[9fans] GitHub.com/u-root/u-root now works again on plan 9

[9fans] GitHub.com/u-root/u-root now works again on plan 9

[Ron Minnich]

u-root is a set of about 180 unix commands (and some plan9-only
commands) written in Go.

It uses a tool called the gobusybox, which does a source-source
transformation of a set of Go prgorams, turning each command into a
package, then compiles them all into a single command.

A tool called mkuimage packages that single binary and, on Plan 9,
creates a set of #! files, into a cpiofs in newc-format.

Since a recent change on 9front, you can mount newc files with cpiofs.

So to get, e.g., find, you can do this:

#!/bin/rc
u-root '-defaultsh=' '-initcmd=' '-shellbang=true'
fs/cpiofs /tmp/initram*cpio
bind -a /n/tapefs /
bind -a /bbin /bin

and in /bbin you can see about 60 commands. I try to port one more
very few months. I welcome contributors.

A few of the things I find useful: grep -r works; I still use find
from time to time; timeout and backoff are two useful commands
(backoff tries a command and, if it fails, backs off and tries again;
timeout runs a command and, if it does not complete, kills it); and
there's a known-good sshd and scp command.

To get u-root,
1. install go 1.22
2. git/clone https://github.com/u-root/u-root
3. you can use the script above.

Let me know if you hit a problem, or you feel like contributing.

The entire rewrite-all-commands and create the initramfs is about 20s
for 180 commands on linux/*bsd/darwin; about 36s for 60 commands on
Plan 9 on my T420. The combined binary is 7 MiB, or about 120K per
command on Plan 9. For 160 commands, it's about the same size. For one
command, it's about 2M.

See slide 11 on
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1sFI4xSveKgi2iCJ95gc8VzrmdJwxiwNbMS6KcKX62Tg/edit?usp=sharing
 to get some idea of size and the limits at each end.

Also, note, there's nothing special about the u-root commands; they
are all standalone Go programs. Which means, you can include anything
you want into the cpio. The u-root  busybox needs no special
programming for its commands, unlike every C and Rust and Go busybox
I've used before.

Also, note, you can use the gobusybox command, and the mkuimage
command, and never use u-root at all. They are separate.

U-root is used in every firmware image in every datacenter platform at
Google. It's pretty hardened.

U-root is another project which the late Andrey Mirtchovski
contributed to in its early days.

Ron
p.s. "Why didn't you write it in Rust?" -- I take that question
seriously, and did some measurements. Rust does not do as well for
this purpose as Go. A good thing; we have native Go on Plan 9, and I
doubt we'll see native Rust on Plan 9 any time soon, if ever.

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Re: [9fans] GitHub.com/u-root/u-root now works again on plan 9

[Matt Wilbur]

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On Wed, Jan 1, 2025 at 8:04 PM Ron Minnich <rminnich@p9f.org> wrote:

> u-root is a set of about 180 unix commands (and some plan9-only
> commands) written in Go.
>

Playing with u-root on some embedded projects at work has been on my to-do
list for some time, as well as 'https://github.com/u-root/cpu'...

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Re: [9fans] GitHub.com/u-root/u-root now works again on plan 9

[Ron Minnich]

The cpu command works really well. I've used it for years, and not
having to worry about lots of usb sticks is ... heavenly.

more on the cpu command here:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1hlBi_sGJy-QCHa_2edBt0xu5lhTNmSxIjjKZV18E6Us/edit?usp=sharing

My next thing is to get u-root cpu working on Plan 9. 9front rcpu is
great, but I need to be able to go from darwin to plan9, and plan 9 to
linux, and bsd to Plan 9, and all that stuff.

And u-root cpu supports nfs3, which is pretty much unavoidable
nowadays in embedded or osx. Apple stopped any support for 9p it
seems.

On Wed, Jan 1, 2025 at 5:35 PM Matt Wilbur <wilburm@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 1, 2025 at 8:04 PM Ron Minnich <rminnich@p9f.org> wrote:
>>
>> u-root is a set of about 180 unix commands (and some plan9-only
>> commands) written in Go.
>
>
> Playing with u-root on some embedded projects at work has been on my to-do list for some time, as well as 'https://github.com/u-root/cpu'...
>
>
> 9fans / 9fans / see discussions + participants + delivery options Permalink

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Re: [9fans] GitHub.com/u-root/u-root now works again on plan 9

[Stanley Lieber]

9front drawterm has a -G flag to run without graphics.

sl


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