From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: To: 9fans@9fans.net Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2011 22:27:03 -0500 From: blstuart@bellsouth.net In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [9fans] Plan9 topology Topicbox-Message-UUID: 976a05d8-ead6-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 >> him. An even more Plan9-like way of doing it is to net-boot a Plan9 >> terminal from your cpu/auth/fs machine. If you want to boot your >> main box that way, you can without installing anything on it. From >> within Linux, you can do the same thing in virtualbox. In fact, I >> have a virtualbox terminal running right now on my machine. It's >> net booted, taking its Plan9 kernel from a Plan9 machine that >> provides DHCP service and it mounts its root from a Ken FS machine. >> At home, I use 9vx taking its root from a Plan9 fossil/venti file >> server. > > So the NIC in your Linux box must have to be PXE capable? It depends. If you want to PXE boot the box directly and have it run the Plan9 kernel natively, then at some point, something will have to be PXE capable. That could be the machine's BIOS or BIOS code on the NIC or even a boot loader loaded from a disk or CD or... On the other hand, for the case of virtualbox the PXE booting support is built into virtualbox itself. > Truth be > told, I've never set up a net-booting system. Because Plan9 was designed from the ground up around a network organization, it does a good job of supporting net booting. It's not hard to set up. > The Plan ( server would > have to have enough disk space to store its own stuff, plus the > workstation's file system? Could get dicey, if you've got a few > workstations net-booting, could it not? It can. The clients all share a single copy of the common files, but each user will have his own files on the common server. But the full Plan9 installation is quite managable. You can do quite a lot with only a few gig. > I should be able to hang the Plan 9 server off my router without any > problems, should I not? The router NATs .. Definitely. Most of the Plan9 systems I've run do access the external net through a NAT box. >> But whichever path(s) you take, I hope you'll find Plan9 is a great >> system, just as we do. > > I'm in trouble already ... Rotfl... You will be assimilated :) Seriously though, the Plan9 community is a good bunch and everyone is happy to help anyone who genuinely wants to learn. My suggestion would be to work on your spare machine first. You won't have to worry about blowing anything away and it might evolve into a useful part of your network. I'd also start by installing from the CD as a stand-alone machine. After you know your way around some, you can try to convert it to a combined CPU/auth/file server and then look into how you connect to it from other machines. BLS