[9fans] Support for Mac OS X Leopard

[9fans] Support for Mac OS X Leopard

[Tharaneedharan Vilwanathan]

Hi,

For a long time, I was interested in trying a Mac PC. I have decided
on the Mac Mini and I am just waiting for the release of Mac OS X
Leopard. Here are my questions related to the support of Plan9, Plan9
port and Inferno on this platform:

- Can I safely assume I will be able to run Plan9 on a VM like
Parallels on the Mac with OS X Leopard?

- Any idea when plan9port, Inferno, and drawterm will be available for Leopard?

I would also like to know if Mac is used by a fair amount of people
for running Plan9/Inferno. That way I can assume there will be a fair
amount of interest in the community and any issues on Mac will be
addressed.

Please share your thoughts on this.

Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks
dharani

Re: [9fans] Support for Mac OS X Leopard

[andrey mirtchovski]

> - Can I safely assume I will be able to run Plan9 on a VM like
> Parallels on the Mac with OS X Leopard?

yes (it doesn't depend on plan9, but rather on Parallels running under Leopard).

> - Any idea when plan9port, Inferno, and drawterm will be available for Leopard?

right after leopard is out. they run on tiger therefore, there
shouldn't be a problem. is there a particular "feature" of leopard
you'd like to see plan9/inferno support?

> I would also like to know if Mac is used by a fair amount of people
> for running Plan9/Inferno. That way I can assume there will be a fair
> amount of interest in the community and any issues on Mac will be
> addressed.

there are a few people running macs.

Re: [9fans] Support for Mac OS X Leopard

[Tharaneedharan Vilwanathan]

Hi Andrey,

Thanks for the quick reply.

On 9/29/07, andrey mirtchovski <mirtchovski@gmail.com> wrote:
> > - Can I safely assume I will be able to run Plan9 on a VM like
> > Parallels on the Mac with OS X Leopard?
>
> yes (it doesn't depend on plan9, but rather on Parallels running under Leopard).
Yeah, that was my thinking too. I dont see any mention of Leopard in
Parallels website. Not sure how soon Leopard will be supported.

> > - Any idea when plan9port, Inferno, and drawterm will be available for Leopard?
>
> right after leopard is out. they run on tiger therefore, there
> shouldn't be a problem. is there a particular "feature" of leopard
> you'd like to see plan9/inferno support?
Not really. I wanted to try Mac but at the same time I didnt want to
stay with Tiger just because of Plan9/Inferno support. I just want to
try Leopard features and Leopard version of apps like iLife.

> > I would also like to know if Mac is used by a fair amount of people
> > for running Plan9/Inferno. That way I can assume there will be a fair
> > amount of interest in the community and any issues on Mac will be
> > addressed.
>
> there are a few people running macs.
Thats good to know. During Bay Area meeting, when I asked about Mac
support, Ron mentioned you use Mac regularly and thats what I have
noticed in your postings also. Thats really good to know.

I dont know when Apple will release Leopard but I would have a Mac
Mini right after that. I thought of the MacBook but I thought it will
be safer/cheaper to try Mac Mini.

Thanks
dharani

Re: [9fans] Support for Mac OS X Leopard

[Francisco J Ballesteros]

I´m using both a macbook pro and a macbook regularly.
Plan9 on Parallels works fine, although time does  funny things when
you suspend (I do not) and some times parallels crashes (not plan 9) when
you start it.

On 9/29/07, Tharaneedharan Vilwanathan <vdharani@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Andrey,
>
> Thanks for the quick reply.
>
> On 9/29/07, andrey mirtchovski <mirtchovski@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > - Can I safely assume I will be able to run Plan9 on a VM like
> > > Parallels on the Mac with OS X Leopard?
> >
> > yes (it doesn't depend on plan9, but rather on Parallels running under Leopard).
> Yeah, that was my thinking too. I dont see any mention of Leopard in
> Parallels website. Not sure how soon Leopard will be supported.
>
> > > - Any idea when plan9port, Inferno, and drawterm will be available for Leopard?
> >
> > right after leopard is out. they run on tiger therefore, there
> > shouldn't be a problem. is there a particular "feature" of leopard
> > you'd like to see plan9/inferno support?
> Not really. I wanted to try Mac but at the same time I didnt want to
> stay with Tiger just because of Plan9/Inferno support. I just want to
> try Leopard features and Leopard version of apps like iLife.
>
> > > I would also like to know if Mac is used by a fair amount of people
> > > for running Plan9/Inferno. That way I can assume there will be a fair
> > > amount of interest in the community and any issues on Mac will be
> > > addressed.
> >
> > there are a few people running macs.
> Thats good to know. During Bay Area meeting, when I asked about Mac
> support, Ron mentioned you use Mac regularly and thats what I have
> noticed in your postings also. Thats really good to know.
>
> I dont know when Apple will release Leopard but I would have a Mac
> Mini right after that. I thought of the MacBook but I thought it will
> be safer/cheaper to try Mac Mini.
>
> Thanks
> dharani
>

Re: [9fans] Support for Mac OS X Leopard

[andrey mirtchovski]

On 9/29/07, Francisco J Ballesteros <nemo@lsub.org> wrote:
> I´m using both a macbook pro and a macbook regularly.
> Plan9 on Parallels works fine, although time does  funny things when
> you suspend (I do not) and some times parallels crashes (not plan 9) when
> you start it.
>

if you don't mind your parallels p9 to run with the wrong time you can
simply stop timesync and you'll have no issues with suspend/restart.
the problem is that when timesync puts the new time in after a suspend
the system recalculated the cpu clock rate and forces it down the
cpu's throat, which causes time to run much faster than usual.

here's a snippet from a discussion we had with jmk trying to figure
this one out a few months ago:

> devcons.c:^writebintime forces a new clock frequency down the kernel's
> throat at the writer's behest. the writer in this case is timesync...
> perhaps it shouldn't be allowed to do so?

i don't know a solution, i simply avoid running timesync under parallels

Re: [9fans] Support for Mac OS X Leopard

[andrey mirtchovski]

> the system recalculated the cpu clock rate and forces it down the
> cpu's throat, which causes time to run much faster than usual.

that statement is incorrect, the throat belongs to the kernel. sorry :)

Re: [9fans] Support for Mac OS X Leopard

[Jack Johnson]

On 9/29/07, andrey mirtchovski <mirtchovski@gmail.com> wrote:
> > devcons.c:^writebintime forces a new clock frequency down the kernel's
> > throat at the writer's behest. the writer in this case is timesync...
> > perhaps it shouldn't be allowed to do so?
>
> i don't know a solution, i simply avoid running timesync under parallels

What happens when you change the time on a running machine, and
how/why is this different from what timesync is trying to do?

-Jack

Re: [9fans] Support for Mac OS X Leopard

[Russ Cox]

> if you don't mind your parallels p9 to run with the wrong time you can
> simply stop timesync and you'll have no issues with suspend/restart.
> the problem is that when timesync puts the new time in after a suspend
> the system recalculated the cpu clock rate and forces it down the
> cpu's throat, which causes time to run much faster than usual.

to be fair, timesync is in a bit of a hard situation.
it just found out that an hour (say) of real time
went by in the last (say) million cycles.

the right thing to do is to fix timesync to notice
such jumps and write them off as suspend/resume
instead of assuming that the cpu has gotten *very* slow.

russ

Re: [9fans] Support for Mac OS X Leopard

[andrey mirtchovski]

> the right thing to do is to fix timesync to notice
> such jumps and write them off as suspend/resume
> instead of assuming that the cpu has gotten *very* slow.

timesync still needs to set the correct time (a system which was
suspended for, say, 10 hours will live 10 hours in the past). perhaps
devcons.c:^writebintime should be the one to skip updating the clock
frequency?

Re: [9fans] Support for Mac OS X Leopard

[Russ Cox]

>> the right thing to do is to fix timesync to notice
>> such jumps and write them off as suspend/resume
>> instead of assuming that the cpu has gotten *very* slow.
>
> timesync still needs to set the correct time (a system which was
> suspended for, say, 10 hours will live 10 hours in the past). perhaps
> devcons.c:^writebintime should be the one to skip updating the clock
> frequency?

timesync is in charge of figuring out the
correspondence between cpu frequency
and real time.  the kernel does what timesync
says.  instead of the kernel second-guessing
timesync, timesync should just be fixed.

sometimes clock speed *does* vary w.r.t. real time.
if i switch from ac to battery on a laptop,
then timesync helps navigate the change
in cpu frequency.

russ