[9fans] 2024 Plan 9 Foundation Board Report

[9fans] 2024 Plan 9 Foundation Board Report

[paul lalonde]

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It is my pleasure to distribute the Plan 9 Foundations' 2024 Annual Report.
It is also attached in PDF format for your reference.


Paul Lalonde,

Secretary of the Board of Directors of the Plan 9 Foundation.


Plan 9 Foundation Annual Report 2024

Glenda’s Diary
Important events

The theme of earlier years might have been described as “righting the
ship.” This year, now that we were no longer doing major repairs, we were
able to get ready to sail.

The theme for the year was to build a community.


   -

   We had IWP9 in Philadelphia, and it was quite a success. More
   importantly, we established the cadence for conferences, always starting
   work on the next year’s conference at the close of this year’s conference.
   -

   We arranged for the next IWP9 in Paris, in a prestigious venue.
   -

   We are on a firm financial footing, with contributions continuing to
   come in each month.
   -

   We worked with 9front to get the repo into a state that people are
   comfortable with.
   -

   We got a mailing list going, and although usage is very light, we are
   getting there.
   -

   We got permission to manage 9fans, taking over that list, making it
   moderated, and merging it with our existing list. Because 9fans has been a
   continual source of reputational harm, this is a significant change.

Did we achieve our 2024 goal?

We assembled our community, and getting control of 9fans is important, but
discussion is still light.  We are overall pleased with the progress but
aren’t yet seeing the impact of the change.
Goals to shoot for in 2025

Grow the number of places experimenting with Plan 9 ideas. [visit unis,
profs, research labs…]

Provide a trivial on-ramp to Plan9.

Your ideas here (yes, that means you).

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[9fans] Re: [p9fUsers] 2024 Plan 9 Foundation Board Report

[Noam Preil]

> Provide a trivial on-ramp to Plan9.
> Your ideas here (yes, that means you).

One idea i've flirted with, if only for my own use, is to just add some
tools - similar to 9front's existing installer - that automate setup
tasks for first-time users.

Or, at least, man pages that guide through which steps are needed and
what they accomplish.

e.g. setting up upas is a PITA the first time around: have to figure out
where to put TLS certs, keys into factotum / how to keep them there,
which can mean figuring out how to set up secstore, have to update the
script for sending mail, configure the accounts, ...

Once you've done it once, it's easier to do again, but nontrivial.
Setting up _multiple_ accounts, even more so.

The existing manuals aren't cohesive towards the goal of "read and send
mail," so much as they are "this is how upas/fs works, this is how Mail
works, this is how factotum works, ..."

Recently had to set up upas on my Reform, having not touched the config
in 2+ years since doing so on a Thinkpad, and it was much more annoying
than it needed to be.

A simple draw client that makes reading man pages easier, is included in
riostart by default, jumps to intro(1), and adding more useful man pages
and links to them from the intro man page, could make a world of
difference in terms of accessibility.

Anywho, I don't have time to flesh this out now, I probably shouldn't
have written this email right now either but gotta procrastinate
_somehow_, right?

- Noam Preil



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Re: [9fans] Re: [p9fUsers] 2024 Plan 9 Foundation Board Report

[Steve Simon]

an alternative suggestion:

how about writing an app like upas/debug which could analyse your installation and attempt to diagnose problems (and even suggest man pages to look at).

personally i have found auth/debug very useful, though i still had situations that it couldn’t help with.

just an idea

-Steve

> On 18 Jan 2025, at 5:07 am, Noam Preil <noam@pixelhero.dev> wrote:
> 
> 
>> 
>> Provide a trivial on-ramp to Plan9.
>> Your ideas here (yes, that means you).
> 
> One idea i've flirted with, if only for my own use, is to just add some
> tools - similar to 9front's existing installer - that automate setup
> tasks for first-time users.
> 
> Or, at least, man pages that guide through which steps are needed and
> what they accomplish.
> 
> e.g. setting up upas is a PITA the first time around: have to figure out
> where to put TLS certs, keys into factotum / how to keep them there,
> which can mean figuring out how to set up secstore, have to update the
> script for sending mail, configure the accounts, ...
> 
> Once you've done it once, it's easier to do again, but nontrivial.
> Setting up _multiple_ accounts, even more so.
> 
> The existing manuals aren't cohesive towards the goal of "read and send
> mail," so much as they are "this is how upas/fs works, this is how Mail
> works, this is how factotum works, ..."
> 
> Recently had to set up upas on my Reform, having not touched the config
> in 2+ years since doing so on a Thinkpad, and it was much more annoying
> than it needed to be.
> 
> A simple draw client that makes reading man pages easier, is included in
> riostart by default, jumps to intro(1), and adding more useful man pages
> and links to them from the intro man page, could make a world of
> difference in terms of accessibility.
> 
> Anywho, I don't have time to flesh this out now, I probably shouldn't
> have written this email right now either but gotta procrastinate
> _somehow_, right?
> 
> - Noam Preil
> 

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Re: [9fans] Re: [p9fUsers] 2024 Plan 9 Foundation Board Report

[Ron Minnich]

I think upas/debug is a great idea.

I was unable to send mail yesterday because apple changed its x509
cert. Now, I can find that, but it is a pain. A upas/debug would be
very useful. I would hope it would check the certs.

On Sat, Jan 18, 2025 at 3:59 AM Steve Simon <steve@quintile.net> wrote:
>
> an alternative suggestion:
>
> how about writing an app like upas/debug which could analyse your installation and attempt to diagnose problems (and even suggest man pages to look at).
>
> personally i have found auth/debug very useful, though i still had situations that it couldn’t help with.
>
> just an idea
>
> -Steve
>
> > On 18 Jan 2025, at 5:07 am, Noam Preil <noam@pixelhero.dev> wrote:
> >
> > 
> >>
> >> Provide a trivial on-ramp to Plan9.
> >> Your ideas here (yes, that means you).
> >
> > One idea i've flirted with, if only for my own use, is to just add some
> > tools - similar to 9front's existing installer - that automate setup
> > tasks for first-time users.
> >
> > Or, at least, man pages that guide through which steps are needed and
> > what they accomplish.
> >
> > e.g. setting up upas is a PITA the first time around: have to figure out
> > where to put TLS certs, keys into factotum / how to keep them there,
> > which can mean figuring out how to set up secstore, have to update the
> > script for sending mail, configure the accounts, ...
> >
> > Once you've done it once, it's easier to do again, but nontrivial.
> > Setting up _multiple_ accounts, even more so.
> >
> > The existing manuals aren't cohesive towards the goal of "read and send
> > mail," so much as they are "this is how upas/fs works, this is how Mail
> > works, this is how factotum works, ..."
> >
> > Recently had to set up upas on my Reform, having not touched the config
> > in 2+ years since doing so on a Thinkpad, and it was much more annoying
> > than it needed to be.
> >
> > A simple draw client that makes reading man pages easier, is included in
> > riostart by default, jumps to intro(1), and adding more useful man pages
> > and links to them from the intro man page, could make a world of
> > difference in terms of accessibility.
> >
> > Anywho, I don't have time to flesh this out now, I probably shouldn't
> > have written this email right now either but gotta procrastinate
> > _somehow_, right?
> >
> > - Noam Preil
> >

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Re: [9fans] Re: [p9fUsers] 2024 Plan 9 Foundation Board Report

[sirjofri]

18.01.2025 17:11:52 Ron Minnich <rminnich@p9f.org>:

> I think upas/debug is a great idea.
>
> I was unable to send mail yesterday because apple changed its x509
> cert. Now, I can find that, but it is a pain. A upas/debug would be
> very useful. I would hope it would check the certs.

I have a "do not check certs" flag in my smtpd, but I'd prefer some proper chain cert check instead. The original way is to add each and every cert thumb to a file, which is quite annoying and a lot of manual labor. Even a TOFU would be much better than not checking any certs.

A upas/debug would be nice, though upas is used in various scenarios, which makes it harder to debug. Maybe a general mail/debug suite would be better (for checking a mail server and a pure mail client, as those are quite different).

Nowadays, I rarely use upas as a mail client. I use my mail server via some other mail client on my phone. And I'm pretty sure that I'll have issues setting up my mail server again, since it's running reliably for many months now. A proper guide (and cleaned up config files) would help a lot.

In general, we have a lot of "this is how tool X works" manuals, and a lack of "this is how task X can be done" documentation. The fqa is probably the most famous example of the latter, next to the intro man pages. I would be happy if we had more on-line documentation like the intro pages, but for more specific tasks. I feel that many new users especially encounter situations where they just don't know what can be done.

There's lots of knowledge about this hidden in various mailing list threads, chat groups, and blogs.

sirjofri

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Re: [9fans] Re: [p9fUsers] 2024 Plan 9 Foundation Board Report

[Kurt H Maier via 9fans]

On Sat, Jan 18, 2025 at 10:29:48PM +0100, sirjofri wrote:
> In general, we have a lot of "this is how tool X works" manuals, and a lack of "this is how task X can be done" documentation. The fqa is probably the most famous example of the latter, next to the intro man pages. I would be happy if we had more on-line documentation like the intro pages, but for more specific tasks. I feel that many new users especially encounter situations where they just don't know what can be done.

Part of the problem is that people insist on using hostile mail
services.  Every time anyone puts together a decent upas tutorial it
gets immediately tripled in size by workarounds required for GMail.
The overcomplicated GMail version becomes oral legend, so nobody knows
what things to do for normal email and what things to do for bad email.

I don't know who wrote it, but there's a nice document at
http://wiki.9front.org/upas-theory which works well as a "what does this
piece do again?" refresher.

khm


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Re: [9fans] Re: [p9fUsers] 2024 Plan 9 Foundation Board Report

[sirjofri]

18.01.2025 23:47:22 Kurt H Maier via 9fans <9fans@9fans.net>:

> On Sat, Jan 18, 2025 at 10:29:48PM +0100, sirjofri wrote:
>> In general, we have a lot of "this is how tool X works" manuals, and a lack of "this is how task X can be done" documentation. The fqa is probably the most famous example of the latter, next to the intro man pages. I would be happy if we had more on-line documentation like the intro pages, but for more specific tasks. I feel that many new users especially encounter situations where they just don't know what can be done.
>
> Part of the problem is that people insist on using hostile mail
> services.  Every time anyone puts together a decent upas tutorial it
> gets immediately tripled in size by workarounds required for GMail.
> The overcomplicated GMail version becomes oral legend, so nobody knows
> what things to do for normal email and what things to do for bad email.

I'm pretty sure that's not only GMail's fault. Also, I believe we all know about the broken state of email in the recent years. It's far away from the original email experience we had and should have.

> I don't know who wrote it, but there's a nice document at
> http://wiki.9front.org/upas-theory which works well as a "what does this
> piece do again?" refresher.

Iirc, ori (?) wanted to clean up the config directory to get rid of outdated information and improve the structure. Also to make it way more understandable.

sirjofri

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plan9 ML on topicbox (Was: Re: [9fans] [p9fUsers] 2024 Plan 9 Foundation Board Report)

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

Talking about email, .. a bit off-topic, but fyi.

Maybe 9fans should consider to move the list to a different email
provider, as topicbox does some things really bad, and forces
people to use whitelisting for not only .topicbox.com but also
.messagingengine.com, the address used by outgoing email.

'Thing is that topicbox uses return-paths like

  Jan 14 15:16:16 postfix/smtp[892]: 4013616065: to=<bounce.mMf69fb7a2ec786bdd37fc8981.rf5167a6a-eb83-11e9-92f5-7ab8f5b1d025@9fans.bounce.topicbox.com>, relay=mx1.topicbox.com[103.168.172.233]:25, delay=1.6, delays=0.02/0.17/1.3/0.14, dsn=2.1.5, status=deliverable (250 2.1.5 Ok)
  ..
  Jan 14 15:16:16 postfix/smtp[893]: 8D64D16067: to=<bounce.mM1d0608a97b91ed0ef138d2f7.rf5167a6a-eb83-11e9-92f5-7ab8f5b1d025@9fans.bounce.topicbox.com>, relay=mx1.topicbox.com[103.168.172.232]:25, delay=1.6, delays=0.01/0.23/1.2/0.19, dsn=2.1.5, status=deliverable (250 2.1.5 Ok)
  ...
  Jan 14 15:16:16 postfix/smtp[891]: 586AF16066: to=<bounce.mM0295fcc211a103059818efab.rf5167a6a-eb83-11e9-92f5-7ab8f5b1d025@9fans.bounce.topicbox.com>, relay=mx1.topicbox.com[103.168.172.233]:25, delay=1.7, delays=0.01/0.1/1.4/0.13, dsn=2.1.5, status=deliverable (250 2.1.5 Ok)

ie, each and every email address is distinct, so that greylisters
and sender verifiers have to greylist / verify each email sent to
these lists by themselves!
For return-path differentiation VERP[1] has been invented long ago,

  [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_envelope_return_path

I usually do not really look at logs except for kernel / message,
but rotated logs get sent via email, so i usually see "their
fingerprint" (first and last few lines), and so i stumbled upon
this by accident, given the current turmoil on this list.

While looking into this i did some dig(1)ging, and though my DNS
is a bit rusty, i did "dig topicbox.com" and got "103.168.172.5"
for another 178 seconds, but then "dig -x 103.168.172.5" got
NXDOMAIN by messagingengine.com, which is what one gets when
asking for MX of topicbox.com.  This seems pretty much no good.
(Funnily topicbox seems to use postfix with many milters,
.. i posted a similar message to postfix in
"reject_unverified_sender: parallelism seems sub-optimal" on the
17th, maybe someone there has seen it by then .. or now here).

So what other service?  I do not know, maybe the GNU people would
host it at nongnu, it is now GPL is it?  lynx browser, tinyc, they
are all there.  The lua language decided to go googlegroups when
their decade-long hoster vanished.

A nice weekend i wish.

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,                The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter           he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)
|
|In Fall and Winter, feel "The Dropbear Bard"s pint(er).
|
|The banded bear
|without a care,
|Banged on himself for e'er and e'er
|
|Farewell, dear collar bear