[9fans] FWIW: kerTeX published as git repos

[tlaronde]

FWIW, I have published under:

https://github.com/tlaronde/

risk_comp, kertex_M, kertex_T and kertex_pkg sources.

More easy to browse than the tarballs.

I will accept contribs after review (I believe in managing with a hand
of iron in a glove of lead, the lead adding to the weight when hitting
while being malleable enough to avoid hurting the iron hand):

Violence doesn't solve all the problems... Above all if one
makes the mistake of not hitting hard enough.

   KungFuCius

-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
http://kertex.kergis.com/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

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Re: [9fans] kerTeX packages framework update

[tlaronde]

Please note that by:

http://kertex.kergis.com/{fr,en}/pkg.html

I mean whether the french version:

http://kertex.kergis.com/fr/pkg.html

or the (sort of) english one:

http://kertex.kergis.com/en/pkg.html

{fr,en} is not a subdir ;-)

On Tue, Jan 30, 2024 at 07:47:59AM +0100, tlaro...@kergis.com wrote:
> I have made a significant update to the extensions framework of kerTeX
> (installing packages, typically things on CTAN).
> 
> What is of special interest to plan9 and derived systems users:
> 
> - When a recipe downloads sources from CTAN, the URL is not specified.
> The definition of the env variable KERTEX_PKG_SRC_SRV is used,
> defaulting to 'http://mirrors.ctan.org/'. The problem is that this
> last is a CDN and redirection does not work with every client or one
> can make a better choice of a reliable mirror near location. It is
> then possible to simply redefine the variable to download from the
> preferred server. This URL can also be a
> 'file:///some/dir/with/CTAN/like/tree/' so there is the following
> utility;
> 
> - pkg_bulk_get is provided that can download all the sources
> (mirroring) needed by the recipes in KERTEX_PKG_RCP_DIR (a dir; not an
> URL) that defaults to $KERTEX_LIBDIR/pkg/rcp/. If one wants only
> sources for the recipes one uses, just define the variable to the dir
> where the selected recipes are (one can also see the dependencies of
> recipes in order to have a complete set);
> 
> - An utility pkg_rcp_sketch is provided that sketches a recipe for a
> LaTeX contrib macros package on CTAN. The recipe provided should work
> as is in a fair amount of cases (in this case, no need to provide it:
> this lightens the burden for me to have to maintain recipes).
> 
> All explanations are in:
> 
> http://kertex.kergis.com/{fr,en}/pkg.html
> 
> --
> Thierry Laronde 
>  http://www.kergis.com/
> http://kertex.kergis.com/
> Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
http://kertex.kergis.com/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

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[9fans] kerTeX packages framework update

[tlaronde]

I have made a significant update to the extensions framework of kerTeX
(installing packages, typically things on CTAN).

What is of special interest to plan9 and derived systems users:

- When a recipe downloads sources from CTAN, the URL is not specified.
The definition of the env variable KERTEX_PKG_SRC_SRV is used,
defaulting to 'http://mirrors.ctan.org/'. The problem is that this
last is a CDN and redirection does not work with every client or one
can make a better choice of a reliable mirror near location. It is
then possible to simply redefine the variable to download from the
preferred server. This URL can also be a
'file:///some/dir/with/CTAN/like/tree/' so there is the following
utility;

- pkg_bulk_get is provided that can download all the sources
(mirroring) needed by the recipes in KERTEX_PKG_RCP_DIR (a dir; not an
URL) that defaults to $KERTEX_LIBDIR/pkg/rcp/. If one wants only
sources for the recipes one uses, just define the variable to the dir
where the selected recipes are (one can also see the dependencies of
recipes in order to have a complete set);

- An utility pkg_rcp_sketch is provided that sketches a recipe for a
LaTeX contrib macros package on CTAN. The recipe provided should work
as is in a fair amount of cases (in this case, no need to provide it:
this lightens the burden for me to have to maintain recipes).

All explanations are in:

http://kertex.kergis.com/{fr,en}/pkg.html

-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
http://kertex.kergis.com/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

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Re: [9fans] programs from UNI*x

[tlaronde]

Le Wed, Jun 28, 2023 at 05:34:16PM +0200, Luis a écrit :
> On Wed, 2023-06-28 at 15:55 +0100, Conor Williams wrote:
> > hello there 9fans.ers
> > 
> > anyone need any UniX programs transferred (port.ed) to Plan9
> > 
> > will give u a good price 1cent an hour iff i can get it going...
> > 
> > textual programs mostly...
> > 
> > Kind Regards
> > will51 (conor.williams@ yada yada c. reply address)
> > ps: I am currently catching up on some good dickens novels and would
> >      love some diversionary tactics my the fans of de plan9 oses
> 
> What do the plan 9 people think of Donald Knuth's mmix/mmixal?
> (https://www.mmix.cs.hm.edu/).
> 
> 9front has a mix emulator (games/mix), but what about mmix, has anyone
> considered porting that? Perhaps the effort required would be too
> large, though.

I would be very surprised if it was difficult to port. You need only
ctangle(1)---it is with kerTeX and kerTeX is available for Plan9---to
obtain the C code, and D.E. Knuth always write his "demonstration"
software in a very OS agnostic way.

At worst, you could compile it under APE.
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
http://kertex.kergis.com/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

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[9fans] kerTeX : LaTeX update

[tlaronde]

FWIW, I have modified the latex.sh recipe so that one can specify via
a SUPPORTED_LANGUAGES variable a blank separated list of languages
(by their Babel names) for which hyphenation has to be added to the
format (hyphenation patterns have still to be compiled in the format
and can not be put afterwards at user level).

For example:

$  SUPPORTED_LANGUAGES="french ukenglish ngerman russian" \
$KERTEX_SHELL latex.sh install

Will add french, english extended (compared to hyphen.tex; "english" is
not a Babel name and refers to D.E.K.'s original hyphen.tex; Babel has
"ukenglish" and "usenglishmax"), german post 1996 and russian, for
hyphenation to the format.

The dedicated Babel packages (fre...@latex.sh etc.) have still to be 
added afterwards for "user level" particularisations.

FWIW,
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
http://kertex.kergis.com/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

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Re: [9fans] kerTeX: LaTeX recipe fix for Plan9

[tlaronde]

Le Tue, Nov 01, 2022 at 02:12:32PM -0700, Skip Tavakkolian a écrit :
> The problem here was due to hget failing. Binding hurl over hget and
> running it again, latex installed properly. Thanks!
> 

The problem is indeed with mirrors.ctan.org that redirects (and
distributes: at every invocation, it yields a different server) and hget(1)
does not do it.

For the time being specifying:

$KERTEX_SHELL some_rcp.sh -p http install

will use the KerGIS cache instead of the CTAN mirrors, without
redirectioni, and it will succeed.

I will rework, some time, the logic to let a configuration file
specifies the sites to try in order of preference, instead of
specifying the server in the download list spec.


> On Mon, Oct 31, 2022 at 1:28 AM  wrote:
> 
> > Le Sun, Oct 30, 2022 at 04:41:21PM -0700, Skip Tavakkolian a écrit :
> > ...
> > >
> > > Also, I can't find latex.sh in the installed packages. Did I miss a step?
> > >
> > 
> > It should be in $KERTEX_LIBDIR/pkg/rcp/latex.sh
> > 
> > and this should be here if you run:
> > 
> > $KERTEX_SHELL $KERTEX_LIBDIR/pkg/rcp/r...@pkg.sh install
> > 
> > this being done, unless you answered no, during the install.
> > 
> > (all the variables are defined in which_kertex(1) that can be evaluated to
> > have the definitions in the environment).

-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
http://kertex.kergis.com/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

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Re: [9fans] kerTeX: LaTeX recipe fix for Plan9

[tlaronde]

Le Mon, Oct 31, 2022 at 09:27:10AM +0100, tlaro...@polynum.com a écrit :
> Le Sun, Oct 30, 2022 at 04:41:21PM -0700, Skip Tavakkolian a écrit :
> > I just did a full install of the stable version in my local evolutionary
> > branch of 9legacy using the get_mk_install.rc script.
> > I had to extend XCPPFLAGS in "kertex_T/lib1/web/Makefile.ker" to include
> > "-D_SUSV2_SOURCE"
> 
> It's anormal since all the kerTeX stuff depends only on standard C, the
> only exception needing POSIX being introduced by a primitive added for LaTeX 
> but whose
> implementation, in kerTeX, is in the system dependant library for Plan9
> and not in libweb...

Correction: since the system dependant part is not in a separated
library but in a separate object (source defined depending on the
system) but put in libweb, this macro definition has to go in:

kertex_T/sys/lib1/web/plan9.c

before the inclusion of the system headers.

Thanks for the report!

> > 
> > Also, I can't find latex.sh in the installed packages. Did I miss a step?
> > 
> 
> It should be in $KERTEX_LIBDIR/pkg/rcp/latex.sh
> 
> and this should be here if you run:
> 
> $KERTEX_SHELL $KERTEX_LIBDIR/pkg/rcp/r...@pkg.sh install
> 
> this being done, unless you answered no, during the install.
> 
> (all the variables are defined in which_kertex(1) that can be evaluated to
> have the definitions in the environment).
> 
> > On Thu, Oct 13, 2022 at 8:05 AM  wrote:
> > 
> > > The latest version of the recipe used utilities in a way not matching
> > > Plan9 (rmdir(1) or mv(1) for directories...) and the use of the mf(1)
> > > binary was made without ensuring the kerTeX directory was in the path.
> > > 
> > > This is corrected in the new recipe latex.sh (tested on 9front).
> > > --
> > > Thierry Laronde 
> > >  http://www.kergis.com/
> > > http://kertex.kergis.com/
> > > Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C
> 
> --
> Thierry Laronde 
>  http://www.kergis.com/
> http://kertex.kergis.com/
> Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
http://kertex.kergis.com/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

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Re: [9fans] kerTeX: LaTeX recipe fix for Plan9

[tlaronde]

Le Sun, Oct 30, 2022 at 04:41:21PM -0700, Skip Tavakkolian a écrit :
> I just did a full install of the stable version in my local evolutionary
> branch of 9legacy using the get_mk_install.rc script.
> I had to extend XCPPFLAGS in "kertex_T/lib1/web/Makefile.ker" to include
> "-D_SUSV2_SOURCE"

It's anormal since all the kerTeX stuff depends only on standard C, the
only exception needing POSIX being introduced by a primitive added for LaTeX 
but whose
implementation, in kerTeX, is in the system dependant library for Plan9
and not in libweb...

> 
> Also, I can't find latex.sh in the installed packages. Did I miss a step?
> 

It should be in $KERTEX_LIBDIR/pkg/rcp/latex.sh

and this should be here if you run:

$KERTEX_SHELL $KERTEX_LIBDIR/pkg/rcp/r...@pkg.sh install

this being done, unless you answered no, during the install.

(all the variables are defined in which_kertex(1) that can be evaluated to
have the definitions in the environment).

> On Thu, Oct 13, 2022 at 8:05 AM  wrote:
> 
> > The latest version of the recipe used utilities in a way not matching
> > Plan9 (rmdir(1) or mv(1) for directories...) and the use of the mf(1)
> > binary was made without ensuring the kerTeX directory was in the path.
> > 
> > This is corrected in the new recipe latex.sh (tested on 9front).
> > --
> > Thierry Laronde 
> >  http://www.kergis.com/
> > http://kertex.kergis.com/
> > Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
http://kertex.kergis.com/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

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[9fans] kerTeX: LaTeX recipe fix for Plan9

[tlaronde]

The latest version of the recipe used utilities in a way not matching
Plan9 (rmdir(1) or mv(1) for directories...) and the use of the mf(1)
binary was made without ensuring the kerTeX directory was in the path.

This is corrected in the new recipe latex.sh (tested on 9front).
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
http://kertex.kergis.com/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

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Re: [9fans] hget'ing from a cdn

[tlaronde]

Hello,

Le Fri, Jul 08, 2022 at 10:07:21PM -0700, Skip Tavakkolian a écrit :
> i use hurl:
> 
> % hurl https://mirror.ctan.org/tds/packages.zip > xyz.zip
> 
> https://go.dev/play/p/v6Ludjnzyg_L
> 

I will then simply add the utility in the list of recognized retrievers
and add the choice in the get_mk_install.rc script.

Thanks!

> On Fri, Jul 8, 2022 at 8:55 PM Skip Tavakkolian
>  wrote:
> >
> > Use a client written in Go?
> >
> > On Fri, Jul 8, 2022, 12:53 PM  wrote:
> >> 
> >> Hello,
> >> 
> >> Pkg in kerTeX are created by processing and first retrieving files using
> >> hget(1) for http served files.
> >> 
> >> The main TeX repository is CTAN. Now, there is an address:
> >> mirrors.ctan.org (http/https), that is in fact redirecting dynamically
> >> to various mirrors (this changes almost on any invocation).
> >> 
> >> There is a difference in implementation between Plan9 legacy and 9front,
> >> hget(1) being, if I'm not mistaken, a binary in Plan9 legacy, and a rc
> >> script in 9front.
> >> 
> >> The problem is that the redirection is not handled at least by one of
> >> these and I have to keep a static cache on my website server to mirror
> >> the files so that users can use the downloads.kergis.com/kertex/
> >> (http/https) address instead to circumvent the problem.
> >> 
> >> Is there a way to make it work ideally on both flavors, so that the
> >> pkg/recipes are indeed "live" taking whatever is current on CTAN using
> >> whatever mirror?
> >> 
> >> TIA,
> >> --
> >> Thierry Laronde 
> >>  http://www.kergis.com/
> >> http://kertex.kergis.com/
> >>http://www.sbfa.fr/
> >> Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
http://kertex.kergis.com/
   http://www.sbfa.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

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[9fans] hget'ing from a cdn

[tlaronde]

Hello,

Pkg in kerTeX are created by processing and first retrieving files using
hget(1) for http served files.

The main TeX repository is CTAN. Now, there is an address:
mirrors.ctan.org (http/https), that is in fact redirecting dynamically
to various mirrors (this changes almost on any invocation).

There is a difference in implementation between Plan9 legacy and 9front,
hget(1) being, if I'm not mistaken, a binary in Plan9 legacy, and a rc
script in 9front.

The problem is that the redirection is not handled at least by one of
these and I have to keep a static cache on my website server to mirror
the files so that users can use the downloads.kergis.com/kertex/
(http/https) address instead to circumvent the problem.

Is there a way to make it work ideally on both flavors, so that the
pkg/recipes are indeed "live" taking whatever is current on CTAN using
whatever mirror?

TIA,
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
http://kertex.kergis.com/
   http://www.sbfa.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

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[9fans] kerTeX: LaTeX fixes

[tlaronde]

FWIW, for LaTeX users (I'm not), I had made a blunder in the latex.sh
recipe preventing the installation of a part of the (huge) psnfss font
collection. It has been corrected.

Since a LaTeX user hit a capacity limit, I have also increased the 'BIG'
version of the prote engine.

One thing that may hit other (not LaTeX) users: if a line was not
terminated by a newline, but it was the end of the file, it was an
error. After a multiplication of files not ending with a newline, I have
modified the input routine to consider the eof to be a valid end of
line.

Everything is online.
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
http://kertex.kergis.com/
   http://www.sbfa.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

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[9fans] Re: kerTeX: Update for LaTeX3 compatibility

[tlaronde]

Hello,

Le Sun, Apr 17, 2022 at 07:48:17PM -0500, Atticus a écrit :
> Thierry,
> 
> Thanks for more excellent work on KerTeX. I don't use LaTeX myself, just
> good old plain TeX, but I always turn to KerTeX for that.

I don't use LaTeX myself, neither ;-)

> 
> There does seem to be some minor permissions issues on downloads.kergis.com
> at the moment, affecting get_mk_install.sh, kertex_bundle.tar, and possibly
> other files. Those two at least consistently return `403 Forbidden'.

There seems to be spurious (and recent) problems with the server. The
permissions are OK, but I have encountered too random problems
(killing the download and restarting always solved it). I don't host the
server (it is an ISP) and I will have to try to find what has been going wrong
recently (maybe the CDN that I selected at one moment; then disabled
because there were problems; and since I renewed the lending, perhaps it
has been reset back).

Thanks for the report and the encouragement!

Best,

T. Laronde

> 
> The individual source tarballs don't seem to affected.
> 
> 
> Thanks again for all the hard work,
> 
> -- Byron Grobe
> 
> On Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 14:35  wrote:
> 
> > Hello,
> > 
> > LaTeX3 requires additional primitives neither present in TeX nor e-TeX
> > and I had hence to develop these primitives on the TeX/e-TeX engine. The
> > result is Prote (MIT licensed change file), compatible with TeX, with
> > e-TeX and providing the primitives required now by the latest LaTeX
> > developments. Some additional file handling had to be developed as
> > well (\input primitive) and this has been done too (this was a major
> > work also).
> > 
> > I have published a new version of kerTeX, with the LaTeX recipe
> > (latex.sh) updated as well so that kerTeX will progressively return
> > being really "live" that is: taking whatever is current on CTAN to
> > update packages with a seldom need to update the recipe itself (since I
> > was blocked by the new LaTeX development, I had to cache the "old"
> > versions of the CTAN packages on my site so that everything will not
> > fail due to the LaTeX evolution).
> > 
> > I have tested an early version on 9front/amd64 and there was no error.
> > If I find the time (I'm short on it right now) I will test it also with
> > 9legacy/rpi.
> > 
> > Future directions: Prote is an uniq engine compatible with standard TeX,
> > with e-TeX and now with LaTeX requirements. I'd like to make it able to
> > be the formatting engine for *roff macros too so that an uniq program
> > will be able to do all. It still depends on nothing but only
> > on libc (with the exception of one file related primitive, it was even
> > only standard C libc, not requiring even POSIX.1). And it is
> > unencumbered.
> > 
> > FWIW,
> > --
> > Thierry Laronde 
> >  http://www.kergis.com/
> > http://kertex.kergis.com/
> >http://www.sbfa.fr/
> > Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
http://kertex.kergis.com/
   http://www.sbfa.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

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[9fans] kerTeX: Update for LaTeX3 compatibility

[tlaronde]

Hello,

LaTeX3 requires additional primitives neither present in TeX nor e-TeX
and I had hence to develop these primitives on the TeX/e-TeX engine. The
result is Prote (MIT licensed change file), compatible with TeX, with
e-TeX and providing the primitives required now by the latest LaTeX
developments. Some additional file handling had to be developed as
well (\input primitive) and this has been done too (this was a major
work also).

I have published a new version of kerTeX, with the LaTeX recipe
(latex.sh) updated as well so that kerTeX will progressively return
being really "live" that is: taking whatever is current on CTAN to
update packages with a seldom need to update the recipe itself (since I
was blocked by the new LaTeX development, I had to cache the "old"
versions of the CTAN packages on my site so that everything will not
fail due to the LaTeX evolution).

I have tested an early version on 9front/amd64 and there was no error.
If I find the time (I'm short on it right now) I will test it also with
9legacy/rpi.

Future directions: Prote is an uniq engine compatible with standard TeX,
with e-TeX and now with LaTeX requirements. I'd like to make it able to
be the formatting engine for *roff macros too so that an uniq program
will be able to do all. It still depends on nothing but only
on libc (with the exception of one file related primitive, it was even
only standard C libc, not requiring even POSIX.1). And it is
unencumbered.

FWIW,
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
http://kertex.kergis.com/
   http://www.sbfa.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

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Re: [9fans] licence question

[tlaronde]

Le Sun, Jan 30, 2022 at 08:44:05AM -0500, ibrahim via 9fans a écrit :
> On Sunday, 30 January 2022, at 8:55 AM, tlaronde wrote:
> > The lacking piece is the end: converting DVI to something else than PS
> and extending DVI to include drawing primitives so that there is a
> "MetaPost" generating DVI (Metadraw). The other points are already
> addressed.
> 
> Perhaps xdvi is a good start point to understand how to convert dvi to raw 
> images. dvi isn't a ready to display format you have to prepare the missing 
> glyphs (fonts). Knuth has provided a converter to make dvi files human 
> readable and you task is to interpret this output. If you take a viewer as a 
> start point you could store the fineshed rendering in a file instead of 
> saving that. Like ps dvi is also a virtual machine code but much simpler.

There is nothing difficult in the task per se. But when adding a
new block of DVI commands, it has to be done with some care. METAFONT
is also a rasterizer, so the fundamental bits are already there to
obtain a rasterized image. But there are, too, converters to develop
to translate the glyphes shapes of alien fonts in something
METAFONT can understand---TeX only uses the metrics informations,
it doesn't care about what is drawn in the boxes, this is why one
can use easily PS fonts with TeX; rendering, when what has to be
drawn is involved, is another story...

And xdvi is the perfect example of the problem: it has a myriad of
dependencies.
-- 
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 http://www.kergis.com/
http://kertex.kergis.com/
   http://www.sbfa.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

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Re: [9fans] licence question

[tlaronde]

Le Sat, Jan 29, 2022 at 09:48:47PM +0100, hiro a écrit :
> > I personally would say using page for displaying pdf or ps is dangerous and
> > makes a distribution depending on this feature highly dangerous for
> > developers.
> 
> yes, it's very dangerous in terms of licensing. i suggest you rewrite
> ghostscript as gs/pdf reading ability is very important for most users
> (even for our own docs).
> 

If I have made the kerTeX distribution, it is also with the (remote) aim
to have a typographical (and drawing too with a modified MetaPost)
system not under GPL and being able to generate an enhanced DVI that
could be transformed with kerTeX own means.

I.e. the goals are:

1) To have a very limited, in size, in code language (C with a limited
dependency on a restricted subset of POSIX.2 like utilities for
scripting), in license (BSD like or MIT---Prote), in dependencies (none
but a libc and the limited POSIX.2 utilities subset),
typographical/drawing system able to render both system documentation
(including manual) and user's writing (including LaTeX);

2) That the system be self-contained: providing everything, including
fonts and till the production of a rendering; 

3) The the system be like a "hosted" typographical system, meaning that
every extension ("package") be handled by this system, whatever the OS
it is installed upon---no billions of packages versions for every OS,
but only one package for kerTeX, installing the same way on any OS.

A lot as already being done, the latest piece added being a "patch"
(change file) to TeX so that the latest LaTeX can be dumped with TeX
(LaTeX now requires both the e-TeX extensions and supplementary
primitives not present in TeX). This is in the same spirit as e-TeX and
is called Prote.

The lacking piece is the end: converting DVI to something else than PS
and extending DVI to include drawing primitives so that there is a
"MetaPost" generating DVI (Metadraw). The other points are already
addressed.

FWIW,
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
http://kertex.kergis.com/
   http://www.sbfa.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

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Re: [9fans] Is POSIX:clock_gettime(2) in APE somewhere/anywhere?

[tlaronde]

Le Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 05:54:44PM -0400, o...@eigenstate.org a écrit :
> Quoth tlaro...@polynum.com:
> > But is clock_gettime(2) available in APE in any instance of Plan9 or is
> > there a routine achieving the same purpose?
> 
> Here's a quick sketch of something that we could add; note
> that the implemented monotonicity is really crude.
> 
> diff 03d870e0283299404b0eb46689d13f8538e83a2f uncommitted
> --- a//sys/include/ape/time.h
> +++ b//sys/include/ape/time.h
> @@ -53,15 +53,20 @@
>  #ifdef _POSIX_SOURCE
>  extern void tzset(void);
>  
> +#defineCLOCK_REALTIME  1
> +#defineCLOCK_MONOTONIC 2
> +
> +typedef intclockid_t;
> +
>  struct timespec {
> time_t tv_sec;
> long tv_nsec;
>  };
>  extern int nanosleep(const struct timespec *req, struct timespec *rem);
> -#endif
>  
> -#ifdef __cplusplus
> -}
> +extern int clock_getres(clockid_t, struct timespec*);
> +extern int clock_gettime(clockid_t, struct timespec*);
> +extern int clock_settime(clockid_t, struct timespec*);
>  #endif
>  
>  #ifdef _POSIX_SOURCE
> @@ -69,6 +74,10 @@
>  extern long timezone;
>  extern long altzone;
>  extern int daylight;
> +#endif
> +
> +#ifdef __cplusplus
> +}
>  #endif
>  
>  #endif /* __TIME_H */
> --- /tmp/diff11791256
> +++ b/sys/src/ape/lib/bsd/clock.c
> @@ -1,0 +1,60 @@
> +#include 
> +#include 
> +#include 
> +#include 
> +
> +/* ap/plan9/9nsec.c */
> +extern long long _NSEC(void);
> +
> +#define Ns2sec (1000*1000*1000)
> +
> +int
> +clock_getres(clockid_t id, struct timespec *ts)
> +{
> +   if(id != CLOCK_REALTIME && id != CLOCK_MONOTONIC){
> +   errno = EINVAL;
> +   return -1;
> +   }
> +   ts->tv_sec = 0;
> +   ts->tv_nsec = 1;
> +   return 0;
> +}
> +
> +int
> +clock_settime(clockid_t, struct timespec *)
> +{
> +   errno = EPERM;
> +   return -1;
> +}
> +
> +int
> +clock_gettime(clockid_t clk, struct timespec *ts)
> +{
> +   static Lock maxlk;
> +   static long long max;
> +   long long t;
> +
> +   t = _NSEC();
> +   switch(clk){
> +   case CLOCK_REALTIME:
> +   /* nothing */
> +   break;
> +   case CLOCK_MONOTONIC:
> +   /* Bug: we should support a real monotonic clock */
> +   lock();
> +   if(t < max)
> +   t = max;
> +   else
> +   max = t;
> +   unlock();
> +   break;
> +   default:
> +   errno = EINVAL;
> +   return -1;
> +   }
> +
> +   ts->tv_sec = t/Ns2sec;
> +   ts->tv_nsec = t%Ns2sec;
> +
> +   return 0;
> +}

Since only CLOCK_REALTIME is mandatory (up to current POSIX 7), you could drop 
the MONOTONIC
variant. And nsec(2) is good enough for REALTIME.

Thanks for working on this!

Best,
-- 
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 http://www.kergis.com/
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Re: [9fans] Re: APE:sys/time.h: long instead of suseconds_t

[tlaronde]

Le Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 06:11:54PM +, Conor Williams a écrit :
> surely you can shift a 64 bit long?
> 

In fact, I have read cursorily the man page and misread "the time is
expressed in seconds and microseconds since EPOCH" to mean "expressed
in seconds AND expressed in microseconds" while there is a structure
because there is the integer (seconds) part and the fractional
(microseconds) part. Hum...

So, yes, the result (in microseconds) can be hold in a long long.

And for long instead of suseconds_t, I'm probably the only one who will
ever directly use suseconds_t in the code for a variable thinking it is
like the result of nsec(2) and it is probably a type that will never
appear in real user code.

So let this RIP.

> On Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 6:04 PM  wrote:
> 
> > Le Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 07:56:37PM +0200, tlaronde a écrit :
> > > As suggested by o...@eigenstate.org, I have used gettimeofday(2) to
> > > achieve what I needed.
> > >
> > > But I had to change suseconds_t (in POSIX) to long (in Plan9
> > > ape/include/sys/time.h).
> > >
> > > But are all the compilers in Plan9 making long an octabytes, whatever
> > > the arch and the machine? Because a long, if it is a tetra, will never
> > > hold the value...
> >
> > I misread: the microseconds are for the fractional part. I was still
> > focusing on nsec() and taking the one for the other.
> >
> > But the following still holds:
> >
> > >
> > > Furthermore, for portability, there should be a typedef associating
> > > suseconds_t to long (or vlong, if long is not guaranteed to be an
> > > octa).
> > >
> > --
> > Thierry Laronde 
> >  http://www.kergis.com/
> > http://kertex.kergis.com/
> >http://www.sbfa.fr/
> > Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

-- 
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 http://www.kergis.com/
http://kertex.kergis.com/
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[9fans] Re: APE:sys/time.h: long instead of suseconds_t

[tlaronde]

Le Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 07:56:37PM +0200, tlaronde a écrit :
> As suggested by o...@eigenstate.org, I have used gettimeofday(2) to
> achieve what I needed.
> 
> But I had to change suseconds_t (in POSIX) to long (in Plan9
> ape/include/sys/time.h).
> 
> But are all the compilers in Plan9 making long an octabytes, whatever
> the arch and the machine? Because a long, if it is a tetra, will never
> hold the value...

I misread: the microseconds are for the fractional part. I was still
focusing on nsec() and taking the one for the other.

But the following still holds:

> 
> Furthermore, for portability, there should be a typedef associating
> suseconds_t to long (or vlong, if long is not guaranteed to be an
> octa).
> 
-- 
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http://kertex.kergis.com/
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Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

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[9fans] APE:sys/time.h: long instead of suseconds_t

[tlaronde]

As suggested by o...@eigenstate.org, I have used gettimeofday(2) to
achieve what I needed.

But I had to change suseconds_t (in POSIX) to long (in Plan9
ape/include/sys/time.h).

But are all the compilers in Plan9 making long an octabytes, whatever
the arch and the machine? Because a long, if it is a tetra, will never
hold the value...

Furthermore, for portability, there should be a typedef associating
suseconds_t to long (or vlong, if long is not guaranteed to be an
octa).

I'm puzzled by this...

Meanwhile, with this, kerTeX compiles on Plan9 for the dev version...
-- 
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Re: [9fans] Linking against Plan9 own routines with APE

[tlaronde]

Le Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 12:49:47PM -0400, o...@eigenstate.org a écrit :
> Quoth tlaro...@polynum.com:
> > For kerTeX, I need to access a time reference with better than the
> > second.
> > 
> > The answer is nsec(2).
> > 
> 
> For posix: we already have gettimeofday(),
> which has microsecond resolution.

Oh! I was using up-to-date POSIX reference and it was marked as
obsolete, so I skipped this one but it is indeed better than the
second for now.

> 
> But also, I'd commit a patch that adds
> clock_gettime: it's standardized, widely
> used, relatively simple to implement, and
> makes porting other code easier.
> 
> (monotonicity aside -- that's separate.)

Thanks!

Best,
-- 
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 http://www.kergis.com/
http://kertex.kergis.com/
   http://www.sbfa.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

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Re: [9fans] Linking against Plan9 own routines with APE

[tlaronde]

Le Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 06:42:53PM +0200, Sigrid Solveig Haflínudóttir a écrit :
> Sorry for not exactly being helpful with your issue, but that one is
> the exact reason I started on https://git.sr.ht/~ft/npe.
> APE is too limiting and sometimes it's easier to rewrite small parts
> of the software being ported with plan 9 libc-specific api.
> I also did a small write-up on porting in general some time ago:
> http://wiki.9front.org/porting.

Thank you for the links! I will give them a look in the next days when I
have a slot of time.

Best,
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
http://kertex.kergis.com/
   http://www.sbfa.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

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[9fans] Linking against Plan9 own routines with APE

[tlaronde]

For kerTeX, I need to access a time reference with better than the
second.

The answer is nsec(2).

If there is no problem creating an object .o mixing POSIX functions and
nsec(2), when linking, under APE, nsec is not visible in libc.

How can one mix the two, preferably under APE (my framework uses POSIX.2
utilities and I don't want to start making exceptions)?

TIA,
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
http://kertex.kergis.com/
   http://www.sbfa.fr/
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Re: [9fans] Is POSIX:clock_gettime(2) in APE somewhere/anywhere?

[tlaronde]

Le Mon, Oct 11, 2021 at 08:39:31PM +0200, tlaro...@polynum.com a écrit :
>[...] 
> Amongst the extensions I had to add, there are two bits that go beyond
> ISO C libc. One is a way to get elapsed time and unfortunately clock(3)
> is not the answer. I then used POSIX.1:clock_gettime(2) with CLOCK_MONOTONIC
> or CLOCK_REALTIME if the previous is not defined.
> 
> But is clock_gettime(2) available in APE in any instance of Plan9 or is
> there a routine achieving the same purpose?

For what I need, in fact I can simply use nsec(2), diffing nanoseconds
times! (I have the printed manuals from Vita Nuova, I should remember
to read the man pages first in printed form at leisure...)
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Re: [9fans] Is POSIX:clock_gettime(2) in APE somewhere/anywhere?

[tlaronde]

Le Mon, Oct 11, 2021 at 09:20:31PM +0200, Sigrid Solveig Haflínudóttir a écrit :
> I've been using cycles() with _tos on amd64/arm64 with 9front for my
> porting needs, specifically to get monotonic time:
> https://git.sr.ht/~ft/npe/tree/master/item/libnpe/_npe.c#L15

Thank you for the hint. I will take a look.
-- 
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Re: [9fans] Is POSIX:clock_gettime(2) in APE somewhere/anywhere?

[tlaronde]

Le Mon, Oct 11, 2021 at 03:12:11PM -0400, o...@eigenstate.org a écrit :
> Quoth tlaro...@polynum.com:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > LaTeX now requires primitives (extensions) that are not provided by TeX
> > nor e-TeX.
> > 
> > I have hence developed a new engine: Prote, that adds the required
> > extensions and that will be the main target for the future enhancements.
> > 
> > (The main purpose is to have one and only one engine, TeX compatible,
> > e-TeX compatible and LaTeX compatible, with only libc requirements and
> > BSD like licence, in order to set TeX as the OSes typographical engine.)
> > 
> > Amongst the extensions I had to add, there are two bits that go beyond
> > ISO C libc. One is a way to get elapsed time and unfortunately clock(3)
> > is not the answer. I then used POSIX.1:clock_gettime(2) with CLOCK_MONOTONIC
> > or CLOCK_REALTIME if the previous is not defined.
> > 
> > But is clock_gettime(2) available in APE in any instance of Plan9 or is
> > there a routine achieving the same purpose?
> > 
> 
> Currently, no. It can be added without too much
> trouble, though we'd need to create /dev/monotime
> to get properly monotonic time.

Thanks for the answer;

For the time being, I will then simply make the "timer" with a
granularity of 1 second only simply diffing times on plan9.
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[9fans] Is POSIX:clock_gettime(2) in APE somewhere/anywhere?

[tlaronde]

Hello,

LaTeX now requires primitives (extensions) that are not provided by TeX
nor e-TeX.

I have hence developed a new engine: Prote, that adds the required
extensions and that will be the main target for the future enhancements.

(The main purpose is to have one and only one engine, TeX compatible,
e-TeX compatible and LaTeX compatible, with only libc requirements and
BSD like licence, in order to set TeX as the OSes typographical engine.)

Amongst the extensions I had to add, there are two bits that go beyond
ISO C libc. One is a way to get elapsed time and unfortunately clock(3)
is not the answer. I then used POSIX.1:clock_gettime(2) with CLOCK_MONOTONIC
or CLOCK_REALTIME if the previous is not defined.

But is clock_gettime(2) available in APE in any instance of Plan9 or is
there a routine achieving the same purpose?

TIA,
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
http://kertex.kergis.com/
   http://www.sbfa.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

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Re: [9fans] kerTeX update: security fix

[tlaronde]

Le Thu, Sep 02, 2021 at 08:00:49AM -0400, Matthew Singletary a écrit :
> If you found a big in TeX, doesn't that mean you found an error in the TeX
> book? Doesn't that mean you should get one of the famed checks from Knuth?
> 

Normally, yes (the check being now a symbolic reward)---by the way, it's
not in the TeXbook but in "TeX: The Program" (and the same for METAFONT:
The Program, since it is shared code; so for the very same reason, e-TeX
and MetaPost).

But unfortunately, for the moment, people involved for 35 years or more
in the TeX community seem to be annoyed that this has escaped their
prolonged scrutiny and are trying to find convoluted explanations in
order to not classify it as a bug---D.E.K. has obviously better
things to do, so he is not involved.

IT give opportunity for social experiments too!
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[9fans] kerTeX update: security fix

[tlaronde]

Hello,

I'm currently finishing the implementation of the newly required LaTeX
primitives and there will be a new engine (extending TeX and e-TeX).

While reading the program, I found a bug in TeX (and thus e-TeX; and
METAFONT and thus MetaPost) in the filenames handling. So I commited
a security fix.

Even if the potential of the problem is remote, you should upgrade and,
after, if your using LaTeX, re-install the package so that it will use
the corrected etex engine.

Note: I hadn't taken the time to update my Plan9/9front installation nor
to test the new version on it. The changes should not... change
anything as far as the systems are concerned. If something goes weird,
you know whom to send complaints to...
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Re: [9fans] full fossil follies

[tlaronde]

On Fri, Jun 25, 2021 at 02:12:07PM +, adr via 9fans wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 25, 2021 at 01:41:30PM +0100, Richard Miller wrote:
> > > it just becomes difficult
> > > to do anything when no fossil blocks can be allocated
> > 
> > Thinking a bit further about this: intuitively one might expect to be
> > able to reboot using a local file system which is completely full, and
> > use du and ls to find big files and rm to delete them, without the need
> > to allocate new blocks. Something in the way fossil works, makes this
> > impossible at present. I wonder how much work it would be to investigate
> > and fix?
> 
> I haven't studied how fossil works, so excuse this light chat.
> Couldn't fossil have reserved blocks so when it starts and it's
> full it can add those block and present the user to a recovery
> session? Just a console session printing the last file modified?

I don't think I will tell anybody a scoop, but it is what is present in
traditional Unix filesystems where there is a percent of the storage
preserved... but for root, user under which you are not supposed to
log to the system in normal operation. This is probably the problem:
since there is no privileged user, for "whom" to preserve/reserve these
blocks?

I imagine the alternative would be, if fossil reports full, that memory
filesystems should be mounted on top of the system mandatory writable
dirs so that the system will not block but normal booting will not
be done but the program launched will be one requiring user to make
room, crucial infos written in memory filesystems being copied back
to fossil when done. But it is easier to implement when booting/rebooting,
but more problematic if the system is running. Except perhaps that
there will always be a memory filesystem mounted with rescue
programs/scripts that the user can precisely use when the system
is out of disk space, utilities that write nothing to disk (but just in
their memory realm), in order to not paint oneself in a corner.

FWIW,
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Re: [9fans] Transfer of Plan 9 to the Plan 9 Foundation

[tlaronde]

On Tue, Mar 23, 2021 at 06:06:49AM -0700, a...@9srv.net wrote:
> We are thrilled to announce that Nokia has transferred the copyright of
> Plan 9 to the Plan 9 Foundation. This transfer applies to all of the
> Plan 9 from Bell Labs code, from the earliest days through their final
> release.

That's real good news! Thank you to all who kept trying to get this
done!

I'm still convinced that there is a future for Plan9 derived
systems---and despite what happened to Coraid, in particular in the area
of file servers with WORM, deduplication of blocks and history of binary
files (there is a wild range of small to medium size businesses for
which this will cover a need that no offer, in terms of availability,
TCO or price, covers for now).

Best regards,
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[9fans] kerTeX and latex fixes for Plan9

[tlaronde]

FWIW, a user reported that latex failed to install because I had left
a mv(1) command with an expansion applying it to a directory in the
latex recipe.

This is corrected and the use of rmdir is corrected too both in recipes
(latex and amstex) and in kerTeX_T (the utility mp2ps uses it).

The new version is online.
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Re: [9fans] Olimex: these guys are keen electronic engineers.

[tlaronde]

On Wed, Feb 24, 2021 at 07:50:59AM +0200, Lucio De Re wrote:
> They say:
> 
> > This is the first Espressif product with RISC-V core, the datasheet is on 
> > their web.
> >
> > This is also the first SOC with RISC-V core we have access to, so we are 
> > excited to learn > more the ISA on low level.
> >
> > Any resources to recommend?
> 
> So far I have been shy to recommend Plan 9 to them, a little less shy
> to recommend Olimex to 9fans (somewhat long ago, my memory may be
> lying to me).
> 
> In any case, for the likes of Richard Miller and other wizards, this
> is the URL for this specific
> posting:
> 
> https://olimex.wordpress.com/2021/02/23/hello-risc-v-we-got-samples-of-the-new-esp32-c3-module-and-it-is-only-13x17-mm/
> 
> >From there, many recent and less recent developments can be
> discovered. They have a neat catalogue and apply pretty good QC. For
> those in the EU, they operate from Bulgaria. Their English can be
> surprising.

FWIW, I bought Olimex-lime2 (ARM) (severals) and I'm more satisfied with these 
than with
Raspberries (I installed NetBSD on this, plan9 was not tried).

So if the RISC-V is on the same level of quality, it should be certainly
worth.
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Re: [9fans] APL

[tlaronde]

On Tue, Feb 23, 2021 at 02:57:44AM -0700, arn...@skeeve.com wrote:
> This is getting off topic ...
> 

Yes... ;-)

> > > There was an interpreter for P-code and (I think later) a compiler
> > > for the Vax. You'd have to port it to current architectures, and
> > > compiling TeX would probably make TeX run more slowly than the C version.
> > > 
> > > The Berkeley Pascals were some of the compilers used for "Software Tools
> > > in Pascal".
> >
> > The Pascal version would probably be a bit slower. And it would be more
> > an alternative to verify the code than a primary way, since in fact
> > D.E.K. has not written the program in some Pascal but in Algol, a high
> > level abstract description, the wizardry being in the data structures.
> 
> It's Pascal, but in literate form with WEB.  I've read "Tex: The Program". :-)

What I wanted to say is that D.E.K. has put aside all that is "system
dependent". Yes it's Pascal, but the very least common denominator with
all that is system dependent isolated so that porting (or translating)
is easy with the change files and the chunks identified.

I never managed to like Pascal (the language taught when I
was---vaguely---in college) and I, first, would have liked that it was
CWEB and not WEB (C and not Pascal). But, indeed, it is an abstract way
of describing and prevent a myriad of hasardous hacks. So D.E.K.'s was
not a bad choice alltogether...
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http://kertex.kergis.com/
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Re: [9fans] APL

[tlaronde]

On Tue, Feb 23, 2021 at 01:58:16AM -0700, arn...@skeeve.com wrote:
> tlaro...@polynum.com wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, Feb 22, 2021 at 09:44:54PM +, Charles Forsyth wrote:
> > > I'm fairly sure Thompson wrote it on sabbatical in Berkeley. I think he
> > > also wrote the first version of a Pascal compiler.
> > > Pascal isn't a difficult language but I remember that compiler having an
> > > unusual style. I think others reworked it significantly later,
> > > so if it's there at all it's worth looking at the earliest possible one.
> > > 
> >
> > The Pascal compiler rings a bell... It would be fun indeed to derived a
> > version from it so that, finally, TeX and al. could be "natively"
> > compiled instead of converting the (pseudo) Pascal to C (this is web2c
> > purpose or, as I have named it, pp2rc---Pseudo Pascal to Raw C).
> 
> There was an interpreter for P-code and (I think later) a compiler
> for the Vax. You'd have to port it to current architectures, and
> compiling TeX would probably make TeX run more slowly than the C version.
> 
> The Berkeley Pascals were some of the compilers used for "Software Tools
> in Pascal".

The Pascal version would probably be a bit slower. And it would be more
an alternative to verify the code than a primary way, since in fact
D.E.K. has not written the program in some Pascal but in Algol, a high
level abstract description, the wizardry being in the data structures.
And, indeed, only the control flows are being translated from pseudo 
Pascal to C, the core---the data structures---being handled by ad-hoc
code.

And for the architectures, like other compilers, the aim would be to
convert to some intermediate language (perhaps assembly) and to borrow
the back-ends.

But it is all vaporware: I have to implement supplementary primitives
for the new version of LaTeX and I'm already late (not started yet)...
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
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Re: [9fans] APL

[tlaronde]

On Mon, Feb 22, 2021 at 09:44:54PM +, Charles Forsyth wrote:
> I'm fairly sure Thompson wrote it on sabbatical in Berkeley. I think he
> also wrote the first version of a Pascal compiler.
> Pascal isn't a difficult language but I remember that compiler having an
> unusual style. I think others reworked it significantly later,
> so if it's there at all it's worth looking at the earliest possible one.
> 

The Pascal compiler rings a bell... It would be fun indeed to derived a
version from it so that, finally, TeX and al. could be "natively"
compiled instead of converting the (pseudo) Pascal to C (this is web2c
purpose or, as I have named it, pp2rc---Pseudo Pascal to Raw C).
-- 
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 http://www.kergis.com/
http://kertex.kergis.com/
   http://www.sbfa.fr/
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Re: [9fans] APL

[tlaronde]

Hello,

FWIW, I have put two versions I found under kergis.com downloads zone:

http://downloads.kergis.com/misc/apl4_0.tar.gz

and

http://downloads.kergis.com/misc/apl4_3.tar.gz

The version number is relative to the BSD version it was released with.

The 4.0 has a cat1 man page mentioning Ken Thompson (but it is not
present in apl.1?!!!).

The 4.3 version tells a story that links to what Charles told: Ken
Thompson wrote the Unix version, then went to Purdue and Berkeley. The
4.3 version is the Purdue version with modifications made, so is derived
from Ken Thompson's version.

In coding style, the versions are quite different. The sizes too!

T. Laronde

On Mon, Feb 22, 2021 at 12:35:56PM -0800, Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM) 
wrote:
> tlaro...@polynum.com writes:
> 
> > There are various versions of an APL interpreter and, amongst these,
> > a version by Ken Thompson, Ross Harvey, Douglas Lanam.
> >
> > Is that this one you are looking for?
> 
> That sounds like the one.  It's entirely possible the version I
> started with came from one of the BSD tapes (we were source
> licensed so we had the full set of tapes from V6 onwards).
> 
> I have the CSRG CD set, but it's in a box in a storage locker
> right now.  Is there any chance you could pull the above APL
> source files and leave them someplace I could grab them from?
> (9p.io would work fine.)
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> --lyndon

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Re: [9fans] APL

[tlaronde]

Hello,

I have the CSRG Archives CDROM set, with archives from 1978 to 1993
and final 4.4 and 4.4BSD-Lite2.

There are various versions of an APL interpreter and, amongst these,
a version by Ken Thompson, Ross Harvey, Douglas Lanam.

Is that this one you are looking for?

Apparently Caldera has granted a free licence to use, modify and
redistribute files for 16bit PDP-11 and early 32bits Unix (version
1 to 7) and it seems it covers this (since the BSD were derived
from and then reimplemented the software to get rid of the licence).

The CD set is available from
https://www.mckusick.com/csrg/cdorderform.html

If I'm not mistaken about the Caldera licence, I can place somewhere
a tarball with this APL code, if this is what you are interested in
(but I would like to be sure I'm not violating someone licence or
copyright before doing so).
-- 
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Re: [9fans] Plan 9 Foundation

[tlaronde]

Hello,

On Tue, Feb 09, 2021 at 11:40:18PM -0800, Anthony Sorace wrote:
> We are pleased to announce the creation of the Plan 9 Foundation.
> 
> The Foundation exists to promote and further the development of Plan 9 and 
> related technologies for lightweight distributed systems.
> 
> More information can be found on our web site, http://p9f.org/. We've also 
> brought up a new wiki, reachable on the web at http://p9f.org/wiki/welcome/ 
> or over 9p at tcp!p9f.org!wiki.
> 
> As our first major activity, the Plan 9 Foundation will be coordinating Plan 
> 9's application to (and, should we be accepted, participation in) Google's 
> Summer of Code. That includes hosting the all-important Ideas Page for this 
> year, as well as other supporting documentation; more on that in a separate 
> email.
> 

One suggestion: add a link for donations. I, for one, when I can't
provide code to software I'm interested in (even remotely), try at 
least to give some money.

My 2 cts (it will be a little more if I donate),
-- 
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Re: [9fans] GSoC 2021 project ideas (WAS: Re: Plan 9 Applying to GSoC 2021)

[tlaronde]

Hello,

On Mon, Feb 01, 2021 at 07:16:58AM +, cigar562hfsp952f...@icebubble.org 
wrote:
> Anthony Sorace  writes:
> 
> > Hello! After a few years away, we?ll be applying to Google?s Summer of Code 
> > program again this year.
> 
> ...
> 
> > 1. Project ideas. One of the key parts of the application is the
> > project ideas page. If you?ve got ideas that seem like they?d be a
> 
> Plan 9-related:
> 
> (1) Porting the Plan 9 kernel to a microkernel architecture, such as
> Mach.  This would give Plan 9 instant access to the whole range of
> hardware supported by the underlying microkernel.
> 

No. One should re-read the initial papers about Plan9. When Plan9 was
designed, microkernels were "fashionable". If one reads carefully the
paper, it's clear that there is a pun intended against microkernels that
didn't achieve what they were supposed to do---disastrous efficiency
leading to the rewrite of the microkernels as assembly---a very low
signal/noise ratio. And a hint: "micro" kernels are usually _huge_, a
clear sign that something went wrong.

As drivers are concerned, there was once a kit supposed to give a wide
range of kernels, drivers code---I don't know where it is now; I suppose
it has vanished. And now probably UEFI drivers is a "better than nothing"
solution.

My 2 cents,
-- 
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Re: [9fans] Plan9 and Inferno and the JS VM

[tlaronde]

On Tue, Nov 17, 2020 at 04:42:02PM +0100, Pouya Tafti wrote:
> 
> 
> On Tue, 17 Nov 2020, at 15:06, tlaro...@polynum.com wrote:
> > Fabrice Bellard has developed a VM in JavaScript (!!!) allowing to
> > run an OS in a browser. See: https://bellard.org/jslinux/
> > 
> > This was brought to my attention by a teacher wanting to teach TeX and
> > litterate programming to students without the need for them to install
> > anything. 
> 
> Even if you didn't want to install anything, why run an entire 
> VM+OS+application in the browser, as opposed to a lightweight client talking 
> to a server?
> 
> Just a thought.

There are obviously other ways to do it. But I know from experience that
when you have to deal with some IT managers in big organizations,
requiring to install anything is an ordeal, specially if it is not MS
Windows.
-- 
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Re: [9fans] Plan9 and Inferno and the JS VM

[tlaronde]

On Tue, Nov 17, 2020 at 04:35:23PM +0100, hiro wrote:
> i'm slightly disappointed that you're booting alpine and not plan9 in there
> 

"I" am not booting anything: I'm riding piggy-back on JSLinux: I just
added kerTeX on top of this and, FWIW, the union of the filesystems is
done with the 9P protocol (once more: I didn't make it: it is the way 
the whole thing has been made by Fabrice Bellard.

> my biggest gripe: the delays - those draws are lagging behind my
> physical mouse by nearly a second. and i'm not too far, it seems we're
> all only 2ms away from the same locations in france. (that's 28ms
> total from here).
> 
> i know drawterm to ovh is rather smooth from my location, so might be
> worth trying to optimize the graphics implementation here.
> 
> possibly more important for those students: i am unable to resize the
> window with the instructions so i can't see the line-ending.
> 
> in comparison to how long it takes to boot in the browser, it might be
> faster to install a VM framework and bootstrap a new VM, though i
> admit that would be including much more manual labour, too.

I must say that I think it is a supplementary, temporary solution.

When I will have finally fix the compilation and installation in MS
Windows, kerTeX will install rapidly on almost anything. So there
shouldn't really be a need, at least for TeX and al.

> 
> very entertaining though :D

Yes. But this shows perhaps too why the browsers have become such fat
beasts: if they can even make that...
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[9fans] Plan9 and Inferno and the JS VM

[tlaronde]

Fabrice Bellard has developed a VM in JavaScript (!!!) allowing to
run an OS in a browser. See: https://bellard.org/jslinux/

This was brought to my attention by a teacher wanting to teach TeX and
litterate programming to students without the need for them to install
anything. This is done for kerTeX see:

http://kertex.kergis.com/en/jslinux.html

What can be the use of this? First, for this very kind of usage 
(allowing an audience to use software without requiring installation)
or for demonstration purposes (instead of trial CDROM for example).

But since what is lost by the emulation can be compensated by changing
the OS, it could perhaps be tempting for someone to try to put plan9 on
the VM (I don't speak about kerTeX; just as a general responsiveness
comparison).

And furthermore, since Inferno, for the very superficial view I have
about it---I spent a very sparse time on Plan9 but never managed to
get to Inferno---, was designed if I'm not mistaken, to be able
with a small memory footprint to do what was done, long ago, with
Java applets, it could be tempting, in this area of teaching being
done at a distance, to compare the speed and the responsiveness of
Inferno vs JS---if Inferno can accept apps not only with its language
but in pure C too, I can probably make kerTeX work on it too.

Just my 2cents.
-- 
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[9fans] kerTeX: do update get_mk_install.rc to succeed

[tlaronde]

In the logs I see tries to install kerTeX on Plan9 but without hget'ing
first the last version of get_mk_install.rc.

But I have changed the name of the recipe for building the core (CM
compiled fonts and others; plain dumps). So the "old" script will work
by side effect because kertex.sh is still there; but if one updates
pkg/tools, the core and the script is removed.

Long explication: the pkg framework is file hierachy based. A pkg that
depends, say, on latex is under latex/. A "nickname" like
french@babel@tex will be put in tex/babel/french.

Since I use the pkg framework to compile the core fonts and the
core formats (plain METAFONT, plain TeX, plain e-TeX and plain
MetaPost) I had to give a name to the recipe. I called it "kertex"
but it was a bad idea:  what is "kertex"? The programs installed?
The package built? This was confusing. So I changed this. And in order
to have the same logics but not "pollute" the hierarchy with a spurious
"root" directory, it is now called to...@pkg.sh.

Other changes may happen in the future till the 1.0 release.

So when upgrading please do always retrieve the latest version of the
script since it is made to match the release.

Thanks!
-- 
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[9fans] kerTeX and LaTeX update

[tlaronde]

Hello,

The last weeks have been fairly busy in order to release a new version
of kerTeX and of the packages (because of the latest release of LaTeX).

There is a new site (I have not redirected for now; I want to make a
couple of additions in the following days to the new site) but it is
online:

http://kertex.kergis.com/

I have tested today that the release works on 9front. It should work
with legacy Plan9 or whatever variation since the main unfelicities I
had were with hget(1) being an rc script under 9front---and problems
once more with regexp because of the caret that has to be escaped on
plan9 even if it is not the first char of the regexp (it seems to not
be "today" POSIX).

As explained on the site, I have made so that the packaging system,
evolving more frequently than the core, can be updated without
recompiling everything.

I expect this release and the whole packages updated to the 26, 27 or 28
october 2020 version on CTAN to be stable enough so that I can dedicate
my time to adding primitives to e-TeX for reasons explained on the (new)
site.

Note: get_mk_install.rc now, at the end, proposes to download all the
"recipes" (a recipe is a chunk of code to build and install packages).
When getting from the KerGIS.com server, hget(1) once failed and
succeeded after when invoked again. I don't know if this was a
temporary problem on my 9front node or if connecting very rapidly to 
the KerGIS.com http server causes a refusal on its side. If it
fails, it is harmless: just rerun, later, the recipe:

. which_kertex
$KERTEX_SHELL $KERTEX_LIBDIR/pkg/rcp/r...@pkg.sh install

Best,
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
http://www.kergis.com/kertex.html
   http://www.sbfa.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

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[9fans] ape/make choking on spurious continuation line

[tlaronde]

Hello,

Someone trying to install kerTeX under plan9 (9front) was not succeeding
so I had a look.

In my created makefiles (the compilation and installation is done with
POSIX(2) tools so under ape), the ones related to MetaPost had a spurious
continuation line before an empty line in a list of token in the
definition of a variable:

CPRODUCTS = imp.c\
mp0.c\
...\
mp12.c\

ape/make choked on this detecting an "infinite recursive expansion"
(from memory; I did not write it down verbatim).

Since leading and trailing blanks are not significant, this might be
considered a bug (yes, I have corrected the makefile skeletons since
this was incorrect and the bundle is corrected even if not for the
moment advertised on the site). 

Best,
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
   http://www.sbfa.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

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Re: [9fans] libdate

[tlaronde]

Hello,

On Sat, Apr 25, 2020 at 05:54:30PM -0700, o...@eigenstate.org wrote:
> Date handling on plan 9 is almost adequate today if you don't
> have to parse dates or deal with timezones, and don't do
> multithreading. Otherwise, it's difficult to get right, and
> we often don't.
> 
> We've got a crappy home-rolled date parser in seconds(1),
> a few in the upas source tree to deal with mail formats,
> and git9 has a few hacks around this as well.
> 
> Out of tree, joe9 has been trying to write code that takes
> stock information in one timezone and moves them to another,
> and our APIs there are completely inadequate.
> 
> So, I tried to write a library that is adequate, without
> being complicated.
> 

Just out of curiosity (I may have missed the point): since this is not
heavily system dependent, and more user related, and for the sake of
APE, did you consider the standard C and the POSIX interfaces?

> The code lives here:
> 
> https://git.eigenstate.org/ori/date.git
> 
> I'll probably be merging in the changes between Tmd and Tm
> soon, and committing to 9front, possibly even as part of libc.
> 
> Some additional work is probably going to be needed to convert
> from IANA zoneinfo to actually bring our timezone data up to
> date. We may also need some timezone info format changes to
> handle political (and leap second) changes.
> 
> 
> The manpage is attached below for review:

FWIW, a typo in the sample code, the closing bracket in the assignation
before comparison is missing.

>if((zl = tmgetzone("local") == nil)
^

(in all the chunks).

Thank you for the work!

Best regards,
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
   http://www.sbfa.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

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Re: [9fans] Request for (constructive?) comments: Plan 9 : 2020

[tlaronde]

On Sat, Oct 26, 2019 at 01:44:39PM -0700, o...@eigenstate.org wrote:
> > But as a general gauge of initial interest it's certainly useful.
> 
> Yes, I think that's mostly what's needed right now: Who's interesetd,
> and where they are.  It's important to know if we're looking for a
> space to host 10 people or 1000 people, or something in between --
> it's important for venue selection.
> 

Count me out, I will probably be unable to attend.

But I will help with some money (and I definitively consider the plan9
continuation as worth it).
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
   http://www.sbfa.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

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Re: [9fans] Request for (constructive?) comments: Plan 9 : 2020

[tlaronde]

On Tue, Oct 22, 2019 at 01:33:06PM -0700, Skip Tavakkolian wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Jeff (jas) and I have been chatting about organizing a "Plan 9 : 2020"
> workshop.  We're trying to gauge everyone's interest, and to solicit agenda
> items, venue suggestions, and hopefully volunteers to help organize it.
> 
>[...] 
> Sponsorship:
> Yes, please?
> Volunteering to help plan, organize, or help with the costs would be great.
> As in past workshops, this will be a labor of love for all involved.
> 

I will very probably be unable to attend but I could help with some
money (don't expect thousands of dollars or other currency; but I will
be probably able to help with some hundreds).

Best,
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
   http://www.sbfa.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

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Re: [9fans] Anything like 2e's road(7)?

[tlaronde]

On Wed, Oct 09, 2019 at 11:49:46AM -0700, Anthony Sorace wrote:
> This isn't really a Plan 9 question at this point, but since we've been 
> talking about 2e a bit:
> 
> 2e included a program road(7), which allowed you to explore a US map 
> database. It has a neat property where you can highlight individual features 
> via regexp match. You could have a map containing only selected roads (say 
> you wanted to show only the Interstates going into your city).
> 
> road(7) never got updated after 2e, and I don't know how to recreate the 
> Tiger database it pulled from, regardless.
> 
> Anyone know of anything, on any platform, which does something similar? Show 
> only selected elements on a road map?
> 

The association of road, Tiger and selection of strings ("labels"
associated with "categories" in GRASS terminology)
reminds me of GRASS (original version). But this is probably not what
you are looking for (a whole GIS "just" for that)...
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
   http://www.sbfa.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] MailRoute: Past Due Invoice for 9fans.net

[tlaronde]

On Fri, Aug 09, 2019 at 03:19:49PM -0400, Russ Cox wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 9, 2019 at 2:02 PM Skip Tavakkolian
>  wrote:
> > May I ask what the monthly cost of mailroute-ing 9fans is?  I can't 
> > decipher the pricing from their site.
> 
> Nothing but good things to say about Mailroute.
> 
> They're mostly aimed at businesses with individual users.
> When I contacted them way back in 2011 to ask about 9fans,
> the owner said he had run Plan 9 on a Sparc at UCLA in 1993 (!)
> and offered to treat the list as a simple two-user domain
> since the list traffic is so low, plus a 10% referral discount that
> was running at the time. That amounts to $54/year currently
> (it started at $60/year but apparently the per-user price went down!).
> 
> The service has worked like clockwork ever since then, except when
> my bank sends me a replacement credit card and the next January
> the annual automatic billing fails and I don't notice the emails about it
> (I'm really terrible at keeping up with email since having kids).
> The fact that the list is billed as a "user" is probably why they
> thought to try mailing it to reach me.
> 

Even if you consider that it is an acceptable cost for you---and thank
you, BTW, for this and other things---I, for one, won't object to give
something per year so that the plan9 discussions and work can be hosted
(and I mean, all that is done around plan9---I have used Bell Labs'; I
installed 9front---I just discovered that there is the possibility to
define bounties with 9front for proposed work...).
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
   http://www.sbfa.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] What are you using Plan 9 for?

[tlaronde]

On Fri, Jun 15, 2018 at 04:58:35PM -0700, Iruatã Souza wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 15, 2018 at 12:02 PM, Mark van Atten  
> wrote:
> > On Fri, Jun 15, 2018 at 8:13 AM, Mart Zirnask  wrote:
> >
> >> I'm a part-time writer and radio producer with no CS background, so I
> >> even use this machine for producing 1-hour radio shows for Estonian
> >> Public Broadcasting. (Thank you, Non Daw!: http://non.tuxfamily.org).
> >>
> >> I just love the "zen" of sam (and, occasionally, Acme) as a writing
> >> tool. Also, the idea of "everything is a file" kind of grows on you,
> >> intellectually.
> >
> > I'm a philosopher and use sam and acme every day to write papers
> > in LaTeX.
> >
> > With his KerTeX project, Thierry Laronde has done, and is doing, great
> > work for TeX on Plan 9.
> > It would be great to have LuaTeX as well.
> >
> 
> Did you (or Thierry) tried running LuaTeX? I have "ported" lua ages
> ago to Plan 9 and it was pretty easy, but I know nothing about LuaTex
> internals or the relation between both.

I personnaly have not tried. The main problem are the dependencies. If it 
depends
only on C and WEB, it should be easy. If secondary dependencies (like
generating PDF instead of DVI) draw C++ libraries in the way...

FWIW, at the moment I think that, if I put aside the conversion to utf-8
as input (with dir of 256 glyphes fonts), the main lack is the inability
to display the result without depending on gs(1). So I'd like to have,
for the different OSes, a rendering of the DVI. Then extend DVI so that
it supports the primitives needed by MetaPOST (leading to a MetaDVI). And then
a front end for a dvi2x driver.

This does not mean that I exclude LuaTeX per se. I have to see and I
have to find slots of time (and to try to fit a task in the actual slots
so that "something" is finished---I have already several things kerTeX
related started but none finished...).

Best,
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
   http://www.sbfa.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] What are you using Plan 9 for?

[tlaronde]

On Thu, Jun 14, 2018 at 03:22:24PM +0100, Steve Simon wrote:
> 
> The bigger problem today is the lack of a modern web browser.
> 

FWIW, there is a javascript engine in C:

http://duktape.org/

and a browser if I'm not mistaken written in C (there is the choice
between are several distinct graphical libraries to link against, but
one can also directly write to a framebuffer or to a dumb window):

http://www.netsurf-browser.org/

(netsurf uses duktape) that could be a starting point for someone with
time to tackle the task.

I sometime consider it but I'm almost at the point of trashing (too many
things to do and finally spending most time to switch from one task to
the other, trying the most part of the slot to restore the context---where
was I, what had to be done and how?---, without not much being done
eventually...)

YMMV,
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
   http://www.sbfa.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] Plan 9's style(6) manual page

[tlaronde]

On Sat, Apr 07, 2018 at 01:14:33PM -0700, Ori Bernstein wrote:
> On Sat, 07 Apr 2018 19:00:37 +0300, 8hal...@airmail.cc wrote:
> 
> > Just an amateur C programmer looking for answers. My main inspirations for
> > code style is K 2nd edition and I'm curious about the instructions in Plan
> > 9's style(6) manual page (for reference, 
> > http://man.cat-v.org/plan_9/6/style). I've
> > tried to think about the motivations, but not everything is as clear as 
> > it seems.
> 
> The manpage explains the reasoning:
> 
> Ultimately, the goal is to write code that fits in with the
> other code around it and the system as a whole.
> 
> So, most of the answers to your questions are simply that someone had a
> preference early on. They wrote the code. If you want your code to fit
> in with theirs, this is how to do it.

Indeed. When there are almost as many rational arguments for or
against some choice, this means that the subject is not essential
(there is no "truth"). In this case, for engineering reasons, the
goal shall be consistency: one person ("the chief") decides.
Furthermore, if the code is consistent (in the---french---army we
say: "paumés mais groupés" i.e.  "lost but together") you can apply
regular expressions processing to the whole because there _are_ rules,
if in whatever future the "chief" decides differently...

-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
   http://www.sbfa.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] There is no fork

[tlaronde]

2018-02-12 14:05 GMT+01:00 Ethan Grammatikidis :
> > On Mon, Feb 12, 2018, at 8:33 AM, Giacomo Tesio wrote:
>> 2018-02-12 2:10 GMT+01:00 Ethan Grammatikidis :
>>> linux-style package managers and bsd-style port trees facilitate and enable 
>>> coupling.
>>
>> What a package manager really facilitate is version management.
>> That is when you want to use/update a software at version X that depends on 
>> libraries at version Y and Z.
>
> That's the marketing blurb, I've heard it a thousand times before. [...]
> So, for the last 10-12 years, maybe more, mountains of software have been 
> produced on the assumption that it will be easy to find and install all their 
> dependencies. That's only true for users of big 'distributions' which have 
> lots of people, a large professional team or many contributors, to create and 
> maintain the package tree.

>From a different point of view, the problem is also that the developers,
using some developing tools (for example the GNU automake and autoconf),
don't really know what they are using, or, since "GNU is not Unix",
don't verify that their code is POSIX compliant (and to what level etc.;
when I began using Unix by discovering Linux, I remember reading a book
explaining that for C programming, when linking, you will add always 
the Glib library because "there are probably things you will need in
it!"...).

The amount of dependencies of some packages is simply appaling. (One
example is TeXlive, because using some macros involve using an amount
not necessarily kwown of "other" macros, for a lot of people it is
simpler to "take it all" just in order not to "fail"; and this is
when you need only a part of it that you discover that this "all"
depends on things that you do not have on your system---a C++
compiler and so on).

-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
   http://www.sbfa.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] SMART: Silly Marketing Acronym, Rebuts Truth

[tlaronde]

On Sun, Feb 04, 2018 at 10:10:39AM -0800, Erik Quanstrom wrote:
>in my experience smart can be helpful diagnosing grey failures. but it's 
>useless to generalize about hdd or ssd firmware wrt smart data.

I suspect that the huge majority of technical resources is
nowadays put on improving the manufacture process so that 99% of
the devices will last the duration of the guarantee... but not
longer. Since when SMART reports problems, the disk will finally
fail but several days or weeks after, this is the grey part you
are talking about: near the end of the guarantee but not already
pass the guarantee. So SMART can not advertise the failure (because
the device is still under guarantee) but not lie totally (to incit
you to buy another one). The question the marketing
department doesnt ask itself is whether a customer, seeing that the
device fails just after the guarantee is void, will have an incentive to
buy the same brand. Even if "everybody" (all the brands including the
"no brand"---that manufacture in fact for the brands) does the
same, the brand I have not tested yet has the benefit of the
doubt...

-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
   http://www.sbfa.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] SMART: Silly Marketing Acronym, Rebuts Truth

[tlaronde]

On Sat, Feb 03, 2018 at 03:59:26PM -0800, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote:
> >The interesting thing (for me) was that
> >the SMART data from the drive gave it an all clear right to the end. But
> >unlike the SSDs, there was plenty of behavioural warning to remind me to
> >have the backups up to date and a spare at the ready...
> 
> FWIW, of the three-four dozen or so drives I have actively SMART monitored
> over the years, of the ones that failed, *not* *one* gave a SMART warning
> before dying.
> 
> That includes a spinny disk in one of my Mac Minis.  Of anyone, I would
> expect Apple to be in bed with their HD suppliers enough to have HD firmware
> that reliably reports SMART errors (since the disk utilities do pay
> attemtion to it).  I spent a month listening to that drive's heads slam back
> to the home position as it tried to recalibrate itself, before eventually
> dying. To the bitter end, SMART reported "a-ok boss!"
> 

I had the same experience. SMART has been totally useless advertising
problems only _after_ the disks had failed, repeating "reliable" till
disaster. The OSes log were more helpful since the read and write errors
were reported (corrected) days or even weeks before the disks became
useless---and fortunately, I relied on this information to swap data.
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
   http://www.sbfa.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] aijuboard

[tlaronde]

On Tue, Dec 19, 2017 at 09:22:36PM +, Skip Tavakkolian wrote:
> Hi Julius,
> 
> I am sorry I didn't support this effort. I'm glad to see the successful
> results.  Thank you for sharing your great and creative work.
> 

Same here. I didn't understand at first that it was 2015 and not now and
went to the site to realize the funding  was "closed" and it was in 
2015...

> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 7:42 AM Julius Schmidt  wrote:
> 
> > I am currently collecting funds for a production run of a Zynq based board
> > built specifically with Plan 9 in mind. It has a dual-core ARM CPU and a
> > Xilinx FPGA. We are running 9front, but labs and 9atom would likely work
> > fine too.
> >
> > You can preorder it for $500, buy a glenda or aijuboard t-shirt for $60 or
> > just donate any amount you want.
> >
> > The campaign will be running for 21 more days and we're currently $2300
> > short. Any contribution would be greatly appreciated.
> >
> > https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aijuboard
> >
> > -- aiju
> >
> >

-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
   http://www.sbfa.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] kerTeX update: m3D for 3D images with MetaPost

[tlaronde]

Hello,

On Mon, Aug 21, 2017 at 06:39:25PM -0300, Iruatã Souza wrote:
> On 08/17/2017 06:47 AM, tlaro...@polynum.com wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I have updated kerTeX. The most visible change for user is the
> > possibility to use Anthony Phan's m3D macros for MetaPost allowing
> > 3D figures (this is a package, so it is m...@mp.sh package and not
> > included in the core distribution).
> > 
> > I have tested (and corrected) compilation, installation and creation
> > of the examples figures on my (poor) Plan9 installation but it is
> > so faulty that I never managed to view the result by page'ing the
> > ps (gs takes ages).
> > 
> > If someone has, at any time, the possibility to test on a correct Plan9
> > installation, I will be happy to have feedback (success or failure).
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > 
> 
> I can help testing if you can tell me what to do.
> 

Thank you! But the test has finally been done since I reinstalled plan9
but, this time, the 9front version---and it went quite well and my
system finally works!

If you're curious:

Installing kerTeX (with the get_mk_install.rc) and installing the m3D
package (cmd: ape/sh m...@mp.sh install) and then generating the samples
by following the instructions published at the end of the installation,
you can then see the result by:

kertex/dvips showcase.dvi >showcase.ps
page -w showcase.ps

Thank you for the proposal!
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

[9fans] hget rc vs. hget bin: fix in kerTeX

[tlaronde]

Hello,

I have reinstalled Plan9 and since the "original" iso had many problems
with my hardware, I went to 9front. I must say that this has solved a
lot so thanks! to the ones that did some good job!

Since in 9front, hget(1) is a rc script and not a binary, the usage of
hget(1) for the kerTeX packages (all the admin programs are shared
between OSes, so I selected a subset of POSIX.2), called under ape/sh,
failed.

I have solved the problem (by calling rc with "-c" and cleaning the 
environment with "rfork E;" before calling hget(1)) and this should
work for all the variants of Plan9 installations.

I have been able to verify, this time, that the m3D package works under
Plan9, and that creating the 'showcase' example, generating the PS with
kertex/dvips(1), and showing the file with: "page -w showcase.ps" works
(and simpler than on Unices). (Trying to pipe dvips output directly to
"page -w" doesn't seem to work.)

[ For the ones who don't know, kerTeX is a distribution of TeX and al.

http://www.kergis.com/en/kertex.html

and there is a get_mk_install.rc file to... get, make (not mk...) and
install for Plan9. And yes LaTeX is supported as a package with many
more. This is up to date with TeX, METAFONT, LaTeX etc.
]

Cheers,
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

[9fans] kerTeX update: m3D for 3D images with MetaPost

[tlaronde]

Hello,

I have updated kerTeX. The most visible change for user is the
possibility to use Anthony Phan's m3D macros for MetaPost allowing
3D figures (this is a package, so it is m...@mp.sh package and not
included in the core distribution).

I have tested (and corrected) compilation, installation and creation
of the examples figures on my (poor) Plan9 installation but it is
so faulty that I never managed to view the result by page'ing the
ps (gs takes ages).

If someone has, at any time, the possibility to test on a correct Plan9
installation, I will be happy to have feedback (success or failure).

Cheers,
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] Partition problems

[tlaronde]

Hello,

On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 11:07:03PM +, Steve Simon wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I run a modified labs kernel with a few bits of 9atom to support my atom
> Motherboard.
> 
> I have added an ssd to the mirrored disks in my plan9 server.
> The initialisation of devfs fails without a helpful error message (something 
> I will sort out)
> 
> However the source of the problem seems to be boot/parts.c which fails to 
> instantiate the last partition on my disks. This causes devfs to give up 
> rather than continuing to retry other partitions. My kernel then cannot find 
> its venti partition and dies with a panic.
> 
> If I boot using a different partition structure I can bring up the machine, 
> and see that this one partition is indeed missing.
> 
> If I run disk/prep on the disk and rewrite the partition table unchanged, the 
> missing partition appears.
> 
> Anyone seen problems with the partition table generation code in boot/part.c?
> If not I will keep digging but I thought it was worth asking.

I had a problem (and still have) with the plan9 program because the code
rewrites the whole partition entry, recomputing the values of the start
and so on even with partitions "untouched" rendering the machine
unbootable because the starting block was not the correct one.

I have never found neither the time nor the incentive to correct this
part.

I don't know if this has anything to do with your problem at hand.

Best,
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] Is 9Fans dead or alive

[tlaronde]

On Tue, Aug 23, 2016 at 12:01:48PM +0300, Costin Chirvasuta wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 23, 2016 at 9:06 AM, Andrew Nazarov
>  wrote:
> > I thought the same, but yesterday I noticed that suddenly gmail has begun to
> > mark all the recent 9fans messages as spam.
> 
> Same here. Only about 4 messages though (each from a different
> person). A few others got through.

I'm not using gmail and the list has been quiet for some weeks. But it
is general in August altogether with whatever list.
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] Is 9Fans dead or alive

[tlaronde]

On Tue, Aug 23, 2016 at 02:14:54AM +, Staven wrote:
> We live, we die, we live again!

We simply sleep from time to time...
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] rtl8169 gbe slow

[tlaronde]

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 08:35:04PM +0100, hiro wrote:
> downloads.kergis.com is some http server operated by OVH.
> 
> it would be easier to post a pcap from a transfer where you control
> both sides and possibly enable debugging of window sizes, timeouts,
> packet loss, etc. in tcp.c like erik did.

Both sides won't be possible (at least for me). What I plan to do is
tcpdump/snoopy the interface under NetBSD and Plan9 (from the very same 
workstation), when downloading the "test" file, and look, separately
the two pcap and then compare the processing (I might even go as far as
compare the plan9 implementation with the 4.4BSD-lite).

But for the moment, I have taken down from the shelf Stevens TCP/IP
illustrated, since my knowledge needs both to be refreshed and to be
enhanced... (This means that it will take some time.)

> 
> On 2/23/16, erik quanstrom  wrote:
> > I saw this.  I'm not looking at the pcap file
> >
> > On Feb 23, 2016 10:38 AM, hiro <23h...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> i didn't see any out-of-window rx in the pcap. did i look the wrong way?
> >>
> >>
> >

-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] rtl8169 gbe slow

[tlaronde]

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 04:45:12PM +, r...@hemiola.co.uk wrote:
> >Does plan9 under lguest actually use the linux
> >hardware services? Is plan9 under lguest using "its" implementation
> >except for the low level device driving i.e. the ethernet provided
> >by the Linux host?
> 
> Yes. The lguest plan9 instance has a virtio ethernet driver,
> which is a 'wire' to a tap interface on the host. Packets are routed
> at the ip level from the tap to the linux ethernet interface by
> the linux kernel in the usual way. I'm not sure why plan9 is half
> the speed in this situation, but I feel it might be a red herring,
> and that the combination of lguest/plan9 isn't terribly efficient
> at minimising the context switching that happens when packets are sent
> and received.
> 

If I'm not mistaken, on the server log, even under lguest the string is
still "Plan9/hget" so this seems to rule this out. And if the
performance (minus emulation/switching overhead) is better using,
actually, Linux TCP/IP implementation for the real connection, it will
show that this is the Plan9 implementation that has, under some
circumstances (perhaps with the size of the packets sent by some server)
an unfelicity.
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] rtl8169 gbe slow

[tlaronde]

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 05:19:04PM +0200, lu...@proxima.alt.za wrote:
> > I have hence to ask the provider if there is something,
> > in their configuration, that could explain this
> 
> If you can run NetBSD at the same time as Plan 9, you could also use
> tcpdump (whatever its current impersonation) to monitor the link.
> It's been a long time since I last did that, but it may be revealing.
> 

I will have to snoopy and tcpdump as a last resort to try to have a clue.
Just looking at the numbers, it's like Plan9 only assembling packets in
order (1500 bytes every latency time), and reasking for packet n+1 after
receiving packet n, whatever packets being received in the mean time.
But I'm out of my depth: I'm not a TCP/IP expert.
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] rtl8169 gbe slow

[tlaronde]

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 02:39:20PM +, r...@hemiola.co.uk wrote:
> I get quite consistent results here.
> 
> Downloading http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/kertex_bundle.tar to /dev/null:
> 
> linux over rtl8169 & ASDL  :  5.4 seconds
> plan 9 native over rtl8169 & ASDL  : 12.4 seconds
> as above, but latest sources tcp.c : 12.4 seconds
> 
> linux on server:  1.2 seconds
> plan9 in lguest on the same server :  2.2 seconds
> 
> Oldish labs kernels in both cases.
> 

The interesting data is the difference between plan9 native and
plan9 under lguest. Does plan9 under lguest actually use the linux
hardware services? Is plan9 under lguest using "its" implementation
except for the low level device driving i.e. the ethernet provided
by the Linux host?

-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] rtl8169 gbe slow

[tlaronde]

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 05:20:40AM -0800, erik quanstrom wrote:
> why?  what's the evidence?
> 

If I download from vanilla Plan9 (running on bare metal) data from 
_another http server_, I have correct results.

So the problem is not with Plan9 per se, but downloading from _this_
site (and it is mine!) and under Plan9.

If there was a problem with Plan9, I will have bad speed from whatever
server under Plan9. But it is not the case.

So there is something at the intersection (&&) of Plan9 and this site. 
And it can be Plan9 identifier (client ID) triggering something on
the server side leading to throttling the connection (or my DSL provider
throttling to the server provider; but this doesn't explain why others
have also poor results connecting from Plan9 while I guess they are not
with the same DSL provider as me---SFR here---and this doesn't explain
why with the same connection, downloading under NetBSD doesn't show the
problem---unless, once more, "plan9/hget" is considered a bittorrent
client or a robot and is causing the throttling, but this would seem a
"general" rule then).

Yes, it could be something with Plan9 at some upper IP level. But before
searching the needle in the hay stack, I have to rule out a possible
throttling on the server side (that I don't own or manage; I only
lend room on it; I have hence to ask the provider if there is something,
in their configuration, that could explain this).
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] rtl8169 gbe slow

[tlaronde]

FWIW, I have sent a request to my provider asking if Plan9/hget could
trigger a "robot" rule leading to the throttling of the connection.

-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] rtl8169 gbe slow

[tlaronde]

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 01:52:48PM +0100, Mark van Atten wrote:
> Same 9front under virtualbox:
> 
> term% time hget -o /dev/null http://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/latex/base.zip
> 0.06u 0.24s 8.74r  hget -o /dev/null
> http://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/latex/base.zip

Yes, this is the problem. It is this very address: kergis.com that is
causing a problem. The question is: is it because of something in the
Plan9 implementation; or is it a different behavior from the http server
depending on the OS/utility advertised? I suspect more the latter.
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] rtl8169 gbe slow

[tlaronde]

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 12:17:30PM +, Richard Miller wrote:
> > It seems that Plan9 is not at fault per se
> 
> I think it probably is.  Here's another data point (same ADSL connection) -

The delicate point is: is plan9 at fault or it is the fact that it is
advertised as Plan9 that is the source of this throttling down.

Because I have tested retrieving a 10MB file from another server, under
plan9 (http://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/latex/base.zip) and I have good
results on par with what I have under NetBSD (same node; dualboot).

So I think the ethernet layer (the rtl8169) is not at fault. Perhaps 
another IP layer is at fault (bad negociation under some circonstances
leading to very small packets). Or the server is throttling down
the connection, whether explicitely because it is Plan9/hget (used
by some? as bittorrent utility, or the string used etc.) or simply
because there is a rule that everything not recognized/authorized
(ie, chrome, mozilla, wget, ftp, lftp) is considered a robot, and
is throttled down...

> 
> #l0: i82579: 1Gbps port 0xFE50 irq 10: 386077f0e800
> 0.09u 0.08s 182.26rhget 
> http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/kertex_bundle.tar
> 
> But on the same machine, using linux instead:
> 
> $ time wget -o /dev/null http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/kertex_bundle.tar
> 
> real  0m9.134s
> user  0m0.048s
> sys   0m0.186s
> 

-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] rtl8169 gbe slow

[tlaronde]

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 02:00:53PM +0200, lu...@proxima.alt.za wrote:
> > It seems that Plan9 is not at fault per se, but the server I'm on has
> > not a tremendous throughput, and since it is shared, varies greatly.
> 
> It could be traffic related in a lot of ways.  Or load related.  Might
> be worth speaking to the service provider to see if they are aware of
> the wild swings?

Yes, I will contact them too!
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] rtl8169 gbe slow

[tlaronde]

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 11:06:47AM +, Richard Miller wrote:
> > If someone under Plan9 could try to download with hget(1):
> 
> >From home (ADSL connection) - standard distribution on x86:
> 
> 0.15u 0.16s 183.90rhget 
> http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/kertex_bundle.tar
> #l0: rtl8169: 1Gbps port 0xDE00 irq 10: 003018a47956
> 

Same configuration for me. Twice the speed but not tremendous...

> >From server room somewhere in Amsterdam - standard distribution on raspberry 
> >pi B+:
> 
> 1.02u 0.86s 87.53r hget 
> http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/kertex_bundle.tar
> 

It seems that Plan9 is not at fault per se, but the server I'm on has
not a tremendous throughput, and since it is shared, varies greatly.

I will try to see if I can get a pattern by comparing the Plan9
connection with the NetBSD one (same amd64, dualboot).

Thanks to all for the data!

-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] rtl8169 gbe slow

[tlaronde]

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 12:15:41PM +0200, lu...@proxima.alt.za wrote:
> > 0.10u 0.22s 192.79r   hget -o kertex_bundle.tar
> > http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/kertex_bundle.tar
> > 
> > This is under 9front under virtualbox 4.3.32.
> 
> I get, from my workstation:
> 
> 0.21u 1.34s 50.52r hget -o /tmp/kertex_bundle.tar 
> http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/kertex_bundle.tar

Thank you. Is it plain plan9 in this case?

> 
> and
> 
> term% md5sum /tmp/kertex_bundle.tar
> fbf91d2c9fed66604d14c70e4ab84f5a  /tmp/kertex_bundle.tar
> 
> >From my Cape Town server: 
> 
> 0.26u 2.67s 714.38rhget -o /tmp/kertex_bundle.tar 
> http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/kertex_bundle.tar
> 
> More like what you get, isn't it? Same file:

Yes, on par with what I get. But I'm not under emulation: it's plain
Plan9 on bare metal in my case...


> This one is a VMware ESXi instance with IP address 192.96.32.148 (or
> somesuch).

Thanks for the data.

So with what Mark van Atten and you have, the problem is not local (to
my workstation) and this is why I'd like to now the difference between
the VMware instance and the first with more correct download times. If
it is plain plan9 (not hosted), I'm a bit puzzled...
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] rtl8169 gbe slow

[tlaronde]

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 10:40:18AM +0100, Mark van Atten wrote:
> Dear Thierry,
> 
> > If someone under Plan9 could try to download with hget(1):
> >
> > http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/kertex_bundle.tar
> >
> > and give me the time (it is a 10MB file) to do so,
> 
> 0.10u 0.22s 192.79r   hget -o kertex_bundle.tar
> http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/kertex_bundle.tar
> 
> This is under 9front under virtualbox 4.3.32.

Thank you. It's better than what I get, but it is still poor: ~53KB/s...
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] rtl8169 gbe slow

[tlaronde]

Actually, the sources are up-to-date.

Setting "tcp" for /net/log doesn't produce any message.

Since the problem is with one address (http://downloads.kergis.com/),
I will have to snoopy the interface to have a clue about what is going
on (is the negociation leading to this poor performance? Are the packets
arriving sparsely, meaning that the problem is "before" with the gateway
or the external server? Is "Plan9/hget" considered a bittorrent
application and the external server throttling down on purpose?).

If someone under Plan9 could try to download with hget(1):

http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/kertex_bundle.tar

and give me the time (it is a 10MB file) to do so, I will have a clue
about whether there is something "generally" going on on the server 
with Plan9 or hget, or if the problem is local to my installation.

TIA
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] rtl8169 gbe slow

[tlaronde]

On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 08:41:01PM +0100, Mark van Atten wrote:
> > i think that david has a mirror up, and 9fs sources still works here.
> 
> http://9p.io/

Thanks, Mark! 
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] rtl8169 gbe slow

[tlaronde]

On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 11:26:58AM -0800, erik quanstrom wrote:
> > > anyway, please update your tcp.  the debugging tools that are most
> > > helpful with tcp are
> > > /net/tcp/stats
> > > /net/tcp/*/status
> > > echo tcp>/net/log && tail -f /net/log
> > 
> > To update I need to update the sources. Where are now the "updated"
> > sources? since Bell Labs site seems to be definitively down... Is there
> > somewhere the "latest" sources, at least with the TCP corrections?
> 
> i think that david has a mirror up, and 9fs sources still works here.
> 
> you can also grab the 9atom version @ 
> http://sources.9atom.org/sys/src/9/ip/tcp.c
> contact me off-list about any compile issues.  a few greps don't show any of 
> the usual suspects, but i haven't tried myself.

Thanks. I will try the Bell Labs mirror and fall back to the 9atom
version in case of problem (just to try to avoid mixing sources with the
inability finally to be able to say exactly what version I run...).
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] rtl8169 gbe slow

[tlaronde]

> anyway, please update your tcp.  the debugging tools that are most
> helpful with tcp are
> /net/tcp/stats
> /net/tcp/*/status
> echo tcp>/net/log && tail -f /net/log

We have definitively not the same systems ;-) The echo tcp brings an
error for netlog.

But for further puzzling things (for me).

If I try to download the kertex tarball from "my" site (I just pay for
some space on a remote server; it is not my machine) the performance are
abysmal.

I tried another site, with http, in this case:

http://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/latex/base.zip

since the file for the base LaTeX is the same size as the tarball for
the whole kerTeX.

In this case, I have the following:

first ": 1024
second ": 34k
afterward: 1.7M!

So there is "something" about the "negociation" between hget and
"my" site that is not good---note: "my" site uses cookies (I don't;
this is the Apache running on the server that does; my pages don't
use cookies at all and I have no hand on that). I wonder if some
"persistent" (cookie) information could cause this misbehavior
(since I have a multiboot PC, this very same IP address is depending
on the moment whether NetBSD, Plan9 or, more rarely, Windows 8.1).

-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] rtl8169 gbe slow

[tlaronde]

On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 09:20:52AM -0800, erik quanstrom wrote:
> On Sat Feb 20 06:04:02 PST 2016, tlaro...@polynum.com wrote:
> > On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 02:31:54PM +0100, hiro wrote:
> > > what is the latency on WAN?
> > 
> > When using traceroute, I have 42.6ms for a roundtrip 
> > (cf. with LAN: 0.23ms).
> > 
> > But the very same machine, under NetBSD, with the very same ip address,
> > downloads the very same file from the very same external server
> > (downloads.kergis.com) in 17s, while hget(1) spends 6 minutes doing
> > it.
> > 
> > I wondered if the unsupported same chip integrated network card would
> > be a problem. But disabling it via the BIOS doesn't change anything.
> > 
> > Is there a way to trace what hget is doing/calling so that I can have a
> > clue about the bottleneck? There is no transmission errors on the
> > interface, so the problem is in the upper levels of TCP/IP.
> 
> yes.  i believe this was suggested before.  from the evidence, the best
> guess is that you are using an old kernel with an old tcp.

Does it explain the difference between LAN and WAN? ftp is TCP; and on
LAN there is no visible problem (connecting to a host running NetBSD)---
well, since the latency on LAN is the 1/300 of the latency of WAN, the 
problem could be masked...

> 
> the old tcp had abysmal performance starting at a latency of ~10ms.  this
> was due to a flawed implementation of tcp reno.  plan 9 used to commit
> the cardinal sin of tcp, and move the left edge of the window.
> 
> anyway, please update your tcp.  the debugging tools that are most
> helpful with tcp are
> /net/tcp/stats
> /net/tcp/*/status
> echo tcp>/net/log && tail -f /net/log

To update I need to update the sources. Where are now the "updated"
sources? since Bell Labs site seems to be definitively down... Is there
somewhere the "latest" sources, at least with the TCP corrections?
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] rtl8169 gbe slow

[tlaronde]

On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 04:06:24PM +0200, lu...@proxima.alt.za wrote:
> > But the very same machine, under NetBSD, with the very same ip address,
> > downloads the very same file from the very same external server
> > (downloads.kergis.com) in 17s, while hget(1) spends 6 minutes doing
> > it.
> 
> Just for one more data point: dump the hget output to /dev/null.  That
> may at least exclude the disks and fossil from the equation.

I have already ruled this out: copying the file in the very same place 
from mounted ftpfs (LAN), no speed problem. Copying in /tmp served by 
ramfs, no difference for hget...
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] rtl8169 gbe slow

[tlaronde]

On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 02:31:54PM +0100, hiro wrote:
> what is the latency on WAN?

When using traceroute, I have 42.6ms for a roundtrip 
(cf. with LAN: 0.23ms).

But the very same machine, under NetBSD, with the very same ip address,
downloads the very same file from the very same external server
(downloads.kergis.com) in 17s, while hget(1) spends 6 minutes doing
it.

I wondered if the unsupported same chip integrated network card would
be a problem. But disabling it via the BIOS doesn't change anything.

Is there a way to trace what hget is doing/calling so that I can have a
clue about the bottleneck? There is no transmission errors on the
interface, so the problem is in the upper levels of TCP/IP.
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] rtl8169 gbe slow

[tlaronde]

On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 12:23:29PM +0100, Kenny Lasse Hoff Levinsen wrote:
>> [rtl8169 gbe full speed on LAN; very slow on WAN]
> Is your MTU higher that 1500? That might be able to mess things up over the 
> internet.
> 

Thanks for the suggestion but no: even with -m 1500, speed is still
awful.

Best,
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] rtl8169 gbe slow

[tlaronde]

I have compared downloading a file (via ftpfs) on the LAN, and
downloading it from the WAN.

On the LAN, I get the 10MB file in less than a 1s (this is normal since
the node I download from has only a 100Mb ethernet).

On the WAN, it takes 6 minutes (with hget).

My conclusion is that the card device (driver) is not at fault but that
something is wrong along the path when I get through the gateway.

Has somebody an idea about what I may do wrong or what could cause such
a cost on the gateway.

I have set IPv6 on the gateway: no difference. I have tried to disable
IPv6 on the ether: no difference. 

ip/traceroute to the outside server shows results that are on par
with what I get from NetBSD on this very node where I run also
plan9.

"Something" is obviously wrong. But "what" is less obvious (at least to
me).

-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] NetSurf (browser) and Duktape (javascript)

[tlaronde]

On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 02:00:47PM +0100, Kenny Lasse Hoff Levinsen wrote:
> Styling/proper rendering might be more interesting than JS.
> 

Unfortunately, today, there are a number of sites that require
javascript. I don't speak about overloaded media sites. But for example
bank or even governemental sites.

It is unfortunate to have, for some common tasks, the need of
"something else" (and due to the size and complexity of Mozilla
and Chrome, "something else" can be a pretty restrictive choice).

If I'm not mistaken, Russ Cox says somewhere that he was happy working
under Plan9 but that he ported the Plan9 utilities to other systems when
he realized there was no hope that someday Mozilla will run on Plan9...
So he still uses Plan9 utilities, but not under Plan9...
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] rtl8169 gbe slow

[tlaronde]

On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 05:22:42AM -0800, erik quanstrom wrote:
> the 8169 driver is pretty fast.  I've measured it at more than 500mbps.
> it sounds like something else is misbehaving.  what does
> /dev/irqstat say.  I bet something is stuck.
> 

Is /dev/irqstat a lapsus? Here are /dev/irqalloc and
/net/ether0/ifstats:

  3   0 debugpt
  7   0 mathemu
  8   0 doublefault
  9   0 mathover
 14   0 fault386
 15   0 unexpected
 16   0 matherror
 32   0 clock
 33   1 kbd
 35   3 sdE (iahci)
 38   6 floppy
 39   7 lpt
 42  10 ether0
 44  12 kbdaux

ifstats:

TxOk: 4483
RxOk: 7520
TxEr: 0
RxEr: 0
MissPkt: 0
FAE: 0
Tx1Col: 0
TxMCol: 0
RxOkPh: 7482
RxOkBrd: 28
RxOkMu: 10
TxAbt: 0
TxUndrn: 0
txdu: 0
tcpf: 0
udpf: 0
ipf: 0
fovf: 0
ierrs: 0
rer: 0
rdu: 0
punlc: 0
fovw: 0
tcr: 0x2f200700
rcr: 0xe70e
multicast: 10
phy:1000 796d 001c c914 01e1 c5e1 000d 2801
4e2e 0300 3800     3000
01ee ac9c   8040 0006 4100 2100
 8c00 0040 0106 217c 8fbc 0123 
rcv descrs processed at once:   highwater 2/255 curr 1 hitmax 0
xmit descr queue len:   highwater 0/31 curr 0 hitmax 0

Note: _this_ card is a PCIe supplementary one. There is another rtl
embedded in the motherboard that Plan9 does not recognize:

rtl8169: unknown mac 8168 4c00
oui 0x732 phyno 1, macv = 0x2c00 phyv = 0x0004
#l0: rtl8169: 1Gbps port 0xC000 irq 10: e8de2701f455

I have tried by disabling the embedded ether controller, the result is
the same.

Another kernel message for what is worth (since I don't know what it
means, I don't know if it's relevant):

i8042: fe returned to the ea command

-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] NetSurf (browser) and Duktape (javascript)

[tlaronde]

On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 01:17:12AM +0100, Aram H?v?rneanu wrote:
> What problem would this solve, it's not like netsurf can display any
> useful web page that mothra can't display.

NetSurf will incorporate Duktape javascript engine. Does Mothra have
javascript?

-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] NetSurf (browser) and Duktape (javascript)

[tlaronde]

On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 08:41:27PM +0100, Jens Staal wrote:
> 2016-02-18 15:26 GMT+01:00 :
> 
> > NetSurf (http://www.netsurf-browser.org/) is a browser written in C. And
> > Duktape is a javascript engine written in C too.
> >
> > Has anybody given them a look?
> >
> 
> Several NetSurf libraries (used to) build fine under APE. I probably should
> try again sometime and upload to the 9front-ports project.
> 
> What would be really cool is if  the LibNSFB (netsurf framebuffer
> abstraction library) would be ported to Plan9, since this would mean that
> it might be possible to run a NetSurf port natively (if all the other parts
> compile well)

I have already too many things on the stack---and late. But as for TeX,
I wanted to do the stuff years and years ago and never done anything
significative untill I finally got angry about my written work in 
danger, so I've finally done it.

So if nobody beats me, I may do it. Some day. But it's probably not in
the near future.
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

[9fans] rtl8169 gbe slow

[tlaronde]

Hello,

I have finally managed to install plan9 on my new workstation.

By putting back the keyboard on the PS2 connector, I have solved some
unfelicities (with the USB->legacy emulation, the keyboard switched
every other typing to UPPERCASE...).

The mouse, still USB connected and hence "emulated" by the BIOS,
does not react very gracefully but I will see if I can play with
the acceleration and the resolution to have a better terminal. (Or
if I manage to find a long enough cable to have a COM slot back since
there is the bare connector on the motherboard; in this case I will go
back to a com mouse and will be able to probe USB for other
devices---external disks.)

One thing is inconvenient: I have a rtl8169 gbe pci-e ether card, but
when testing the compilation of kerTeX (it has been fixed: it works for
the last release; rio to come for METAFONT), the throughput with hget is
abysmal: 30kB/s... The disk is not a fault, reacting well enough (I have
plenty of RAM and the blocks cache for fossil is set to 3000---it could
be obviously higher).

Setting the mtu to jumbo packet does not help.

Is there something to tune or is it simply that the chip is not well
supported?

TIA
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] plan9.ini: ipconfig and bootargs

[tlaronde]

Hello Erik,

On Mon, Feb 15, 2016 at 07:41:37AM -0800, erik quanstrom wrote:
> On Sun Feb 14 08:30:20 PST 2016, tlaro...@polynum.com wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > When trying to re-install a Plan9 on a new node, being unable, with the
> > kernel compiled present on the CDROM image, to access a FAT or an iso
> > image of a root file system, I went to a combination of a minimal sketch
> > of a plan9 slice, with a 9fat made "by hand" (from an already installed
> > other OS---here NetBSD) and access at boot time a remote root
> > filesystem, for the installation, serves by another Unix node serving
> > 9P2000.
> > 
> > The surprise is with the bootargs, in plan9.ini, supposed to configure
> > the network for the node, in order to access a remote root filesystem,
> > as in:
> > 
> > fs=192.168.1.3
> > # auth not used
> > auth=192.168.1.3
> > bootargs=tcp!-g 192.168.1.1 gbe 192.168.1.2 255.255.255.0
> > 
> > what is after the '!' being supposed to be args to ip/ipconfig.
> 
> here's what i have on my cpu server
> 
>   nobootprompt=il -g 10.1.10.1 ether /net/ether0 10.1.1.1 /112
> 
> nobootprompt is equivalent to bootargs

Yep (but since I was testing, I wanted the prompt and the ability to
change with bootargs). 

But what kernel do you boot? Because, reading the various inst/* rc
scripts, I gather that 9pcdisk is perhaps an "old" kernel (9pcf is used
instead now) and this is perhaps I used this 9pcdisk kernel that the
whole string is not correctly interpreted...
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

[9fans] plan9.ini: ipconfig and bootargs

[tlaronde]

Hello,

When trying to re-install a Plan9 on a new node, being unable, with the
kernel compiled present on the CDROM image, to access a FAT or an iso
image of a root file system, I went to a combination of a minimal sketch
of a plan9 slice, with a 9fat made "by hand" (from an already installed
other OS---here NetBSD) and access at boot time a remote root
filesystem, for the installation, serves by another Unix node serving
9P2000.

The surprise is with the bootargs, in plan9.ini, supposed to configure
the network for the node, in order to access a remote root filesystem,
as in:

fs=192.168.1.3
# auth not used
auth=192.168.1.3
bootargs=tcp!-g 192.168.1.1 gbe 192.168.1.2 255.255.255.0

what is after the '!' being supposed to be args to ip/ipconfig.

The problem is that the gateway is taken as _another_ ip address for the
interface! and that the mask is taken as the "node" serving the root
filesystem! "fs" not being taken into account.

Only:

bootargs=tcp!gbe 192.168.1.2

works...

Is the ip/ipconfig embedded in boot reduced as to not take all the
options? (I don't need them; but the wiki page is the wrong; and
I wonder if I'm doing something wrong or if there is indeed something
changed since the page was written...)

-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

[9fans] bad character set for rune...

[tlaronde]

Hello,

I'm on the way to install Plan9 on a new node.

Since with the CDROM or the (different flavors of) USB images, it
doesn't work, I'm "bootstrapping" by hand.

I have made, from an external OS (NetBSD), a plan9 partition with the
initial 9fat configured and populated in order to be able to boot boot.

Since, so far, I have been unable to convince the 9pccd kernel to read
an iso file of the root file system put whether in the 9fat or in plan9
partition in a "fs" subpartition, I'm now serving a root filesystem
via 9P2000, from another node.

Well, it works, but when launching the installation (I have copied the
various scripts so that they are in the served /), I have the message,
continuously repeated:

bad character set for rune 0x in /lib/font/bit/lucm/unicode.9.font

since it is the font loaded for rio. (The rio windows are blank, the
message is on the "console".)

Has anybody any clue about what is causing this? Can a program needed to
read/decompress/whatever the font be missing (I have tried to put on the
root only what is needed)? If yes, what is this program?

TIA

-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] bad character set for rune...

[tlaronde]

On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 10:40:21PM +0100, tlaro...@polynum.com wrote:
> 
> Well, it works, but when launching the installation (I have copied the
> various scripts so that they are in the served /), I have the message,
> continuously repeated:
> 
> bad character set for rune 0x in /lib/font/bit/lucm/unicode.9.font
> 
> since it is the font loaded for rio. (The rio windows are blank, the
> message is on the "console".)
> 

Replying to myself: because I had copied the unicode.9.font but not the
other components (files) or subfonts (? Is this the correct term).

Once done, it works...
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] Install: root file system

[tlaronde]

On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 06:06:57PM -0200, Iruatã Souza wrote:
> Never tried it, but you could try installing 9front, then your
> distribution of choice atop of that.

If nothing else works, I will fall back to a kernel loaded locally from
the sketched "by hand" plan9 partition (indeed the 9FAT at the very
beginning) but accessing a network root filesystem served by a NetBSD
node serving 9P.

But I investigate other tracks---see below.

> 
> On Sun, Jan 3, 2016 at 8:06 AM,   wrote:
> > On Sat, Jan 02, 2016 at 04:26:39PM -0800, erik quanstrom wrote:
> >> i'm not sure what the root cause of your problem is,
> >
> > I'm now suspecting that the underlying problem is that a 9fat is a dos,
> > but that is a special dos: part of a plan9 slice, so whether kfs or
> > fossil supplementary partitions are expected.

If I'm not mistaken, the man page about kfs is misleading. It says that
indeed what is not fossil is treated as "kfs", but that "kfs" handles 
cd9660 or dos too.

If I understand correctly, this is not true. This is 9660srv or dossrv
or bzfl programs that are copied as "kfs" in the special installation
kernel root according to the type of the root filesystem to read.

And since in the installation kernels there is no kernel with a dossrv
masquerading as "kfs", it fails (the 9pcflop doesn't support sdiahci,
and this is _the_ problem; so I can't use the embedded bzfl root image
since only 9pcflop has the "kfs" to read it; 9pccd supports sdiahci
but it expects an ISO filesystem---and the "live" cd is not very
alive; I don't know if this is via emulation, but everything is
incredibly slow even to try to bootstrap the installation by entering
commands in the CD live plan9.

Note to others: I have only a PS2 keyboard/mouse combo, and other
serials are all USB. Disabling via plan9.ini the USB, even if attached
as USB devices, the mouse and keyboard appear (I guess by some BIOS
emulation). If USB is on, I have no mouse and no keyboard, or only one
of the twoi: the one connected to the PS2 combo.

For root filesystem experiments, I have even tried to create a
"kfs" partition in the plan9 slice, embedding in my case a cd9660
filesystem hoping that giving this as the rootfilesystem the 9660srv
masquerading as kfs in the 9pccd will be able to read it. But boot
fails with a "/ incorrect format" that I'm unable to understand at
the moment (but can be caused by the specification given as bootargs
in plan9.ini; I will try to investigate a little further if I have
some time).
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] Install: root file system

[tlaronde]

On Sat, Jan 02, 2016 at 04:26:39PM -0800, erik quanstrom wrote:
> i'm not sure what the root cause of your problem is, 

I'm now suspecting that the underlying problem is that a 9fat is a dos,
but that is a special dos: part of a plan9 slice, so whether kfs or
fossil supplementary partitions are expected.

I have changed the MBR identifier to big FAT16 (6) and in this case
9load doesn't find a Plan9 slice and ask for a kernel, the 
sdE2!dos!9pcdisk.gz is OK (but it panics after since it doesn't ask for
a plan9.ini).

> due to not enough data,
> but it does remind me of a limitation that has been bugging me.
> 
> to boot from usb cleanly, i added a bit to the boot process that creates a 
> loopback
> sd device /dev/sdu0 that points to the usb disk device.  i've been booting my 
> auth
> server this way for some time.
> 

The idea is interesting.

Another idea/question appeared to me: could it be possible to add a
device identifier # to the booting device or publish it
in the name space under /boot?

Corollary: when an embedded bzfilesystem ships with the kernel, is there
an device identifier that allows to access it? (From a cursory look at
the proto, it seems that the file is published under /boot, but since
the 9pcflop has no the sdiahci drivers, I try to simply catenate the
9pccd---or 9pcdisk FWIW---with the root.bz2 extracted, guessing that
this is 9load task to arrange the loading, but I didn't find a way to
access it directly from kernel hierarchy, since it is not visible in
namespace).

> it seems to me that i really screwed this up.  what i really want is a sd 
> device
> that always points to the boot drive, the one bios refers to as 0x80.
> givem this, one can then put something like "bootargs=local!#S/sdB0/fs"
> in plan9.ini.  this will allow the 9atom usb install image to run off any 
> bootable
> media (for which we have drivers).
>

:-) This has always been the "pleasure" of the bootstrapping procedure
in the PC world. If I understand correctly, it is normal on other
architectures to pass through the bios to access some hardware. With the
PC, there is the limitation of the interface and, essentially, the real
mode problem.

But it is indeed a bit frustating to see devices accessed at booting
(hurrah! my hardware is recognized!) and suddenly not recognized (when
the BIOS is not used anymore and the kernel is on is own without the
drivers)...

Related question (for whoever has an answer): unfortunately my node has
only a PS2 combo, so that I could, theoretically, have whether a PS2
mouse xor a PS2 keyboard. In fact, when the mouse and keyboard are both
connected via USB, 9pcflop has no problem: I have keyboard and mouse
(BIOS emulating PS2 interfaces). If I use 9pccd or 9pcdisk, I loose the
keyboard (and don't have the mouse if it is connected to USB).

So it seems I could have a running Plan9 (it works for mouse and
keyboard attached via usb with 9pcflop, but 9pcflop doesn't recognize
the SATA/AHCI disks; 9pccd or 9pcdisk recognize the sdiahci, but don't
recognize the usb mouse and keyboard; I hope a synthesis is possible
with the "best" of all worlds)? But what does the usb attachment work
with 9pcflop for mouse and keyboard and doesn't work for the
others---perhaps because 9pcflop doesn't recognize usb and hence fall
back to a PS2 BIOS provided interface?

> so, i'm preparing a patch that will present the boot device as /dev/sdB0 
> regardless
> of what underlying disk driver or protocol is being used.  here's the output 
> from
> my test machine.  it's been booted over the network, but even so bios has 
> assigned
> a 0x80 drive, and it's been found and configured:
> 
> >>sdB loop #S/sdF0/data
>   sdE ahci ahci port 0xfe00fb538000 pci 0.17.4: 64a ncq alp led clo 
> pmb slum pslum ems apts alhd xonly smb elmt iss 3 ncs 31 np 4 ghc 8002 
> isr 0 pi f 0-3 ver 10300
>   sdF ahci ahci port 0xfe00fb532000 pci 0.31.2: 64a ncq alp led clo 
> pmb slum pslum ems apts alhd xonly smb elmt iss 3 ncs 31 np 6 ghc 8002 
> isr 0 pi 3f 0-5 ver 10300
>   sdN nvme port 0xfe00fb41 pci 2.0.0 v1.0 rst 0 ctg 1 ams 0 
> stride 1 to 2 fatal 0
>   sdO nvme port 0xfe00fb30 pci 4.0.0 v1.1 rst 0 ctg 1 ams 0 
> stride 1 to 3 fatal 0
> 

That's interesting!

For the mean time, I guess I will have to put an unix to serve 9P for a
locally loaded kernel---but I will have to adapt the inst/ scripts since
some programs are in the image embedded for the installation but are not
present on the CDROM.

And I will have to find a way to be able to use both mouse and keyboard,
or it will be a no-go.
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] Install problem: disks not listed

[tlaronde]

On Fri, Jan 01, 2016 at 01:25:20PM +0100, tlaro...@polynum.com wrote:
> 
> I have a new node and I'm trying to install Plan9 on it (it is a
> multiboot node, with already NetBSD and Windows).
> 
> When booting (from Bell Labs' iso), the disks are found as sdE[12], the
> CD driver as sdE0 that are all on SATA.
> 

Replying to myself: sdiahci is commented out in pcflop, hence the AHCI
SATA are inaccessible from 9pcflop.
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

[9fans] Install: root file system

[tlaronde]

Hello,

As explained in a previous message, I try to install Plan9 on a new node
(previous one defunct).

I have tried the usb Bell Labs and 9 atom flavours, and none works on my
node.

The Bell Labs iso works (I mean it boots and the install starts) but
9pcflop doesn't recognize my disks (while 9load lists them correctly).

So I'm back to what I had already done: I sketch a Plan9 partition from
NetBSD, setting a bootable FAT and populate it. 9pcdisk recognizes my
disk but there is the problem of the root file system---an initial one,
so that I can make the install from 9pcdisk and not 9pcflop.

I have populated the 9fat with what is indicated in the proto. But there
are binaries not in the iso image (bargraph, tailfsrv and a few others).

So I have extracted the embedded root.bz2 from 9pcflop (found in
bootdisk.img on the ISO) with the help of grep, od (because there are
nulls to have the correct offset) and dd.

The problem is that this is not only bzip2'ed, but previously bflz'ed. I
can even not add the bflz binary to the FAT, since there is no such
binary on the  ISO.

The questions are the following:

1) Is it possible to specify as bootargs the 9fat as the root
filesystem? If yes, what is the plan9.ini syntax (I tried
local!#S/sdE2/9fat, but this is not it...);

2) Is it possible to give the root.bz2 as a filesystem to a vanilla
kernel (here 9pcdisk)? Does it have the code to load it in memory, or
can I cat 9pcdisk with the root.bz2 (with the sentry "bzfilesystem")
like what is done with 9pcflop?

3) Can such a root file be served, if nothing local work, as a root file
system for a DHCP request?

TIA
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] Rio: possibility to forbid resizing a window?

[tlaronde]

On Fri, Jan 01, 2016 at 02:58:07PM -0800, erik quanstrom wrote:
> > Is there such possibility with rio?
> 
> yes, this is implemented by games/sudoku.  just refuse to resize.
> 

Thanks. I will give a look to the code.
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

[9fans] Install problem: disks not listed

[tlaronde]

Hello (and best wishes to all for 2016!),

I have a new node and I'm trying to install Plan9 on it (it is a
multiboot node, with already NetBSD and Windows).

When booting (from Bell Labs' iso), the disks are found as sdE[12], the
CD driver as sdE0 that are all on SATA.

But when going to partdisk, the disks are not listed and partdisk fails.

"Somewhere" before the call to partdisk, the mount of the disks failed.

Does somebody have a clue as to where to find the culprit or can
somebody give the sequence of commands launched when selecting to
install from the CD so as to be able to find the hiatus?

TIA
-- 
Thierry Laronde 
 http://www.kergis.com/
 http://www.arts-po.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C