Re: [9fans] Pointers for using Plan 9?

[andrey mirtchovski <aam396@mail.usask.ca>]

I'm kind of in the same shoes -- I've taken up on Plan9 for a research
project of mine. I am trying to port/reimplement some bioinformatics
algorithms for plan9 and will compare them with PVM running on NetBSD
(presumably on the same cluster)...

The hardware I have been allocated is a bunch of old Alpha UDBs, on which
I'm just starting to install Plan9.

My suggestion would be to create a simple plan9 installation on i386-based
machines and work from there. The stations can easily be booted off a i386
fileserver, provided you can compile a suitable kernel for sparc (don't know
about NeXT boxen). The source code is very readable and will (hopefully) be
no problem to customize (I've heeard of at least one non-bell-labs person
who has tweaked the kernel succesfully in order to get P9 going on weird
hardware, and AFAIK it's not too hard, just time consuming :)

As for example programs and tutorials -- it seems to be all there, you just
have to look through the code for several of the utilities that provide
functionality similar to what you need. In my opinion their code reads
pretty much like a book.

Also there have been several links and code posted to this list/newsgroup
which contain sample implementations of several types -- graphics, device
drivers, utilities, scripts... Browsing through the archives may yield
positive results :)

Regards: Andrey

On Thu, 5 Oct 2000, Kirk M. Anne wrote:

>
> I am assisting a Computer Science faculty member with a Distributed
> Systems undergraduate course and we are working on Amoeba now.  I spotted
> that Plan 9 is now available for downloading and have tinkered around with
> it and read through many of the papers.
>
> I was wondering if there were any example programs or "How to" documents
> that we can give out to the class to help them learn about Plan 9.  We
> have built an Amoeba cluster and want to replicate the experience in Plan
> 9 so that the students can get a firm understanding of how distributed
> systems work (where there are similarities and differences between the
> two).
>
> So, could anyone send me the following?
>
> 	1. Sample Plan 9 setup and guidelines for decisions (I'm still
>            pouring over the Overview to Plan 9 networks)
>
> 	2. Sample programs that use Plan 9 features
>
> 	3. Recommendations for an upper level project using Plan 9
>
> 	4. Pointers to SPARC and NeXT installation instructions for Plan 9
>
> If this goes well, we hope to continue with directed studies on using Plan
> 9 to solve scientific problems that other faculty around campus have in
> Physics, Chemistry and Biology.
>
> Any information would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Kirk Anne
> Manager, Systems & Networking
> SUNY Geneseo
> Geneseo, NY 14454
> 716-245-5577
>
>