From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: From: a@9srv.net To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] 'wall' messages In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2003 19:19:10 -0400 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Topicbox-Message-UUID: 66427e0e-eacc-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 another problem with the 'echo 'rebooting now' > /dev/screen/*' or whatever is the fact that it requires more specific resources to exist. my primary interaction with plan 9 these days is (sadly) via ssh (ether on Virtual PC, anyone?), so most of the common /dev entries present on a terminal, via drawterm, or via vnc won't show up for me. i've used a system based around /chan in inferno (/chan is more or less inferno's version of /srv), and been quite pleased. it's been a few years, but we may have even had the same file visable in both plan 9 and inferno. we had a little logger window that printed out messages and un-minimized itself when one came in, or you could just cat it if you're on a text console. the point of doing it that way was it offered a ton of flexability as far as the software that presented the message to the user (from 'cat' to our Limbo/Tk app). and whatever the software was, it was really simple, and the user could choose where the notifications went, how they were presented, &c.; not so with the schemes using direct manipulation of things in /dev. i suspect the plumber could be used to great effect here. that's another amazing bit of kit. i've also played around with system-wide "profiles", executed via /rc/lib/rcmain, before the $home/lib/profile, but wasn't sure what i though of that. it's useful, to be sure, but another thing to maintan and another thing going on more-or-less without the users knowledge. which isn't always a bad thing, but... this is all in addition to the security/architecture complaints =05people have pointed out so far, which i think are dead on. =E3=82=A2