Re: [9fans] So, once I've got the OS up how do I...

Re: [9fans] So, once I've got the OS up how do I...

[Russ Cox]

I answered a bunch (and left a bunch unanswered.)

	Q1.	What is the choice with respect to mail mirrors or mailing list
		software like majordomo?

There's no list software as of yet.  It wouldn't be hard to write.

	Q2.	What is the usual web server?

ip/httpd, see httpd(8)

	Q3.	Is the Plan 9 <> Linux software reliable?

I don't understand the question.

	Q4.	What IRC choices (both client and server) are available?

None.  Again, not hard to write.  An Acme IRC would be
really easy to write and really easy to use.

	Q5.	How do I play my audio CD's and what mp3 player is suggested?
		Is there any good audio sampling (and pop reduction) software?

Play audio CDs with acd (see http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~rsc/plan9.html).
Charles Forsyth has an mp3 player port, as does Bruce Ellis, I believe.
Long ago I saw a port of sox for doing more advanced stuff.
There's no audio sampling/pop reduction stuff ported currently.

	Q9.	What sorts of packages such as StarOffice are available, if
		any?

troff, tex, gs, basically what you'd expect.
I write my presentations in Postscript, but I'm an outlier.

I've been using StarOffice on Windows in lieu of Microsoft
Word (only under duress) and I'm not very happy with it.  I'd rather use Word.
I didn't think Microsoft really understood anything about UI
until I tried to use StarOffice.

	Q10.	What about Perl, Python, Rexx, Tcl/Tk, Java, or Prolog?

Perl yes.
Python yes.
Rexx no.
Tcl/Tk no.
Java yes, someone ported Kaffe a while back.
	It's pretty rough.

Prolog no.  (Someone is going to ask you about Prolog?  Really?)

	Q11.	Is there any sort of effort to move the GNU tools to the
		Plan 9 reality?

No, for the same reason there is no sort of effort to herd wild water buffalo
into major metropolitan areas.

	Q15.	What sort of RDBMS, especially multimedia, is available?

Someone mentioned something on 9fans about having
some database up and running.  A friend was interviewing
at Oracle a few weeks ago and in Oracle's boasts about the
portability of their server they said they had even brought
it up on Plan 9 recently.  I doubt this is going to be the cornerstone
of a new business plan.

	Q16.	Assuming a small group wished to do a custom distribution, how
		would they go about licensing it with Bell Labs? Would it even
		really be necessary under the current license? Would there be
		any advantages/disadvantages either way?

I don't think you need to talk to Bell Labs.
I am not a lawyer, but that's what license seems to say.

[9fans] Re: So, once I've got the OS up how do I...

[Jim Choate]

Thanks for taking the time to go over them.

On Wed, 7 Feb 2001, Russ Cox wrote:

> 	Q3.	Is the Plan 9 <> Linux software reliable?
>
> I don't understand the question.

As I understand it Plan 9 hosts an NFS server and there is a deamon that
lets Linux boxes mount the Plan 9 filesystem. Are they reliable in that
once setup they stay up for extended periods (eg several weeks)? Do they
have any significant limitations with respect to what or how things can be
mounted?

Pretty broad question admittedly.

> 	Q10.	What about Perl, Python, Rexx, Tcl/Tk, Java, or Prolog?
>
> Perl yes.
> Python yes.
> Rexx no.
> Tcl/Tk no.
> Java yes, someone ported Kaffe a while back.
> 	It's pretty rough.
>
> Prolog no.  (Someone is going to ask you about Prolog?  Really?)

I work for Tivoli in my day job and we use Prolog in the rules engine of
one of our products. Be glad I didn't ask about my favorite language,

Logo :)

> 		Plan 9 reality?
>
> No, for the same reason there is no sort of effort to herd wild water buffalo
> into major metropolitan areas.

You haven't been to Texas have you?...:)

> 	Q15.	What sort of RDBMS, especially multimedia, is available?
>
> Someone mentioned something on 9fans about having
> some database up and running.  A friend was interviewing
> at Oracle a few weeks ago and in Oracle's boasts about the
> portability of their server they said they had even brought
> it up on Plan 9 recently.  I doubt this is going to be the cornerstone
> of a new business plan.

No, not alone, but coupled with the distributed nature it has potential
impact at point-of-sale operations for example. Part of my day job is to
take various Tivoli and IBM software and fix business problems. Plan 9 has
a lot of potential. I also believe it will significantly impact problems
related to distributed and mobile computing.

    ____________________________________________________________________

           Before a larger group can see the virtue of an idea, a
           smaller group must first understand it.

                                           "Stranger Suns"
                                           George Zebrowski

       The Armadillo Group       ,::////;::-.          James Choate
       Austin, Tx               /:'///// ``::>/|/      ravage@ssz.com
       www.ssz.com            .',  ||||    `/( e\      512-451-7087
                           -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'-
    --------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: [9fans] So, once I've got the OS up how do I...

[Dan Cross]

In article <200102080105.UAA03200@smtp3.fas.harvard.edu> you write:
>	Q3.	Is the Plan 9 <> Linux software reliable?
>
>I don't understand the question.

I won't add much to this, except to state that I've found Drawterm
pretty unreliable.  It's a lot better to run an actual Plan 9 terminal.

>troff, tex, gs, basically what you'd expect.
>I write my presentations in Postscript, but I'm an outlier.

``This is a manly lab, and we write manly papers in a manly page
  description, in a manly way....''

Umm, apologies to the uptown guys at Saturday Night Live.
LES represent.

>Rexx no.

Seriously?  Rexx?  Wow.

>Prolog no.  (Someone is going to ask you about Prolog?  Really?)

Not terribly surprising.  Prolog is kind of cool.

One solution to that is to try and port Terzo, which is an
implementation of Lambda prolog.  It's written in SML, and might come
over with the Moscow ML port....  It probably requires the compiler
component, though, which isn't un Russ' port.  I got it to work on my
system without too much hassle, though (the Moscow ML compiler that is;
I haven't tried to port Terzo, which uses the SML/NJ compilation system,
which I think is included in mosml).

>	Q11.	Is there any sort of effort to move the GNU tools to the
>		Plan 9 reality?
>
>No, for the same reason there is no sort of effort to herd wild water buffalo
>into major metropolitan areas.

:-)

>	Q15.	What sort of RDBMS, especially multimedia, is available?
>
>Someone mentioned something on 9fans about having
>some database up and running.  A friend was interviewing
>at Oracle a few weeks ago and in Oracle's boasts about the
>portability of their server they said they had even brought
>it up on Plan 9 recently.  I doubt this is going to be the cornerstone
>of a new business plan.

Oracle is very portable, but they only release versions for
very specific platforms.  Kenji ported the postgres monitor
onto Plan 9, check out:

	http://basalt.cias.osakafu-u.ac.jp/plan9/p9index.html.

Unfortunately for mere mortals such as I, most of the associated
documentation is in Japanese.  :-)  It's not the whole DBMS, just
the client part, but it might help out.

	- Dan C.

Re: [9fans] Re: So, once I've got the OS up how do I...

[Russ Cox]

Regarding Plan 9 <-> Unix as far as file systems,
Plan 9 has an NFS server that Unix systems may
use to mount Plan 9 file systems.  It works pretty
well.  We had someone working almost exclusively
over the NFS server two summers ago.

U9fs is a 9P server that Plan 9 systems may use to
mount Unix file systems.  It too works pretty well.
As I type this, I have two such file systems mounted
in my namespace.  I'm also booting a Plan 9 box
entirely over an ethernet with a FreeBSD machine
serving as both file and authentication server.
I'm using u9fs (rewritten for 9P2000 but pretty much
the same) for file service and a port of auth.srv for
authentication.  It works.

Neither is blazingly fast, but that's not the goal.
They work well for providing interoperability.

The amazing thing is how simple they are.

    1527    3657   27203 u9fs/u9fs.c
     326     792    6457 9auth/9authsrv.c

The rest is mostly supporting routines pulled in
from the Plan 9 C library, like doprint and convM2S.

That's a full file server in 1500 lines of code,
and an authentication server in 300.  The reason this
works is that 9P is so simple.  If you want to drive the
point home, put up the rot13fs below (inspired by a
French intro to Plan 9 that appeared a few years ago;
I'd credit further except not knowing French, I got
by reading only the examples).

The whole guts of the filter is right here:

	while(n=sizeof buf, getS(rd, buf, &f, &n) == nil){
		if(f.type == Ropen)
			isdir[f.fid] = f.qid.path&CHDIR;
		if((f.type == Twrite || f.type == Rread) && !isdir[f.fid])
			rot13(f.data, f.count);
		n = convS2M(&f, wbuf);
		write(wr, wbuf, n);
	}

and that's it.  9P is simple.  Compare this with the hoops
being jumped through to do encrypted file systems on Unix
by having fake NFS servers or kernel vnode-layer replacements
or what-have-you.

Russ


#include <u.h>
#include <libc.h>
#include <auth.h>
#include <fcall.h>
#include <ctype.h>

void
rot13(char *p, int n)
{
	char *ep;

	for(ep=p+n; p<ep; p++)
		if(isalpha(*p))
			if(tolower(*p) <= 'm')
				*p += 13;
			else
				*p -= 13;
}

int isdir[65536];
void
filter(int rd, int wr)
{
	char buf[MAXMSG+MAXFDATA], wbuf[MAXMSG+MAXFDATA];
	Fcall f;
	long n;

	while(n=sizeof buf, getS(rd, buf, &f, &n) == nil){
		if(f.type == Ropen)
			isdir[f.fid] = f.qid.path&CHDIR;
		if((f.type == Twrite || f.type == Rread) && !isdir[f.fid])
			rot13(f.data, f.count);
		n = convS2M(&f, wbuf);
		write(wr, wbuf, n);
	}
	postnote(PNGROUP, getpid(), "die");
}

void
main(int argc, char **argv)
{
	int sfd, p[2];

	rfork(RFNOTEG);

	if(argc != 1+2){
		fprint(2, "usage: rot13fs service-in mountpoint\n");
		exits("usage");
	}

	if((sfd = open(argv[1], ORDWR)) < 0)
		sysfatal("cannot open %s: %r\n", argv[1]);

	if(pipe(p) < 0)
		sysfatal("pipe fails: %r\n");

	switch(rfork(RFNAMEG|RFPROC|RFFDG|RFMEM)){
	case -1:
		sysfatal("rfork fails: %r\n");
	case 0:
		close(p[0]);
		switch(fork()){
		case -1:
			sysfatal("rfork fails: %r\n");
		case 0:
			filter(sfd, p[1]);
			break;
		default:
			filter(p[1], sfd);
			break;
		}
		_exits(0);
	default:
		close(p[1]);
		if(amount(p[0], argv[2], MREPL, "") < 0)
			sysfatal("mount fails: %r\n");
		exits(0);
	}
}

[9fans] Re: So, once I've got the OS up how do I...

[Jim Choate]

On Wed, 7 Feb 2001, rob pike wrote:

> I'm a little disturbed by these questions.  It's not that I doubt
> you'll get asked them, it's that Plan 9 will lose any feature fight.
> What makes the system interesting is how it does things, not how many
> programs have been ported to it, how compatible it is with Linux, or
> how few picoseconds it takes to do a context switch.

I don't intend to present it as a feature fight. I'm planning to avoid any
sort of us/them dialog/diatribe. I've started this Hangar 18 project and
we've already got like 5 people. What I'm looking to do is make a list of
projects and issues that we need to address if we want Plan 9 to succeed.

I agree that the distributed features are one of the key feature, I
believe it will enable many of the things people have wanting to do for
years. I've personally been following Plan 9 since the early 90's. The
only(!) reason I moved to Linux in 1992 is that I saw no chance of a
change in the license.

Perhaps it'd help if I explained a little more of what I'm looking to do.

I want to try and get several people here in the Austin area with
dedicated high speed connections (I use ISDN 24*365 w/ a Class C at home)
to run Plan 9 servers, both file and process. The hope is to build a
distrubuted library of materials and services that people can use. I want
to allow at least Plan 9 and Linux users to be able to participate. There
are some additional ideas for projects at,

http://einstein.ssz.com/hangar18

Your fears are not unfounded. I've been fighting a battle within the Linux
user group who are so rabid anti-anything_not_Linux that it's nearly
unbelievable. Fortunately the majority of participants are interested and
at least admit the potential of a world, and possibly a personal use, with
Plan 9 in it. The group has agreed to host our Plan 9 meetings the last
Thu. of each month.

http://austinlug.org

> You can help propagate the message by talking about how the system
> works.  Tell stories about how the pieces fit together, how they solve
> problems by design rather than attack by overwhelming features.  It's
> a hard sell but it can be done.

Better yet, we hope to show them. Right now we'll have three machines at
the meeting on Thu. the 22'nd. I'm going to give away 10 CD's and do a
install. Then the other couple of guys are going to do some networking and
demo the user interface. Then I've got to figure out what feature I need
to do each month for about the next six months.

As to applications, I agree 100%. I'm a physics geek, not a computer geek,
and I want to do things with the thing. A computer is a fancy wrench. Not sit
arounda and talk about how pretty it is...;) This was one of the reasons I
asked the host of questions. I'm trying to figure out what I need to dance
around while at the same time keeping it interesting and usefull.

    ____________________________________________________________________

           Before a larger group can see the virtue of an idea, a
           smaller group must first understand it.

                                           "Stranger Suns"
                                           George Zebrowski

       The Armadillo Group       ,::////;::-.          James Choate
       Austin, Tx               /:'///// ``::>/|/      ravage@ssz.com
       www.ssz.com            .',  ||||    `/( e\      512-451-7087
                           -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'-
    --------------------------------------------------------------------