Re: [9front] Staying up-to-date

[Thomas Nemeth <tnemeth@free.fr>]

Le dimanche 16 juin 2024 15:03:30 CEST, vous avez écrit :
> >     It seems to be Plan9-fileserver oriented (obviously).
> 
> It's very easy. So easy that once you get it working you will want to
> throw all but one of your hard drives out the window. Follow
> https://fqa.9front.org/fqa6.html#6.7

    That's what I was refering to ;)


> I also wanted to say that when it comes to learning Plan 9 from a
> Linux/*nix background you will find that Plan 9 will appear obtuse and
> difficult. That is because you have only known obtuse and difficult so
> you have come to expect it. Plan 9 is the opposite - so much so that
> it appears alien to the beginner.

    Well... That's partially true. I've been developing and
    administering on several Unix system for a long time. Mainly *BSD,
    Solaris and Linux. Of course I'm very comfortable with them :)

    I began to look into Plan9 about 10 (maybe more) years ago. I'm
    very, deeply, interested in every OS (well, a little less for
    proprietary ones) and the design ideas behind Plan9 were (and
    still are) appealing. I've read a lot of documentation. A lot.

    I've been playing occasionally with plan9 since then. First in
    VMs, then as soon as I had the possibility, on real hardware.
    But, and it's still true now, it's only _playing_.

    Once these ideas are understood what you say may appear as alien
    do not anymore. What's disturbing is that the documentation is
    not up to the task (in my opinion of course) to teaching newcomers
    all the intricacies of Plan9, even with the "intro" for each
    man section.

    That's in line with what you said:

> fs is the now deprecated classic on-disk file server for plan 9. The
> two currently supported file systems on 9front are hjfs and cwfs.

    Indeed. But it's still what we get when we look for some
    documentation...

    Since youur mail I've been trying several things. Looking at how
    to add a new user, a thing I had done some years ago, but didn't
    had the time until now, I understood how to communicate with the
    filesystem and send commands. But some that were in the man pages,
    could not be issued (the "users" command for example).

    And more importantly I understood that I absolutely cannot use
    "con -C /srv/hjfs.cmd".
    The command to leave the CLI is "CTRL-\ + q". But, on my (french)
    keyboard it means typing CTRL-ALTgr-\ + q". And CTRL-ALTgr-\ only
    prints \ and does nothing else so typing q+return afterward doesn't
    do as told...


> There is a third, an amazing piece of work by Ori called gefs, which
> is in testing right now. Read the man pages for those supported file
> systems and you will see the relation to fs.

    Now I have another task :) Learn how to create such a filesystem
    and use it as the root filesystem !


> Plan 9 (the kernel) only speaks 9P. It doesn't understand on-disk file
> systems such as hjfs or cwfs as that is the job of the disk file
> servers cwfs(4) and hjfs(4) - programs which translate the on-disk fs
> to 9P. This means you could in theory boot from ext, nfs, cifs, sshfs,
> etc.

    I'm already convinced that the 9P is quite the feat ;) It's also
    used in hypervisors for VMs.


> Plan 9 does not have mounts in the Unix sense as mounts and binds are
> per namespace. Instead you use the ns(1) command which prints a list
> of commands which represents the construction of the namespace that rc
> process is running in. That namespace is inherited by children procs
> which is why mounting/binding something in a new Rio window does not
> effect other windows BUT performing that same mount before running Rio
> does. See namespace lifting in the wiki for a global mount solution
> and read about srv(3).

    That's also what we get with containers under Linux. But for Linux
    it had been bolted into the kernel afterward whereas it's native
    Plan9. I've followed the developement of the namespaces in Linux
    then I've been working with lxc and docker. I could not help but
    to think about Plan9 during these developments :)


> >     Even though I've been playing occasionally with Plan9 and then
> >     9front for ~10y, I still don't feel confident enough for system
> >     administration.
> 
> Rome was not built in a day. Take your time and ask questions. Do not
> mash keys or make assumptions. Have fun!

    \o/ That's the point : having fun :)

    But not only. Trying new things, stepping out of your comfort zone
    changes your way of thinking and makes you gain experiences.

    As I said previously, I like a lot of the ideas behind Plan9. The
    only thing I disagree with is... user interaction. I come from the
    "no GUI" era : I'm a keyboard man. But that won't stop me from
    trying to gain proficiency with Plan9 :)

    I still want to test and try a lot of stuff with it. On the free
    time my wife let me have ;) This includes:

    - Handling mails. Tried before. Very complex even for a guy that used
      to configure sendmail.
    - Raspi cluster configuration. I want to put my hands into what
      makes Plan9 so powerful.
    - Development. Customizing applications, etc.

    Sorry for my _long_ mail. I cannot stop talking about the stuff I
    love :)

Thomas.