[9fans] nvram on a diskless cpu server
I just took all the disks out of my cpu server. I'm booting from my fileserver. I get the following prompts (which make the bootup process really non-automated): readnvram: couldn't find nvram can't open nil: unknown device in # filename authid: bootes authdom: mydom secstore: password: can't write key to nvram: unknown device in # filename So is there any way to put this data into /dev/nvram for the server to read from there? Or is there no way to make this truly diskless? Thanks, ak
Re: [9fans] nvram on a diskless cpu server
Some time ago I modified the rtc driver so we could use '#r/nvram' (oh, gosh, this was almost 10 years ago but ...) so that we could use the CMOS to store this stuff. Maybe it's time for another look. ron
Re: [9fans] nvram on a diskless cpu server
On Sun Jul 10 17:56:42 EDT 2011, rminn...@gmail.com wrote: Some time ago I modified the rtc driver so we could use '#r/nvram' (oh, gosh, this was almost 10 years ago but ...) so that we could use the CMOS to store this stuff. Maybe it's time for another look. vorsicht! there's a lot of magic stuff in the rtc. and where the magic bits are depends on your particular special bios. i think the problem is no one has pieced together 50-odd bytes from rtc - union(used bits). i know that some folks have a dedicated aoe network using seperate interfaces. if you have something like that and you think it's secure enough, it can be used to store nvram. - erik
Re: [9fans] nvram on a diskless cpu server
Well, I don't have a dedicated AoE for secure keys. Alternatively, can I store the keys on a little USB device? Does it require anything more than a change to the INI (in this case PXE) file? On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 3:04 PM, erik quanstrom quans...@labs.coraid.com wrote: On Sun Jul 10 17:56:42 EDT 2011, rminn...@gmail.com wrote: Some time ago I modified the rtc driver so we could use '#r/nvram' (oh, gosh, this was almost 10 years ago but ...) so that we could use the CMOS to store this stuff. Maybe it's time for another look. vorsicht! there's a lot of magic stuff in the rtc. and where the magic bits are depends on your particular special bios. i think the problem is no one has pieced together 50-odd bytes from rtc - union(used bits). i know that some folks have a dedicated aoe network using seperate interfaces. if you have something like that and you think it's secure enough, it can be used to store nvram. - erik
Re: [9fans] nvram on a diskless cpu server
On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 3:04 PM, erik quanstrom quans...@labs.coraid.com wrote: vorsicht! there's a lot of magic stuff in the rtc. and where the magic bits are depends on your particular special bios. Sure. but it's been done. We did it. ron
Re: [9fans] nvram on a diskless cpu server
yeah, the usb would be a great place to store it! Then you can easily rewrite the key ... ron
Re: [9fans] nvram on a diskless cpu server
Sure, but how do mounting and reading and all that jazz, work on boot? On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 3:13 PM, ron minnich rminn...@gmail.com wrote: yeah, the usb would be a great place to store it! Then you can easily rewrite the key ... ron
Re: [9fans] nvram on a diskless cpu server
write to the raw disk, and use the device name for nvram in plan9.ini On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 12:20 AM, Akshat Kumar aku...@mail.nanosouffle.net wrote: Sure, but how do mounting and reading and all that jazz, work on boot? On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 3:13 PM, ron minnich rminn...@gmail.com wrote: yeah, the usb would be a great place to store it! Then you can easily rewrite the key ... ron
Re: [9fans] nvram on a diskless cpu server
and of course the other option is to put a file named 'nvram' into the image and use that. usually the easiest. ron
[9fans] Fwd: nvram on a diskless cpu server
I asked this of nemo, should have forwarded here as well: -- Forwarded message -- Hi Francisco, Doesn't authsrv itself write to the raw data file you provide in `nvram=' in plan9.ini? Otherwise, what would be the format to do so manually? Also, what does device name mean in this case? #u/ep... or #S/sdU...? Thanks, ak On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 3:34 PM, Francisco J Ballesteros n...@lsub.org wrote: write to the raw disk, and use the device name for nvram in plan9.ini On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 12:20 AM, Akshat Kumar aku...@mail.nanosouffle.net wrote: Sure, but how do mounting and reading and all that jazz, work on boot? On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 3:13 PM, ron minnich rminn...@gmail.com wrote: yeah, the usb would be a great place to store it! Then you can easily rewrite the key ... ron
Re: [9fans] Fwd: nvram on a diskless cpu server
term% cd /tmp term% dd -bs 512 -count 1 /dev/zero nvram 1+0 records in 1+0 records out term% nvram=nvram term% xd nvram 000 010 etc. term% auth/wrkey bad nvram key bad authentication id bad authentication domain authid: xyz authdom: abc secstore key: password: term% cat nvram 1� �@�123�xyztabc/term% xd nvram 000 31d90c00 028140e2 010 31323300 9f78 020 797a 030 0074 61626300 040 etc. It pays to make the nvram file len 512 bytes or you have to set nvramlen in plan9.ini and who wants to do that. Note the nvram=nvram step ... it is needed. ron p.s. No points for guessing the password I used :-)
Re: [9fans] grep (or perhaps regex(6)) question
On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 3:56 AM, dexen deVries dexen.devr...@gmail.com wrote: on plan9port: % echo foobar | 9 grep '$JUNK' - foobar that is, p9p grep matches any line with regular expression in form of $ANY_REGEX why is it so? It's an ancient bug in the Plan 9 grep, a complication of the way Ken implemented ^ and $: as aliases for \n (!). It looks like someone added a workaround for this one case in the Plan 9 sources since I forked them for plan9port seven years ago. I pulled it in. For fun, try seeing what matches '^$^$' across a variety of grep implementations. Russ
Re: [9fans] Plan 9 on VIA C7
To assign proper credit, I learned that trick from the 264x terminals manufactured by HP in the mid-to-late 70s. In those days most computer fans still used AC motors, so HP operated 240 VAC muffin fans at 120 VAC to exhaust the terminal heat in a virtually silent fashion. Modern (brushless DC motor) computer fans can be similarly tamed by reduced voltage, or by PWM. John On 7/8/2011 5:59 PM, ron minnich wrote: What you see strapped to it is a 12V fan from a dell desktop which I ran at 5V, not 12V (a trick I learned from John DeGood). Very little air had to move, it was noiseless, and it all cooled right down. You don't need huge noisy fans in all cases.
[9fans] fs(3) for pseudo partitions
For AoE reasons, I need to combine a mirror (of a partition of a disk and a whole disk) with another partition of a disk, in a way that the combination looks like a disk in itself. Has anyone tried such a thing with fs(3)? I have a mirror: mirror m0 /dev/sdD1/data /dev/sdC0/worm at /dev/fs/m0, and what I would like is a new pseudo device in fs(3) that joins /dev/fs/m0 and /dev/sdC0/kcache. But not simply as a `cat' of these two files, rather so that the resulting data file has the two as partitions. This way I don't need a ton of NICs and `vblade' instances for each drive/partition that I want to serve to my ken fs server. Thanks, ak
Re: [9fans] fs(3) for pseudo partitions
On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 8:05 PM, erik quanstrom quans...@quanstro.net wrote: there are several simple options - write a little sd driver. see sdloop(3) for a prototype. Ah, so such a thing can't be done simply with some fs(3) configuration? The sd driver would concatenate the specified list of files, and keep in the header, some partition lines, in the vein of sd(3) data files? - modify vblade to serve multiple luns. Is there any reason you decided against this in the past? Some drawbacks? Thanks, ak
