fossil/venti all get compiled into the kernel, which unfortunatly
makes it fairly big and bulky, and you get to recompile everytime
something gets updated or you want to change some of the initial settings.

I had to go this route because i lacked the drives/space at the time
to do anything else. I will probably swap over to booting onto kfs then
exporting fossil now that i have some extra drives, hopefully things
will be easier that way.

Re: [9fans] more silly fossil questions

[plan9]

Hi,

I reached exactly this stage a couple of months ago and my question
was answered by people going, yes, build your kernel to use
fossil/venti just as it says in the wiki.  It may say there that is is
complicated, but that is because it is more complicated than booting
off a CD, not because it is challenging.

The recipe given in the wiki is pretty easy to follow.

Once you've got that up and running, everything just behaves like you
want it to.  Apart from the fact that changes in your configuration
and pulling updates becomes a bit of a hassle, as you have to
recompile, reinstall your kernel and reboot.  I haven't yet gone
through this process myself.  But considering all the changes of late
I probably will have to soon.

Incidentally, how are people backing up their venti?  I don't have a
CD writer on my cpu/fossil server, but I do have one on my terminal.
Can I 'just' use rdarena on the terminal?  Probably not, I guess I
need to do some reading.  Anyway, stories of how to do backups and
restores would be much appreciated.

Robby

Re: [9fans] more silly fossil questions

[Dan Cross]

> I reached exactly this stage a couple of months ago and my question
> was answered by people going, yes, build your kernel to use
> fossil/venti just as it says in the wiki.  It may say there that is is
> complicated, but that is because it is more complicated than booting
> off a CD, not because it is challenging.
>
> The recipe given in the wiki is pretty easy to follow.
>
> Once you've got that up and running, everything just behaves like you
> want it to.  Apart from the fact that changes in your configuration
> and pulling updates becomes a bit of a hassle, as you have to
> recompile, reinstall your kernel and reboot.  I haven't yet gone
> through this process myself.  But considering all the changes of late
> I probably will have to soon.

I suppose another solution is to dedicate a (very) small partition at
the beginning of the disk for the fossil/venti bootstrap.  Put a simple
filesystem, such as the flash FS, on it and then the kernel image need
only contain just enough logic in /boot/boot to mount it and run a
script.  It would certainly make alterations easier as they are no
longer tied into the not-easily-mutable kernel image.  If something
*really* gets messed up, one can boot off a CD and ostensibly still
have access to the configuration data for recovery.  That said, I
haven't tried it.  I have too much of the wrong hardware to set up a
fossil at the moment.  With luck, that'll change after I get back from
India.

	- Dan C.

Re: [9fans] more silly fossil questions

[Russ Cox]

> I suppose another solution is to dedicate a (very) small partition at
> the beginning of the disk for the fossil/venti bootstrap.  Put a simple
> filesystem, such as the flash FS, on it and then the kernel image need
> only contain just enough logic in /boot/boot to mount it and run a
> script.  It would certainly make alterations easier as they are no

Then you have to maintain the script.  As long as you can build
one kernel that works for many people I think it's better to have
the logic in the kernel.

You can use the venti/conf and fossil/conf commands to brand
configurations onto your disks.  Then /boot/boot will just do the
right thing.  There's a new kernel 9pcf that is a fossil terminal.
I don't remember if I pushed out though.  I'll check.

Russ

Re: [9fans] more silly fossil questions

[bs]

Dan Cross wrote:
> With luck, that'll change after I get back from India.

To India in the summer? Surely, you will change when you get back from
India ;-) (yes, I know parts of India very well)

Re: [9fans] more silly fossil questions

[Dan Cross]

> > I suppose another solution is to dedicate a (very) small partition at
> > the beginning of the disk for the fossil/venti bootstrap.  Put a simple
> > filesystem, such as the flash FS, on it and then the kernel image need
> > only contain just enough logic in /boot/boot to mount it and run a
> > script.  It would certainly make alterations easier as they are no
>
> Then you have to maintain the script.  As long as you can build
> one kernel that works for many people I think it's better to have
> the logic in the kernel.

The way I see it, we can have it both ways.

The issue seems to be that that one kernel isn't ideal for some people,
who want to change around their configuration without rebuilding their
kernel.  But as I see it, those who want to experiment can keep a
script elsewhere.  Those who just want the default can use the single
kernel image you describe.

> You can use the venti/conf and fossil/conf commands to brand
> configurations onto your disks.  Then /boot/boot will just do the
> right thing.  There's a new kernel 9pcf that is a fossil terminal.
> I don't remember if I pushed out though.  I'll check.

Cool!

	- Dan C.

Re: [9fans] more silly fossil questions

[Dan Cross]

> > With luck, that'll change after I get back from India.
>
> To India in the summer? Surely, you will change when you get back from
> India ;-) (yes, I know parts of India very well)

Yeah.  South India no less, to visit with my girlfriend's family.  Hey,
if I drop a couple of pounds sweating while I'm there that might be
good.

	- Dan C.

Re: [9fans] more silly fossil questions

[Fco.J.Ballesteros, nemo]

> Incidentally, how are people backing up their venti?  I don't have a

I use fs(3) to keep two disks in mirror. Arenas and indexes come from
partition in those disks. Besides (less than I should) I burn the arenas
in CDs.

Re: [9fans] more silly fossil questions

[Fco.J.Ballesteros, nemo]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 249 bytes --]

We boot a standalone machine that runs both venti and fossil
on top of a mirror (see fs(3)) device built of two ide disks.
Everything else boots from that file server. My laptop uses
kfs to work standalone but I'm switching to fossil there too.

[-- Attachment #2: Type: message/rfc822, Size: 2114 bytes --]

From: andrey mirtchovski <mirtchov@cpsc.ucalgary.ca>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: [9fans] more silly fossil questions
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 11:09:21 -0600 (MDT)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0306241053360.18127-100000@fbsd.cpsc.ucalgary.ca>

how are you running your fossils? do you have a standalone fossil machine
that boots off the fossil partition? do you boot off a kfs/9fat/floppy and
then start fossil somehow?

is 'auth/cpu/fossil' possible the same way 'auth/cpu/kfs' is?

i'm asking because i reached 'Congratulations! You have a fossil!' and am
now staring at 'Booting a standalone fossil system', which claims to be
'complicated and clunky'...

if nobody's booting fossil standalone, then what's your network
configuration then?

andrey

Re: [9fans] more silly fossil questions

[Martin C.Atkins]

On Tue, 24 Jun 2003 21:42:20 -0400 Dan Cross <cross@math.psu.edu> wrote:
> > > With luck, that'll change after I get back from India.
> >
> > To India in the summer? Surely, you will change when you get back from
> > India ;-) (yes, I know parts of India very well)
>
> Yeah.  South India no less, to visit with my girlfriend's family.  Hey,
> if I drop a couple of pounds sweating while I'm there that might be
> good.
>

No luck there :-) - it's the rainy season - mostly not too hot during the
day, and cool during the night. Oh, and occasionally it rains! (In
Bangalore, at least, where I am - are you coming to Bangalore?)

> 	- Dan C.
>

Martin
--
Martin C. Atkins			   martin@mca-ltd.com
Mission Critical Applications Ltd, U.K.	   http://www.mca-ltd.com{/,/martin}

Re: [9fans] more silly fossil questions

[Dan Cross]

> > Yeah.  South India no less, to visit with my girlfriend's family.  Hey,
> > if I drop a couple of pounds sweating while I'm there that might be
> > good.
>
> No luck there :-) - it's the rainy season - mostly not too hot during the
> day, and cool during the night. Oh, and occasionally it rains! (In
> Bangalore, at least, where I am - are you coming to Bangalore?)

Actually, yes....  But for most of the time I'll be in Karnataka, I'll
probably be in Mysore and Bandipur national forest.  Hmm, maybe we can
have a ``9fans in South India meeting.''

	- Dan C.

Re: [9fans] more silly fossil questions

[boyd, rounin]

> > Bangalore, at least, where I am - are you coming to Bangalore?)
>
> Actually, yes....

make sure you bring back some M1A1 Bangalore Torpedos.