I've used that sshnet trick many many times.  I just wish it supported a
newer version of ssh :-)

On Tue, Oct 12, 2010 at 7:53 AM, Steve Simon <steve@quintile.net> wrote:

> the twitter example you gave is perhaps too simple, could the tweets
> not just be text written to a publicly writable file. the users could
> connect
> with 9p but as the user none son they will need no auth.
>
> better examples of the everything is a file aproach are wikifs (a file
> server which
> prvides virtual files for the httpd server (or any normal 9p file client)
> to access and stores a database of wiki pages.
> http://plan9.bell-labs.com/magic/man2html/4/wikifs
>
> the cassic example is using a plan9 server as a gateway machine across a
> firewall.
> This machine is dual homed and all machines inside the firewall are
> isolated.
> when one of these machines wants to connect to somone outside the firewall
> they
> can just import the gateway's /net.alt over the top of their own. (by
> tradition
> the primary interface is mounted on /net and the seccondary at /net.alt)
>
> Now any DNS lookup and  socket connection will be made using the gateway's
> internet
> facing NIC. This is all done using the 9p protocol, no clever IP routing
> etc.
> if the 9p connection to the hateway happens to come over an ssh session,
> ppp, or pigeon, it doesn't matter, you are sharing files, and these
> particular
> files give you access to that machines network interface.
>
> there is also a really neat trick you can use do a similar thing with a
> unix
> machine as the gateway - sshnet provides a /net like interface to plan9 but
> uses
> ssh's remote port forwarding to speak to unix:
> http://plan9.bell-labs.com/magic/man2html/1/ssh
>
> -Steve
>
>