From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <475051C5-92F9-42B8-AC80-3EAA7E08EBE0@xmission.com> References: <475051C5-92F9-42B8-AC80-3EAA7E08EBE0@xmission.com> Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2010 18:06:35 -0500 Message-ID: From: John Floren To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Subject: Re: [9fans] have installed plan 9 on many hosts, can't get any of them to "share". Topicbox-Message-UUID: 8a673a40-ead6-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On Thu, Dec 9, 2010 at 5:53 PM, Lloyd Caldwell wrote: > Synopsis: > =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0do I give up trying to make a distributed plan= 9 home network? > =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0Is plan 9 worth the struggle? > =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0The concepts are clearly superior, is it the i= mplementation, is it > the lack of coherent/correct (imho) documentation? > > Longer background: > > =C2=A0I noticed that the installation notes now has the statement: > > =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0"If you find yourself reinstalling Plan 9 freq= uently, something is > wrong. This should not be necessary. In particular, there is no need to g= ive > each Plan 9 system its own file system. " > > This is speaking directly to me. > > I have been trying to implement plan 9 in a distributed manner for a long > time (since r4 went open source). =C2=A0I have plan 9 installed on many c= omputers > but none of them allow me to share resource between boxes. =C2=A0network = booting > doesn't work (9pxeload aborts with exception on all pc's, but I do see th= e > plan 9 pxe banner). =C2=A0the instructions for setting up cpu server don'= t work > for me (i.e.: cpu -h cpuhost -u user yields errors that I can not decode, > can't even tell which "program" is issuing them). =C2=A0the wiki document= s seem > to jump from extremely complicated to extremely trivial. =C2=A0I have rea= d the > recommended reading list documents multiple times. > > I have read a few plan 9 getting started web documents but they all end > abruptly. =C2=A0The man pages say different things then the 9fans list pe= ople say > and the code is written by really smart people who use (to me) > un-informative variable names (please don't flame me for that statement, = you > folks are the pro's and I defer to your taste in naming, I just can't fig= ure > out what you're doing from reading the code). > > I'm not a computer scientist but in past jobs have installed/managed many > large unix, windoz, distributed systems, including source only systems. > > Should I abandon attempting to build a plan 9 distributed system? =C2=A0I= just > want to setup an isolated (no internet connection) home environment. =C2= =A0I have > written drivers for my custom devices, ported the kernel to some arm boar= ds, > written some csg code but am tired of sneaker net file transfer when this > beast (plan9) is supposed to be all network all the time. > > Note all of my installs are on bare hardware (i.e.: no vm stuff under lin= ux, > mac, windoz). > > Where might I go for a walk thru in setting up a simple plan9 installatio= n, > one cpu/auth/fs and one terminal? > > sorry for the extent of this message, frustrated and the learning curve > seems to have infinite slope. > > regards > Lloyd Caldwell > lmc@xmission.com If you follow the standalone CPU installation instructions on the wiki to the letter, you will have a cpu/auth/file server. It's then easy to export fossil to clients, just set up the configuration to listen on the appropriate port (the document you want is linked from the standalone instructions). Then, once you've got that set up, you install a terminal on another machine. When it asks for a root, say "tcp" then give it the IP for your standalone server when it asks. Boom, your terminal now has remote root. You'll probably want to configure /lib/ndb/local to keep track of all your systems... Configuring PXE isn't that tricky but I don't want to run through the setup process right now, let me know if you need a rundown. Basically, "> Where might I go for a walk thru in setting up a simple plan9 installation one cpu/auth/fs and one terminal?" is answered by "Use the standalone install instructions... and that's basically it." If you'd give us the errors you're seeing from cpu, we might be able to help. "Weird errors" isn't very informative! If it comes down to it, I can exchange some of my config files with you. I have a standalone cpu server running, with PXE boot working. John