Re: [9fans] booting term kernel over the net

Re: [9fans] booting term kernel over the net

[Fco.J.Ballesteros]

Someone here used `import $cpu /blah' from a cpu server when he had
problems connecting to the file server via il.

Re: [9fans] booting term kernel over the net

[Geoff Collyer]

I believe Skip's problem is that he's got 001 IP addresses from his
DSL provider, and that's needed for his DSL router or bridge that is
also doing NAT.  NAT implementations generally don't understand IL,
but most of them allow incoming calls to specific ports to be
forwarded to specified internal machines.

Re: [9fans] booting term kernel over the net

[Russ Cox]

> Also, (I hope this isn't sacrilege), what would be involved
> in effort and design to allow fs to talk over TCP?

you'd have to write a tcp stack for the fs kernel.
not worth it.

the new file server will run as a user-space program
on a normal kernel and speak tcp; then il can be
retired.

Re: [9fans] booting term kernel over the net

[Fco.J.Ballesteros]

The ip stack of the file server does not include tcp, AFAIK.
I'd perhaps wait for venti.

Re: [9fans] booting term kernel over the net

[a]

for dealing with accessing a real file server (which
talks IL) over the internet (particularly through NAT
boxes), can't one use a cpu server running trampoline
via listen on the fs tcp ports to forward on to the
fs over IL? that's assuming you can set up a cpu
server at the same location as the fs, of course. but
it'd also eliminate the problems with only having one
ip addr, as the only one you'd need would be for the
cpu server. you can give the fs some dummy addr, on
10.x or whatever.

i *think* i've done this, and had it work, but that
setup has been disasembled and shipped to various
parts of the world, so this is from memory. my
current setup allows me to use an IP per box.
ア

Re: [9fans] booting term kernel over the net

[Axel Belinfante]

in my case, the terminal is behind NAT, the fs, cpu and
auth server are not. The terminal accesses the il-speaking
fs (not for booting, just for mounting once we are up
and running) via trampoline running on the cpu server
(with thanks to Russ for adding -9 flag to trampoline).
The terminal also accesses the auth server. I suppose you
can run trampoline on auth instead of cpu server, to have
``everything'' from one machine, or, alternatively,
if you want to have both an auth and a cpu server, and
those on the net only see the cpu server, I suppose you
can forward auth requests from cpu server to auth server
(also using trampoline, on different ports -- is this
 even the standard set-up? I recall seeing such forwarding
 somewhere in the /rc/bin/service directory or so?)

Axel.

> for dealing with accessing a real file server (which
> talks IL) over the internet (particularly through NAT
> boxes), can't one use a cpu server running trampoline
> via listen on the fs tcp ports to forward on to the
> fs over IL?
> that's assuming you can set up a cpu server at the same
> location as the fs, of course. but it'd also eliminate
> the problems with only having one ip addr, as the only
> one you'd need would be for the cpu server. you can give
> the fs some dummy addr, on 10.x or whatever.

Re: [9fans] booting term kernel over the net

[Skip Tavakkolian]

> can't one use a cpu server running trampoline
> via listen on the fs tcp ports to forward on to the
> fs over IL?

 From what I can tell from reading the
code (is there a man page for trampoline?) it seems
uncomplicated. To be certain, the kfs service
routine on the cpu+auth would trampoline the
requests to il!fs.

Also, (I hope this isn't sacrilege), what would be involved
in effort and design to allow fs to talk over TCP?

Re: [9fans] booting term kernel over the net

[Russ Cox]

If you're talking about booting from kfs (rather
than a real fs, in which case IL will cause problems),
it's not hard.  You can't fetch the kernel over the
wide-area network, but that's the only problem.
If you have the kernel on a floppy and put the
auth and fs info into plan9.ini, that's enough to
get going.  I've done this for booting terminals
from a standalone kfs/auth across campus and
it worked reasonably well.

Russ

Re: [9fans] booting term kernel over the net

[Fco.J.Ballesteros]

You could use drawterm, but I'd try first to get real terminals working.
However, I don't know if anyone has tried the same setting you want to get.
I think that time ago terminals couldn't boot from a remote kfs, I don't know if
that's still the case (you could just try). But you could always put enough at
your terminals to get the system up and them mount / from the remote kfs, which
would be almost like booting from it.

Re: [9fans] booting term kernel over the net

[Fco.J.Ballesteros]

Do you mean running both a file server and auth server with
a single static IP?

You could install a standalone cpu (auth) server and use the kfs listen
to export its kfs as the file server. Not a real file server but
might be enough for you. Do you also want your terminals to be
diskless?

Re: [9fans] booting term kernel over the net

[Skip Tavakkolian]

> Do you mean running both a file server and auth server with
> a single static IP?

Sort of.  I pay my DSL provider an extra charge to get the same IP
address every time I connect to them (PPPoE).  I have a NAT/firewall
box that is the gateway and routes some configured ports on the
external (static) IP address to the (internal) auth+cpu server.

>
> You could install a standalone cpu (auth) server and use the kfs listen
> to export its kfs as the file server. Not a real file server but
> might be enough for you. Do you also want your terminals to be
> diskless?

I would prefer not to run a local kfs at "term" locations.  I would
like to work on the same system with a couple of associates who do
their work from remote locations.

What about using drawterm?

[9fans] booting term kernel over the net

[Skip Tavakkolian]

Does anyone have any experience providing auth/fs access to
terms over the internet with only a single static IP? Any advice or
caveats? Thanks.