Re: [9fans] sad commentary
Octopus sessions persist by definition as long as you do not reboot your central PC. All other machines are used to run viewers, but the layout is preserved by the (window) file system kept at the PC. Also, you may use tar to capture (most of) the window system state and restore it later (eg., upon reboots). On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 7:24 AM, underspecified [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is actually something I am very interested in as well. If a persistent version of Acme (-SAC) was available it would completely obviate my use of screen. Would something like this be feasible outside of Octopus as well? --underspecified On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 12:10 PM, Tim Wiess [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: this slashdot article almost asks for cpu functionality for plan 9 by name. http://ask.slashdot.org/askslashdot/08/06/29/1417247.shtml not a single mention of plan 9. i hope this is an indication that slashdot has slipped. screens? 1978 called and wants its terminal server mentality back. - erik cpu is not persistent, at least not in the way he wants it. Yeah, seems like the poster is more interested in something similar to what Octopus give you.
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
People do acknowledge the new free systems. Unfortunately, RMS got them off it in a microsecond when 3e came out: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/plan-nine.html And I don't believe the Note at the top will change people's minds. And even if we do manage to make people remember Plan 9, we live in a world ruled by the standard set up by Windows 95. Even Mac OS X seems influenced (the three buttons scenario - take a look at that Ah, minimalism if you don't use that system). If people say Plan 9 is too hard to use they will allocate blame to Rob Pike's rio before reading his tirade on other windowing systems (which you can find at http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/doc/88/1-07.ps.gz) . And I don't think they would be open to using Inferno, where the windowing system has to be started manually and each and every program isn't available from that menu. I'm not complaining, though - I like them both - but I'm warning you. On Jun 29, 2008, at 10:38 PM, Uriel wrote: No, slashdot has not slipped (but then, I stopped reading it a few years ago, and the comments there have always been most depressing). But the world has pretty much forgotten Plan 9 even exists (and lets not even mention Inferno). In a story about 9vx in reddit.com (where supposedly all the cool kids hang out this days) somebody mentioned 'last I got interested in Plan 9 you had to pay a few hundred bucks to get a copy' (or something to that effect). So, that is what anti-propaganda brings you, but at least you don't have to deal with clueless users... oh wait, never mind. uriel On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 4:21 AM, erik quanstrom [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: this slashdot article almost asks for cpu functionality for plan 9 by name. http://ask.slashdot.org/askslashdot/08/06/29/1417247.shtml not a single mention of plan 9. i hope this is an indication that slashdot has slipped. screens? 1978 called and wants its terminal server mentality back. - erik
Re: [9fans] 9vx fork problem
- Modify the kernel (it is based on Unix - even Microsoft says so) - Learn how Cygwin does it - Don't use real processes, like in Inferno On Jun 30, 2008, at 8:34 AM, Steve Simon wrote: Apparently, after a fork, a child retains it's parent's pid in _tos-pid. I think this is at the root of why 9vx cannot run on MS-Windows. I have been very slowly crawling towards an updated port of 9pm (p9p for windows as it was) learing the Windows API and the plan9 kernel as I go. The one total show stopper is a lack of a real fork() in windows. This meant I chose to implement rfork(RFPROC) as somthing like vfork() - CreateThread() followed by CreateProcess() whilst the parent is blocked. This works in simple cases but breaks on rc(1). This is fixable by modifying the rc source (rc runs under windows in its inferno form anyway) but that is not the point. I implemented rfork(RFPROC|RFMEM) as CreateThread() with stack copy and relocation. This works well but means every windows-thread/plan9- psudo-proc has a different stack and thus _tos and _tos-pid won't work. This is OK, I just recompile every app using a modified malloc.c in libc but once again, if you break the purity of unmodified plan9 binaries then then you win almost noting over recompiling them on the target platform anyway - kencc syntax extensions not withstanding. I would love to get 9vx running on windows and if anyone has any ideas how to solve these problems then let me know. -Steve
Re: [9fans] 9vx fork problem
Apparently, after a fork, a child retains it's parent's pid in _tos-pid. I think this is at the root of why 9vx cannot run on MS-Windows. No, it's not. The words fork and pid in that sentence are concepts completely internal to 9vx. The host OS, be it OS X or Linux or Windows, has absolutely no idea they exist and is not contributing at all toward their implementation. The only thing the host OS sees is a bunch of pages from a file being mapped and unmapped from memory. In fact, 9vx would probably be easier to bring up on Windows than trying to do anything special just to implement rfork for a p9p-style port (not implementing rfork would be easier still; see below). I have been very slowly crawling towards an updated port of 9pm (p9p for windows as it was) learing the Windows API and the plan9 kernel as I go. The one total show stopper is a lack of a real fork() in windows. This meant I chose to implement rfork(RFPROC) as somthing like vfork() - CreateThread() followed by CreateProcess() whilst the parent is blocked. This works in simple cases but breaks on rc(1). This is fixable by modifying the rc source (rc runs under windows in its inferno form anyway) but that is not the point. I implemented rfork(RFPROC|RFMEM) as CreateThread() with stack copy and relocation. This works well but means every windows-thread/plan9-psudo-proc has a different stack and thus _tos and _tos-pid won't work. This is a separate issue. In p9p I prepared for this by getting rid of all the uses of rfork to create threads, replacing them with the thread library and threadcreate. The latter should be easier to implement with Windows primitives, if you stay that course. Russ
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
Pietro Gagliardi schrieb: If people say Plan 9 is too hard to use they will allocate blame to Rob Pike's rio before reading his tirade on other windowing systems (which you can find at http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/doc/88/1-07.ps.gz). With this link ione only gets the starting page of the paper. Is there any other source for the complete Paper (without cost)? bblochl
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
Pietro Gagliardi schrieb: People do acknowledge the new free systems. Unfortunately, RMS got them off it in a microsecond when 3e came out: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/plan-nine.html And I don't believe the Note at the top will change people's minds. Wikipedia says: License The full source code is freely available under Lucent Public License 1.02, and considered to be open source by the OSI and free software by the FSF (although incompatible with the GNU General Public License). It passes the Debian Free Software Guidelines. From another mail: But the world has pretty much forgotten Plan 9 even exists (and lets not even mention Inferno) I do think, that its not the license, the main problem of plan 9 is the lack of a tutorial for beginners and examples for some applications and at best with some exercises to practice. Well, there is a bulky manual. The collection of papers Plan 9 — The Documents (Volume 2) is more readable. But learning from manuals compares to learning a language from a dictionary. There is a need for some more readable. For example the role of make as an equivalent for cc is not self-evident for a traditional normal OS-user. It is a regret that alef has gone and limbo is not available under Plan 9. (Or is it?) As there is no simple introduction to Plan 9 new users will just go the easy way and get Windows or Linux. bblochl
Re: [9fans] inferno under 9vx (+ ape fix)
anyway, i might have missed a report about this from someone else, but does anyone else find that when doing a longish mk, the terminal output will occasionally freeze, but is brought back very quickly by interacting with the mouse in the window (sometimes it seems to need an actual click, sometimes a wiggle will do) this happens to me quite regularly (mac os 10.5.3). Andrey mentioned seeing the same thing, but I thought I had fixed it in the native-GUI version (post-0.11) at http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/~rsc/9vx.OSX.gz Which one are you running? Russ
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
Pietro Gagliardi schrieb: If people say Plan 9 is too hard to use they will allocate blame to Rob Pike's rio before reading his tirade on other windowing systems (which you can find at http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/doc/88/1-07.ps.gz). With this link ione only gets the starting page of the paper. Is there any other source for the complete Paper (without cost)? bblochl I'm not sure what you're looking at, but when I downloaded and uncompressed that paper I got the whole thing. John
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
[EMAIL PROTECTED] schrieb: Pietro Gagliardi schrieb: If people say Plan 9 is too hard to use they will allocate blame to Rob Pike's rio before reading his tirade on other windowing systems (which you can find at http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/doc/88/1-07.ps.gz). With this link ione only gets the starting page of the paper. Is there any other source for the complete Paper (without cost)? bblochl I'm not sure what you're looking at, but when I downloaded and uncompressed that paper I got the whole thing. John 1. Where are the examples? 2. Have you ever worked with srtudents? bblochl
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
is not available under Plan 9. (Or is it?) As there is no simple introduction to Plan 9 new users will just go the easy way and get Windows or Linux. lack of an introduction is not the problem. not being unix is the problem. For example the role of make as an equivalent for cc is not self-evident for a traditional normal OS-user. come again? - erik
Re: [9fans] 9vx fork problem
Pietro Gagliardi wrote: - Modify the kernel (it is based on Unix - even Microsoft says so) Sure it is...in the same way that VMS is based on UNIX (which means not at all)
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
For example the role of make as an equivalent for cc is not self-evident for a traditional normal OS-user. come again? i thought it meant that he always types in cc commands on unix. of course you could do that too with 8c/8l but normally on plan 9 i create a mkfile except for the tiniest one-off things.
Re: [9fans] 9vx
On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 10:12 PM, erik quanstrom [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: there's not access to the network device per ce, but the network works fine for me. this is what i needed to do to connect to plan 9 networks 1. edit /lib/ndb/auth and /lib/ndb/local as appropriate. 2. rm /net/cs; ndb/cs 3. auth/factotum 4. cpu -h $host Same recipe works here. But I've no idea why the rm /net/cs is necessary - can anyone put me out of my misery? -sqweek
Re: [9fans] inferno under 9vx (+ ape fix)
On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 6:49 AM, Russ Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: anyway, i might have missed a report about this from someone else, but does anyone else find that when doing a longish mk, the terminal output will occasionally freeze, but is brought back very quickly by interacting with the mouse in the window (sometimes it seems to need an actual click, sometimes a wiggle will do) this happens to me quite regularly (mac os 10.5.3). Andrey mentioned seeing the same thing, but I thought I had fixed it in the native-GUI version (post-0.11) at http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/~rsc/9vx.OSX.gz I think I just unpacked and ran this one, and it started in X11. Did I forget a flag or miss a post on the ML? Dave
Re: [9fans] 9vx os x
My caps lock problem is gone with this! Thanks Russ (nevermind my other message regarding it still starting in X11... I'm extra-scatterbrained today) Dave On Sun, Jun 29, 2008 at 10:00 AM, Russ Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have not bothered to create a new package, but there is a new binary available for OS X: hget -o 9vx.OSX.gz http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/~rsc/9vx.OSX.gz gunzip 9vx.OSX.gz chmod +x 9vx.OSX ./9vx.OSX -r your-root Please try it on 10.5 and see how it works. Sources are not packaged up until things are stable for a little while, but they are in the Mercurial repository at hg clone http://hg.pdos.csail.mit.edu/hg/vx32 Russ
Re: [9fans] 9vx
Same recipe works here. But I've no idea why the rm /net/cs is necessary - can anyone put me out of my misery? There are a bunch of rough edges that need to be fixed. This is one of them. 9vx provides a #I/cs so that you can do things like hget without starting cs. But it can't translate auth domains via /lib/ndb, which factotum needs it to do. So you have to start the more full-featured ndb/cs, but that mounts itself on /net using MAFTER (a bug, if you ask me). Because I knew I couldn't get a fix to ndb/cs into the distribution in time, I made the #I/cs file removable. Originally, the reason for providing #I/cs was to provide access to host DNS lookups, just like it does in drawterm. Now that there is a separate #I/dns (that ndb/cs will use), it might be that the right thing to do is just toss away #I/cs so that termrc will start a real one. Another rough edge, if anyone wants a challenge, is that gs goes into an I/O-free loop after reading the first 4k of /sys/lib/ghostscript/gs_init.ps. (I deleted gs from the 9vx tar file to save space, so you'll have to run against a distribution tree instead.) Russ
[9fans] 9vx: ...and if you love plan9 more than your x86 host
It's more fun to use 9vx in the fullscreen mode to get a complete
Plan9 experience.
Press F11 to toggle fullscreen mode.
Patch attached.
Thanks for 9vx. It makes things a lot easier :)
-- Abhishek
diff -r 9007574b0ca2 src/9vx/x11/x11-kernel.c
--- a/src/9vx/x11/x11-kernel.c Sun Jun 29 22:24:21 2008 -0400
+++ b/src/9vx/x11/x11-kernel.c Mon Jun 30 10:04:59 2008 -0600
@@ -26,6 +26,14 @@ Rectangle windowrect;
Rectangle windowrect;
Rectangle screenrect;
int fullscreen;
+
+enum
+{
+ _NET_WM_STATE_REMOVE =0,
+ _NET_WM_STATE_ADD = 1,
+ _NET_WM_STATE_TOGGLE =2
+
+};
/*
* Handle an incoming X event.
@@ -86,7 +94,24 @@ runxevent(XEvent *xev)
XLookupString((XKeyEvent*)xev, NULL, 0, k, NULL);
if(k == XK_F11){
fullscreen = !fullscreen;
- //TODO _xmovewindow(fullscreen ? screenrect :
windowrect);
+ //TODO _xmovewindow(fullscreen ? screenrect :
windowrect);
+
+ Atom windowState = XInternAtom(_x.display,
_NET_WM_STATE, False);
+ Atom fullScreen =
XInternAtom(_x.display,_NET_WM_STATE_FULLSCREEN, False);
+
+ XEvent fscrev;
+ fscrev.xclient.type=ClientMessage;
+ fscrev.xclient.serial = 0;
+ fscrev.xclient.send_event=True;
+ fscrev.xclient.window=_x.drawable;
+ fscrev.xclient.message_type=windowState;
+ fscrev.xclient.format=32;
+ fscrev.xclient.data.l[0] = (fullscreen ?
_NET_WM_STATE_ADD :_NET_WM_STATE_REMOVE);
+ fscrev.xclient.data.l[1] = fullScreen;
+ fscrev.xclient.data.l[2] = 0;
+
+ XSendEvent(_x.display,
DefaultRootWindow(_x.display), False,
+ SubstructureRedirectMask |
SubstructureNotifyMask,fscrev);
return;
}
_xtoplan9kbd(xev);
Re: [9fans] 9vx
now that you've explained the cs issue things are much clearer. i can confirm that I have successfully booted a 9vx terminal off a remote plan9 server using a small modification to factotum. the original boot process failed with: password: ! authentication failed (auth_proxy rpc write: bootes: Connection refused), trying mount anyways boot: mount /: fossil authCheck: auth protocol not finished 9vx panic: boot process died: unknown and the change simply sidesteps factotum using cs to figure out who/what to dial, instead just using IP addresses. here's the hack: 9grid% yesterday -d util.c diff /n/dump/2008/0630/sys/src/cmd/auth/factotum/util.c /sys/src/cmd/auth/factotum/util.c 33c33 return authdial(net, authdom); --- ;//return authdial(net, authdom); 9grid% now compile 8.factotum and copy it as 9vx/src/9vx/factotum.9 and recompile 9vx. unfortunately with a terminal booted thusly i no longer have /mnt/term :)
[9fans] 9vx problem with venti
on .10, I can run venti/venti. on .11, it locks up 9vx quite thoroughly after it prints init If you resize the window it is filled with garbage. Under strace I can see it taking the timer interrupts. Linux xcpu 2.6.25 #6 SMP Tue May 27 09:46:16 PDT 2008 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux Sorry I don't have much more. I'm still looking around. also, on .10, when I am doing a venti/copy, at some point vx dies with a sigsev on cpux, where x is 5 or 7 or 9 so far. ron
Re: [9fans] 9vx
now compile 8.factotum and copy it as 9vx/src/9vx/factotum.9 and recompile 9vx. err, make that vx32/src/9vx/factotum.9. i'm compiling against the latest mercurial, but there's not reason why it shouldn't just work with .11 and .10
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
erik quanstrom wrote: is not available under Plan 9. (Or is it?) As there is no simple introduction to Plan 9 new users will just go the easy way and get Windows or Linux. lack of an introduction is not the problem. not being unix is the problem. Looking too much like UNIX while acting differently is part of the problem. However, the bigger part is that the existing documentation can be a bit daunting for someone who is new to Plan 9, and still has only a vague notion of how the system works. Like the UNIX man pages, the documentation is very detailed, and great for a reference. But many new users need a bit of hand-holding, of the Trust me, you want to run this command. You'll learn why/how later, but for now, just RUN THIS COMMAND. sort. At least until the 'new user' anxiety dies down a bit, and the return of rational thought allows one to digest the more extensive documentation. Besides, isn't not being UNIX one of the prominent features of Plan 9? Steven Vormwald PS: John, thanks for the link to the RIT Intro paper (in another message in this thread). It helped a lot.
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
On Jun 30, 2008, at 9:48 AM, bblochl wrote: Pietro Gagliardi schrieb: If people say Plan 9 is too hard to use they will allocate blame to Rob Pike's rio before reading his tirade on other windowing systems (which you can find at http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/doc/88/1-07.ps.gz) . With this link ione only gets the starting page of the paper. Is there any other source for the complete Paper (without cost)? bblochl Get a different PostScript viewer. It works for me.
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
RMS has the power to turn people away from bad technology. Remember that now. On Jun 30, 2008, at 9:46 AM, bblochl wrote: Pietro Gagliardi schrieb: People do acknowledge the new free systems. Unfortunately, RMS got them off it in a microsecond when 3e came out: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/plan-nine.html And I don't believe the Note at the top will change people's minds. Wikipedia says: License The full source code is freely available under Lucent Public License 1.02, and considered to be open source by the OSI and free software by the FSF (although incompatible with the GNU General Public License). It passes the Debian Free Software Guidelines. From another mail: But the world has pretty much forgotten Plan 9 even exists (and lets not even mention Inferno) I do think, that its not the license, the main problem of plan 9 is the lack of a tutorial for beginners and examples for some applications and at best with some exercises to practice. Well, there is a bulky manual. The collection of papers Plan 9 — The Documents (Volume 2) is more readable. But learning from manuals compares to learning a language from a dictionary. There is a need for some more readable. For example the role of make as an equivalent for cc is not self-evident for a traditional normal OS- user. It is a regret that alef has gone and limbo is not available under Plan 9. (Or is it?) As there is no simple introduction to Plan 9 new users will just go the easy way and get Windows or Linux. bblochl
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
On Jun 30, 2008, at 10:07 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Are we talking about the same thing? Pietro's link is for an old paper by Rob Pike talking about the mux windowing system. There aren't really any examples. Much of the paper still applies to rio. From mux to rio few changes were made. Possibly the two biggest changes were resizing/moving from the borders and hold mode.
Re: [9fans] 9vx problem with venti
on .10, I can run venti/venti. on .11, it locks up 9vx quite thoroughly after it prints init If you resize the window it is filled with garbage. Under strace I can see it taking the timer interrupts. Linux xcpu 2.6.25 #6 SMP Tue May 27 09:46:16 PDT 2008 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux Sorry I don't have much more. I'm still looking around. also, on .10, when I am doing a venti/copy, at some point vx dies with a sigsev on cpux, where x is 5 or 7 or 9 so far. If you invoke it with the -A flag, then it will go into a sleep loop on panic (-A stands for abort, but that didn't work very well on OS X). You can then attach with gdb and get a stack trace or look at what the other threads are doing. The cpu numbers don't really mean anything except for whether they're 0 (runs user code) or non-zero (runs kprocs). Russ
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
On Sun, Jun 29, 2008 at 7:21 PM, erik quanstrom [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: this slashdot article almost asks for cpu functionality for plan 9 by name. actually, this the scenario for which we designed xcpu, almost exactly. Mount, start up, disconnect, come back later ... I've used it this way. ron
Re: [9fans] 9vx: ...and if you love plan9 more than your x86 host
It's more fun to use 9vx in the fullscreen mode to get a complete Plan9 experience. Press F11 to toggle fullscreen mode. Patch attached. Checked F11 code into hg. Instead of sending the window manager a make me fullscreen request like your code did, the code I added (taken from p9p) just resizes the window to take up the whole screen. I would be happy to use the window manager version (which I added, but if'ed out) except that it doesn't work with p9p rio. Please speak up if the move the window approach doesn't work with your window manager. If it doesn't, then we can make your version the default once someone volunteers to add support to rio. Russ
Re: [9fans] 9vx problem with venti
On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 10:33 AM, Russ Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you invoke it with the -A flag, then it will go into a sleep loop on panic (-A stands for abort, but that didn't work very well on OS X). You can then attach with gdb and get a stack trace or look at what the other threads are doing. in the case of .11 it never really dies -- just hangs ... sufficient input will finally kill the X11 thread. ron
[9fans] WYSE Winterm 9150SE graphical problem
Hello, I have a WYSE Winterm 9150SE [1]. It is a terminal running a AMD Geode GX processor, with 256MB of RAM. It is meant to run Windows XP Embedded, wich is located into a 256MB ROM, but it can also boot from network via PXE. Using PXE, I am successfully running a Plan 9 terminal to my Plan 9 authserver. The text interface is running fine. However, I cannot run the graphical interface. When I try to launch aux/vga, the screen turn to blank and displays no input signal. I tried dozens of modes, from 640x480 to 1280x1024, using 8-bit to 32-bit of colors, and no one seems to work. I also tried CRT and LCD screens. Windows XP Embedded is running fine using 1024x768x16. I uploaded the result of 'aux/vga -p' [2] and 'pci -v' [3] on my WYSE, connected to my authserver. How can I make the graphical interface working? [1] http://www.wyse.com/products/winterm/9150SE/ [2] http://www.9grid.fr/misc/plan9/wyse_9150/auxvga-p [3] http://www.9grid.fr/misc/plan9/wyse_9150/pci-v Thank you. -- David du Colombier
Re: [9fans] 9vx on OpenBSD-4.3
On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 3:15 PM, Iruata Souza [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 3:04 PM, Tim Wiess [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you can wait a couple days I'll have some time later in the week to port this over to OpenBSD. I'm currently trying to get 9vx work on OpenBSD-4.3 (i386, 750Mhz, 256MB RAM), but each time I want to start 9vx I get the following: $ ./9vx.FreeBSD -u glenda Abort Trap $ Of course FreeBSD Binary Emulation has been turned on using /etc/sysctl.conf. Furthermore I tried also to use the Linux binary (using the Linux Emulation, which I also switched on), but I get the same message back in this case too. If you need some more informations about the system, drop me a line. Any hints how to solve this problem welcome Thanks, Malik I started the porting some days ago. Seems the only missing part is one bit in i386_set_ldt. I can upload it somewhere if anyone want to play with the missing stuff. correcting myself: it's the only missing part now that i've done some work. iru
Re: [9fans] 9vx on OpenBSD-4.3
On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 3:04 PM, Tim Wiess [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you can wait a couple days I'll have some time later in the week to port this over to OpenBSD. I'm currently trying to get 9vx work on OpenBSD-4.3 (i386, 750Mhz, 256MB RAM), but each time I want to start 9vx I get the following: $ ./9vx.FreeBSD -u glenda Abort Trap $ Of course FreeBSD Binary Emulation has been turned on using /etc/sysctl.conf. Furthermore I tried also to use the Linux binary (using the Linux Emulation, which I also switched on), but I get the same message back in this case too. If you need some more informations about the system, drop me a line. Any hints how to solve this problem welcome Thanks, Malik I started the porting some days ago. Seems the only missing part is one bit in i386_set_ldt. I can upload it somewhere if anyone want to play with the missing stuff. iru
Re: [9fans] 9vx on OpenBSD-4.3
Thanks for your fast replies. I can't help you coding/porting but if you need some help for testing, drop me a line. Thanks, Malik
Re: [9fans] 9vx on OpenBSD-4.3
On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 3:04 PM, Tim Wiess [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you can wait a couple days I'll have some time later in the week to port this over to OpenBSD. I'm currently trying to get 9vx work on OpenBSD-4.3 (i386, 750Mhz, 256MB RAM), but each time I want to start 9vx I get the following: $ ./9vx.FreeBSD -u glenda Abort Trap $ Of course FreeBSD Binary Emulation has been turned on using /etc/sysctl.conf. Furthermore I tried also to use the Linux binary (using the Linux Emulation, which I also switched on), but I get the same message back in this case too. If you need some more informations about the system, drop me a line. Any hints how to solve this problem welcome Thanks, Malik I started the porting some days ago. Seems the only missing part is one bit in i386_set_ldt. I can upload it somewhere if anyone want to play with the missing stuff. Ok cool. I'd be happy to look at it when I get the chance.
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
This is a very good point. I mostly learned Unix in a corporate environment, but the same logic holds: somebody else had set up and maintained the systems. // I'm afraid there's not much we can do about this. Other, obviously, than getting uni types to use it there. Plan 9 (like Inferno) has quite a bit to offer from pedagogical view. // Trinity College Dublin Pretty campus, warm sweatshirts. Convince your IT folks. ;-) anthony
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
I have not even started such thing, but, if you go for it and want help, count me in :) I've been thinking of writing a Plan 9 for Dummies style thing; Nemo's book is excellent but definitely aimed at someone most interested in writing code immediately. Basically stealing the format from all UNIX beginner's books ever written, it would have a chapters about logging on, basic rio usage, basic commands, the file system layout, acme and sam (to match the standard vi and emacs sections!), rc programming, and C under Plan 9. Imagine chapter one of Nemo's book except greatly expanded. Now, before I set quill to parchment (or fingers to keyboard as may be), has anyone else started something like this?
Re: [9fans] 9vx
Does it work to set csremoved=1 in src/9vx/devip.c instead? I can confirm that this works, with the benefit of using secstore instead of prompting for my password.
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 2:33 PM, Francisco J Ballesteros [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have not even started such thing, but, if you go for it and want help, count me in :) And I would read it! :) -- Tom Lieber http://AllTom.com/
Re: [9fans] 9vx
Does it work to set csremoved=1 in src/9vx/devip.c instead? I can confirm that this works, with the benefit of using secstore instead of prompting for my password. Okay, done. Thanks. Russ
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
Hi 9fans, I'm writing this in an open letter style because I find eric's original post and the follow-up quite on-topic with respect to my unsuccessful Plan 9 experience. To provide context, let me describe myself as a serious hobbyist, which means I know my way around Windows and at least 2 other (UNIX-like) OS's--I can set up a reasonably secure sendmail and BIND installation, write a little Perl or C program to do my bidding, and wouldn't gawk at you if you talked about using xmllint to check a document's well-formedness but I'm not a kernel hacker or a hacker of any sort for that matter. I can Get My Personal Job Done (tm) but you wouldn't hire me as an admin. When I downloaded the Plan 9 4e ISO image I thought to myself one more OS adventure. It turned out to be a very frustrating one. Plan 9 wouldn't work fine, or work at all, on a number of freeware virtualization platforms which I am sure weren't especially rigged to run the other OS's they happened to run fine. It eventually worked on QEMU. Since I'm a serious hobbyist bad installation experience is hardly a deterrent to me--not anymore. When I came to actually use Plan 9 I found out the two interfaces I'd heard about, i.e. rc and rio, are both awkward despite how everybody on 9fans thought they were such glorious climaxes of simplicity and usability and how everybody would bash Bash. If I were to save one interface (textual or graphical) out of all interfaces that exist today that'd be Bash. Perhaps I'm a brainwashed FSF zombie in thinking so but I am once again sure rc or rio won't even be on my top ten list and that's no FSF zombie attitude. Some 9fans members may remember my original zeal to participate in 9fans and learn about Plan 9. That zeal was subdued when I went through the first few chapters of Francisco Ballesteros' fine book. Since then I've only been quietly reading 9fans posts and not using Plan 9. I believe this reasoning from Eris Raymond's The Art of UNIX Programming (a book that is more than a little on the snob side, by the way) is mutatis mutandis appropriate: The long view of history may tell a different story, but in 2003 it looks like Plan 9 failed simply because it fell short of being a compelling enough improvement on Unix to displace its ancestor. Compared to Plan 9, Unix creaks and clanks and has obvious rust spots, but it gets the job done well enough to hold its position. There is a lesson here for ambitious system architects: the most dangerous enemy of a better solution is an existing codebase that is just good enough. --20.2 Plan 9: The Way the Future Was Let me say that Plan 9 didn't seem to me, as a user and not a hacker, to even cover any meaningful rust spots, for example, of FreeBSD. Rio is actually a failure despite whatever the 9fans people and Rob Pike may say. Fossil/Venti, however brilliant it may look like to the code junkie, does not offer anything for me but added complexity. Plan 9 neither fulfills previous functions nor defines new ones for any end user or even hobbyist, except perhaps the most sturdy of them. It is probably a wonderful research platform for computer science students but it cannot and will not support even the simpler tasks a student of, say, mathematics expects of their PC these days, e.g. symbolically solving an equation system (without going through implementing or porting a computer algebra system or learning some twisted Lisp, of course). Good software--to a mathematics student--like Maple will never become available on Plan 9, as it did on Linux, and for the third time I am sure this isn't because Maplesoft has any special affiliation with the Linux people. It's simply because Plan 9 is not the user's OS, it isn't even the geek's OS, or the nerd's OS, it is only the CS/CE OS Design student's OS, with a little margin kept to accommodate a few sturdy geeks and professionals interested in special applications. In fact, I suspect Bell/Lucent made Plan 9 publicly available because they found no better use for it. Plan 9 was not released to the public, instead jettisoned into the public's care. Of course, this accusation of mine remains as undocumented as any conspiracy theory but I'm inclined to believe it. No one should wonder why Plan 9 isn't remembered or used even in such geeky communities as Slashdot. It just isn't our kind of OS and by us I mean lowlifes like me in contrast to the grand exalted Plan 9 user. Best wishes, Eris Discordia P.S. Heck, this is some sad commentary.
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
well, Eris, it is quite possible that you're right. It is also possible that you never quite got it. Or both are possible. ron
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 2:12 PM, Eris Discordia [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Fossil/Venti, however brilliant it may look like to the code junkie, does not offer anything for me but added complexity. i'm using p9p venti on linux, and it's been a total breeze to configure and administer. the utility of hist and yesterday in my opinion far outweigh the couple megabytes of memory that venti needs to be running all the time (i run it on my desktop machine, not a dedicated file server). i'm curious to know what backup system you're using that is simpler than venti. my interest in plan 9, inferno, octopus, c stems mainly from my using venti for backups and finding it to be far better that anything unix had to offer. so it you really do have a backup system simpler and more robust than venti, i'd love to try it out -- i apologize in advance if gmail has in anyway mutilated this messege. stay beautiful!
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
Plan 9 neither fulfills previous functions nor defines new ones for any end user or even hobbyist, except perhaps the most sturdy of them. this blog-style opinion piece does not offer anything constructive. for example, would utf-8 qualify as a functionality that didn't exist before plan9? there are many plan9 ideas that have been adopted by other os -- though the results often are Frankenstein-esque. Eris Discordia P.S. Heck, this is some sad commentary. what's sad is that unless there's a dummy's guide to something, that something is not considered a success. -Skip
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 3:42 PM, Skip Tavakkolian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: P.S. Heck, this is some sad commentary. what's sad is that unless there's a dummy's guide to something, that something is not considered a success. Its worse than that Skip -- I imagine many would rank Apple's time machine greater than venti just because it puts a pretty GUI on top of crap methodology versus doing something clever under the hood. You can't be a success unless you have an animated 3D GUI consuming most of your CPU resources and expending all sorts of power. We should have spent the last 20 years working on movie-OS versus actually trying to do systems research. -eric
Re: [9fans] 9vx problem with venti
I just pulled the hg and built 9vx from sources. venti copy has not died yet. :-) ron
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
Besides, isn't not being UNIX one of the prominent features of Plan 9? tautology, no? to be plan 9 it must be different. if it were not, it would be unix. - erik
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
crap methodology versus doing something clever under the hood. You can't be a success unless you have an animated 3D GUI consuming most of your CPU resources and expending all sorts of power. That couldn't be farther from truth, at least in my case. No one wants to waste their computer's time :-) Yet, when it comes to choose between wasting their time or that of their computer's then most normal people will go for the latter. I'm a regular Windows user. My Windows installation has been reduced to bare minimum. It runs fine and hell it really can compete with any of the top dogs in desktop applications. And when it comes to running a DNS server, well, there's FreeBSD and OpenBSD. Where is the incentive for someone other than a CS/CE OS Design/Research student (or the like) who's a vested interest in learning exotic OS's to switch to Plan 9? Plan 9 seems to be a niche OS, as I pointed out before. We should have spent the last 20 years working on movie-OS versus actually trying to do systems research. Systems research? Did you actually research how a normal user used their computer? Did you even try to guess how a normal user used their system? Did you do that and end up with a technical manual whose prime example for backup strategy involves a Jukebox? Systems research, as you know it, provides a student/researcher/professor/professional with academic credit, three meals a day, and a place to sleep--it won't Get the Users' Job Done (tm). Best wishes, Eris Discordia --On Monday, June 30, 2008 3:55 PM -0500 Eric Van Hensbergen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 3:42 PM, Skip Tavakkolian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: P.S. Heck, this is some sad commentary. what's sad is that unless there's a dummy's guide to something, that something is not considered a success. Its worse than that Skip -- I imagine many would rank Apple's time machine greater than venti just because it puts a pretty GUI on top of crap methodology versus doing something clever under the hood. You can't be a success unless you have an animated 3D GUI consuming most of your CPU resources and expending all sorts of power. We should have spent the last 20 years working on movie-OS versus actually trying to do systems research. -eric
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
this blog-style opinion piece does not offer anything constructive. for example, would utf-8 qualify as a functionality that didn't exist before plan9? The fact the UTF-8 was first implemented on Plan 9 has nothing to do with Plan 9's funtionality as an OS. Similarly, the fact that Windows is still the best platform if you need to do word processing in many languages has nothing to do with its comparatively low performance with many applications--an important OS functionality it lacks. FreeBSD's very good process scheduling, which manifests to a user like me in not having to worry about a non-responsive system in case a process is poorly performing, is an OS funtionality. If the availability of UTF-8 is an advantage, the absence of a single Unicode font in the system useful for non-Latin languages is a very strong disadvantage. UTF-8 in an English-only user paradigm is only extravagance. I even doubt there's a simple way of inputting, say, Hebrew or Arabic in Plan 9. It'll be kind of you to clarify that point for me if I'm mistaken. what's sad is that unless there's a dummy's guide to something, that something is not considered a success. The question is what new function Plan 9, as an OS, defines for the end user. Does it enable me of doing something Windows doesn't? Does it enable me of doing something better than I could do on FreeBSD? Does its default GUI even match Windows in ease of use (read: switching to another window, killing the window you're running, doing a simple copy without typing in regexps/wildcards, et cetera)? By the way, I provided a description of my person to avoid dummy labels. I may well be a dummy in your league but that doesn't mean I'm unable of reading a normal technical manual. I can do and have done that, on Linux, FreeBSD, and Plan 9. And success, by definition, doesn't need an apology. When there's an apology there must have been a measure of failure. Best wishes, Eris Discordia --On Monday, June 30, 2008 1:42 PM -0700 Skip Tavakkolian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Plan 9 neither fulfills previous functions nor defines new ones for any end user or even hobbyist, except perhaps the most sturdy of them. this blog-style opinion piece does not offer anything constructive. for example, would utf-8 qualify as a functionality that didn't exist before plan9? there are many plan9 ideas that have been adopted by other os -- though the results often are Frankenstein-esque. Eris Discordia P.S. Heck, this is some sad commentary. what's sad is that unless there's a dummy's guide to something, that something is not considered a success. -Skip
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
Not a very kind comment. Though, it is possible that it's true. What was there for me to understand about Plan 9 that I did not? Barring a mystical bond with its exquisite kernel, of course. --On Monday, June 30, 2008 1:01 PM -0700 ron minnich [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: well, Eris, it is quite possible that you're right. It is also possible that you never quite got it. Or both are possible. ron
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
The fact the UTF-8 was first implemented on Plan 9 has nothing to do with Plan 9's funtionality as an OS. Not true. The ability to adapt the system quickly in response to a changing standards situation made a critical difference in having UTF-8 rather than a weaker proposal accepted by X/Open and hence ISO. The question is what new function Plan 9, as an OS, defines for the end user. Plan 9 is not for end users. Plan 9 is for programmers. -rob
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
The fact the UTF-8 was first implemented on Plan 9 has nothing to do with Plan 9's funtionality as an OS. it seems like you are avoiding the point on purpose. i don't think you can pick up a kernel with tweezers and make a bunch of abstract statements about it. and so i think the fact that unicode may be used anywhere a character is expected in plan9 does have a lot to do with the system's functionality. If the availability of UTF-8 is an advantage, the absence of a single Unicode font in the system useful for non-Latin languages is a very strong disadvantage. what do you base this claim on? i'm pretty sure that the fonts distributed with the system are enough to support japanese, greek, and russian, to name only the ones i can think of quickly and i am certain that code2000 and cyberbit which are available on sources provide some of the best unicode coverage for free fonts. they're not great fonts nor do they have total coverage, but no fonts do. I even doubt there's a simple way of inputting, say, Hebrew or Arabic in Plan 9. It'll be kind of you to clarify that point for me if I'm mistaken. there is not. perhaps this is something you could contribute. - erik
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 12:32 AM, Eris Discordia [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: crap methodology versus doing something clever under the hood. You can't be a success unless you have an animated 3D GUI consuming most of your CPU resources and expending all sorts of power. That couldn't be farther from truth, at least in my case. No one wants to waste their computer's time :-) Yet, when it comes to choose between wasting their time or that of their computer's then most normal people will go for the latter. I'm a regular Windows user. My Windows installation has been reduced to bare minimum. It runs fine and hell it really can compete with any of the top dogs in desktop applications. And when it comes to running a DNS server, well, there's FreeBSD and OpenBSD. Where is the incentive for someone other than a CS/CE OS Design/Research student (or the like) who's a vested interest in learning exotic OS's to switch to Plan 9? Plan 9 seems to be a niche OS, as I pointed out before. We should have spent the last 20 years working on movie-OS versus actually trying to do systems research. Systems research? Is dead. Utah2000. uriel
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
Its worse than that Skip -- I imagine many would rank Apple's time machine greater than venti just because it puts a pretty GUI on top of crap methodology versus doing something clever under the hood. Pretty GUI doesn't hurt but it is the ease of use that makes time machine popular. Kudos to Apple for making something as unsexy as backups a desirable feature! Pretty GUI may attract people initially but in the end it is really about the ease of use. Most people just want to use a computer, not learn all about it (just as they want to drive a car and not look under the hood). A Plan9 for Dummies book will be great but that won't help all those people who just want to take Plan9 for a spin. With 9vx at least one major hurdle has been removed. BTW, I primarily use venti for backups in my multi-os environment. I would love a fancy GUI on it. Much easier to look for a lost picture by what it looks like than try to remember its camera generated name like P314159.JPG. There is no reason in principle why venti can't be made as easy to use as the time-machine. If anything, plan9 is perhaps a superior platform for building an easy to use system as it has a regular structure. It is just that most people who use plan9 are programmers and seem happy with the status quo. You can't be a success unless you have an animated 3D GUI consuming most of your CPU resources and expending all sorts of power. We should have spent the last 20 years working on movie-OS versus actually trying to do systems research. Didn't someone say back in 2000 that system software research is irrelevant?!
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
// Systems research? Did you actually research how a normal user used their // computer? Did you even try to guess how a normal user used their system? // Did you do that and end up with a technical manual whose prime example for // backup strategy involves a Jukebox? You clearly have a very particular, narrow idea of what a user is, and a very muddy idea of how research works. Obviously getting an optical jukebox isn't practical for Joe Public sitting in his flat, but it makes great sense for lots of users in larger settings. Perhaps more to the point, experience with fs(4) led pretty directly to the current construction of fs(3), fossil(4), and venti(6) - all of which are much more suitabe for Joe. Put another way: the topic under research wasn't how do we provide the backup functionality people are asking for?, but how would having daily dumps change the way you work? would that be useful?. It's a less product- oriented set of questions, but produces more fundamental results. // Plan 9 seems to be a niche OS, as I pointed out before. That may well be true, or at least that it isn't mainstream and mass-market. That's never been its objective, and I'm sorry if you wasted your time based on misunderstanding that. // UTF-8 in an English-only user paradigm is only extravagance. We've got enough folks around here who use something other than English as their primary language with their computer that this complaing falls down. You're right that there's more research to be done here, such as on right-to-left input methods and composing characters, but that's far from the same thing. If the UI model doesn't work for you, well, that's a shame, I guess. Based on the bash love from earlier posts, I'm going to hazard a guess that your complaints are largely based on the old keyboard vs. mouse argument. I doubt hauling out the old references would be convincing once you've already made up your mind. Anthony
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
By the way, I provided a description of my person to avoid dummy labels. I may well be a dummy in your league but that doesn't mean I'm unable of reading a normal technical manual. I can do and have done that, on Linux, FreeBSD, and Plan 9. you've missed my point. most of the dummies books on software try to explain how to deal with very complex, organically developed systems that lack any central design idea. the fact that it requires the reader to admit to being a dummy to buy the book is telling enough.
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
Most people just want to use a computer, not learn all about it (just as they want to drive a car and not look under the hood). And Windows is the Chevrolet|Ford|Toyota|\* for the common man. We are not the common man. Buy a bus pass and push off.
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 6:20 PM, Eris Discordia [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Barring a mystical bond with its exquisite kernel, of course. it seems you have done much kernel programming, eh? iru
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
Plan 9 is not for end users. Plan 9 is for programmers. -- Federico G. Benavento
Re: [9fans] sad commentary
On Jun 30, 2008, at 1:34 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Now, before I set quill to parchment (or fingers to keyboard as may be), has anyone else started something like this? I was planning on doing something of the sort... On Jun 30, 2008, at 5:46 PM, erik quanstrom wrote: this guide was writen at coraid by michael covington. the document proclaims itself to be: ...until I saw this. Should this go into /sys/doc unmodified? Good luck, Mr. Covington.
Re: [9fans] 9vx
I added devsd and wrote an sd loopback yesterday afternoon.
It worked pretty well except that when I ran fdisk,
/dev/sd00/data disappeared. I was going to debug that
before saying anything.
Here's the fix for the fdisk problem:
/sys/src/cmd/disk/prep/edit.c:503,508 - edit.c:503,509
*/
for(i=0; iedit-nctlpart; i++) {
p = edit-ctlpart[i];
+ if(strncmp(p-ctlname, data, 5) != 0)
if(p-changed)
if(fprint(ctlfd, delpart %s\n, p-ctlname)0) {
fprint(2, delpart failed: %s: %r\n, p-ctlname);
Anthony
[9fans] tip 9vx segfault on Ubuntu in Xen
I have Ubuntu on a VPS (on Xen) and I'd like to install a Plan 9 server using 9vx. 9vx tip compiles, but segfaults after the 256M memory line (as does the precompiled binary, in the same place). I am tunneling to local X11 on OS X 10.5.3. I don't know how to debug this properly, but here is gdb output similar to what I saw in another report. Starting program: /home/tom/vx32/src/9vx/9vx -F -u glenda [Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled] [New Thread 1076381360 (LWP 19044)] [New Thread 1635380112 (LWP 19047)] [New Thread 1645087632 (LWP 19048)] [New Thread 1654795152 (LWP 19049)] Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault. [Switching to Thread 1076381360 (LWP 19044)] 0x08099acc in sysexec (arg=0x602852d0) at 9vx/a/sysproc.c:386 386 tos-cyclefreq = m-cyclefreq; (gdb) bt #0 0x08099acc in sysexec (arg=0x602852d0) at 9vx/a/sysproc.c:386 #1 0x08057abc in trap (ureg=0x60b48ee0) at 9vx/trap.c:222 #2 0x08058968 in touser (initsp=0xfa4) at 9vx/vx32.c:284 #3 0x08052421 in init0 () at 9vx/main.c:487 #4 0x in ?? () (gdb) info thread 4 Thread 1654795152 (LWP 19049) 0xe410 in __kernel_vsyscall () 3 Thread 1645087632 (LWP 19048) 0xe410 in __kernel_vsyscall () 2 Thread 1635380112 (LWP 19047) 0xe410 in __kernel_vsyscall () * 1 Thread 1076381360 (LWP 19044) 0x08099acc in sysexec (arg=0x602852d0) at 9vx/a/sysproc.c:386 (gdb) info threads 4 Thread 1654795152 (LWP 19049) 0xe410 in __kernel_vsyscall () 3 Thread 1645087632 (LWP 19048) 0xe410 in __kernel_vsyscall () 2 Thread 1635380112 (LWP 19047) 0xe410 in __kernel_vsyscall () * 1 Thread 1076381360 (LWP 19044) 0x08099acc in sysexec (arg=0x602852d0) at 9vx/a/sysproc.c:386 -- Tom Lieber http://AllTom.com/
[9fans] /lib/font fonts in troff
Hello. I found a few fonts from /lib/font (Courier, for aesthetic reasons, and erik's vera, for its complete Unicode conformance) that I'd like to make available to troff. Is there any way to do this? I'll name the files myself (Other-Courier and Bitstream-Vera, perhaps). Thanks.
