Re: [9fans] making yourself at home

[john@csplan9.rit.edu]

> On Thu, Jun 07, 2007 at 06:09:10PM -0400, erik quanstrom wrote:
>> > - How do I logout to let another user login?
>>
>> reboot.
>
> Ok, but it just sounds strange for someone who has only been using
> Unix-like systems for the last 10 years.
>

It does sound strange, but as long as your terminals don't spend forever
POSTing it can work okay. I seem to have the bad luck of only running
Plan 9 on machines that apparently check RAM, check processor, check
devices, and send out for pizza before they'll actually start *booting*.
My old IBM cpu/auth/file machine was really bad this way.

>> > - Is there something like "su" to let me be someone else in another
>> >   window?
>>
>> no.  you can cpu as another user, but you have a terminal, not a cpu server.
>> you can't cpu to a terminal.
>
> Ok, so a terminal is really a single-user "terminal", unlike a
> "workstation".
>
>> > - Can I somehow lock the screen?
>>
>> reboot. ;-)
>
> Hmmm, ... I'm used to say that a machine should only be powered on
> once and that you should login only once ... so rebooting is not an
> option.
>

Again, like everyone says, you really can't use Plan 9 properly unless
you've got at least a cpu/auth/file server and one terminal. This is
kind of an annoyance for us hobbyists, but I guess it's just a side
affect of building a system with Plan 9's capabilities.

Good luck, have fun, and don't let the trolls bite


John Floren
(now back to scheming about getting some terminals for the Plan
9 server)