[9fans] 9vx instability

[Alexander Kapshuk]

have you considered running plan 9 from within virtualbox?

plan 9 seems to be fairly responsive running within the latest version of
virtualbox on debian squeeze here.

Hello all,
Recently I've discovered Plan 9 and I'm fascinated by it's numerous
beauties, and I want to try it for more or less regular use, probably port
something.
However, as it won't work on my laptop natively, i'm forced to use 9vx
(running in kvm is too slow). It has one magor drawback - it is freezing my
entire system after some random time.
Symptoms are - no reaction on input (mouse/keyboard), no changes in output
(screen is showing me what was going on just before freeze). The only thing
I can do is to press power button for 10 secs and wait until my laptop
turned off.
I've tried to find the reasons of this behaviour, but all system logs are
silent - last kernel.log messages are prior to hang, the same with
messages.log and Xorg.log, console output from 9vx are empty, too. What
causes the hang is also seems unclear - it can froze on 9vx startup, or
when I use terminal, or installing something, or just browsing web (not in
9vx) in chrome, while 9vx window is hidden.
Linux hippo 3.0-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Wed Oct 19 12:14:48 UTC 2011 i686
9vx-hg (checked out 2011.11.17) - cmd line (9vx -r 9front -u glenda)
9front iso image - 9front-1131.664b953bfdde (I've copied it's contents and
`chmod -R u+w`ed it)
xf86-video-intel 2.16.0 - VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation
Mobile 945GME Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
xorg-server 1.11.2
xorg-apps 7.6
Also, I've seen the following message for a few times: "9vx panic: sigsegv
on cpu7", but I don't know if it related to freeze (it can show up in the
middle of my boot-work-freeze session).
Previously, I've used stock Plan 9 from Bell Labs with 9vx - it has the
same problem.
P.S.: Sorry for my English.
Anton.

[Akshat Kumar]

What are the problems with trying to boot it natively
(by the way, you probably won't be able to drive the
wireless card, if you do get it to boot native)?
Have you tried Erik Quanstro's 9atom kernel?


ak

Hello all,
Recently I've discovered Plan 9 and I'm fascinated by it's numerous
beauties, and I want to try it for more or less regular use, probably port
something.
However, as it won't work on my laptop natively, i'm forced to use 9vx
(running in kvm is too slow). It has one magor drawback - it is freezing my
entire system after some random time.
Symptoms are - no reaction on input (mouse/keyboard), no changes in output
(screen is showing me what was going on just before freeze). The only thing
I can do is to press power button for 10 secs and wait until my laptop
turned off.
I've tried to find the reasons of this behaviour, but all system logs are
silent - last kernel.log messages are prior to hang, the same with
messages.log and Xorg.log, console output from 9vx are empty, too. What
causes the hang is also seems unclear - it can froze on 9vx startup, or when
I use terminal, or installing something, or just browsing web (not in 9vx)
in chrome, while 9vx window is hidden.
Linux hippo 3.0-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Wed Oct 19 12:14:48 UTC 2011 i686
9vx-hg (checked out 2011.11.17) - cmd line (9vx -r 9front -u glenda)
9front iso image - 9front-1131.664b953bfdde (I've copied it's contents and
`chmod -R u+w`ed it)
xf86-video-intel 2.16.0 - VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation
Mobile 945GME Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
xorg-server 1.11.2
xorg-apps 7.6
Also, I've seen the following message for a few times: "9vx panic: sigsegv
on cpu7", but I don't know if it related to freeze (it can show up in the
middle of my boot-work-freeze session).
Previously, I've used stock Plan 9 from Bell Labs with 9vx - it has the same
problem.
P.S.: Sorry for my English.
Anton.

[Anthony Martin]

However, as it won't work on my laptop natively, i'm
forced to use 9vx (running in kvm is too slow). It has
one magor drawback - it is freezing my entire system
after some random time. Symptoms are - no reaction on
input (mouse/keyboard), no changes in output (screen is
showing me what was going on just before freeze). The
only thing I can do is to press power button for 10 secs
and wait until my laptop turned off.

I had this happen to me a few times but I never
took the time to track it down. I haven't had
it happen since I upgraded my kernel to 3.1.

We seem to have very simliar setups so you might
want to try that and see if it makes a difference.

$ uname -mp
i686 Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T7400 @ 2.16GHz
$ pacman -Q linux
linux 3.1.1-1
$

P.S.: Sorry for my English.

Seems fine to me. :-)

Cheers,
Anthony

[yy]

Post by Anthony Martin
I had this happen to me a few times but I never
took the time to track it down.  I haven't had
it happen since I upgraded my kernel to 3.1.

I can confirm this. I don't know how to be sure it is solved, but the
problem used to appear after a few minutes of use and, after updating
to 3.1, everything has been running fine for a few hours.

It would be interesting to know what has changed. I don't think it was
a bug in the kernel, since it only happened when running 9vx, but I
don't really have the time to investigate it now.

Thanks to Anthony for the tip!

[yy]

Linux hippo 3.0-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Wed Oct 19 12:14:48 UTC 2011 i686

You may try booting an older kernel.

I've had similar problems since I updated my main arch system to linux
3.0, but I've not had the time to track it down. Since everything
freezes, it is indeed difficult to find out. I will try a 3.1 kernel
to see if that fixes the problem, as Anthony is suggesting, and will
let you know.

For the moment, what I do is using tinycore from an usb instead (by
the way, tc's linux 3.0 works just fine). I also keep another arch
system without updating just because of this.

9vx-hg (checked out 2011.11.17) - cmd line (9vx -r 9front -u glenda)
9front iso image - 9front-1131.664b953bfdde (I've copied it's contents and
`chmod -R u+w`ed it)

If you are using a modern version of 9vx (rminnich's repository at
bitbucket) you don't need to copy the contents of the iso, you can
just run 9vx with -r 9front.iso.

[Jens Staal]

Post by yy

9vx-hg (checked out 2011.11.17) - cmd line (9vx -r 9front -u glenda)
9front iso image - 9front-1131.664b953bfdde (I've copied it's contents and
`chmod -R u+w`ed it)

If you are using a modern version of 9vx (rminnich's repository at
bitbucket) you don't need to copy the contents of the iso, you can
just run 9vx with -r 9front.iso.

That sounds very interesting! I packaged 9vx in AUR (
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=49816) and tried to put up a
wiki ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/9vx). I have done some
rather stupid suggestions about how to deal with permissions and other
stuff like that...

What I would like to know is if you can boot a plan9 system from iso via
9vx as "persistent" partition whereas changes are saved to another
directory (so basically setting up a union mount between the iso and a
directory) - alternatively specifying an alternative path for $home
using 9vx booting from an iso.

[yy]

What I would like to know is if you can boot a plan9 system from iso via 9vx
as "persistent" partition whereas changes are saved to another directory (so
basically setting up a union mount between the iso and a directory) -
alternatively specifying an alternative path for $home using 9vx booting
from an iso.

I do something along those lines. I use a sh script to boot from the
iso and bind a sysfromiso repository and usr/ from my home directory.
You could use bin/9vxp in the repository if that's good enough for you
or, in any case, look at it for inspiration on how to use the -i flag.
If you prefer, you can use a .ini file and set initargs there, instead
of using -i.

Read the 9vx man page (included in the repository and also at
https://bytebucket.org/yiyus/vx32/wiki/9vx.html).

[Anton]

Wow, so many replies :)

Post by Alexander Kapshuk
have you considered running plan 9 from within virtualbox?

I've not tried it yet, since the are a lot mentions that Plan 9 is slow
under vb, but I'll try it if nothing helps.

Post by Alexander Kapshuk
What are the problems with trying to boot it natively?

As you correctly suggested, my wireless card isn't supported and
connecting laptop
through the Ethernet cable to my router located in another room is
somewhat inconvenient.
Also, I'm not sure if my video card (GMA 950 as listed in specs or 945GME
as lspci says) works right (uhm, should I try realemu?)
Of course, I'll be glad if I'm wrong with this incompatibilities.

Post by Alexander Kapshuk
Have you tried Erik Quanstro's 9atom kernel?

Nope. I'll give it a try. Actually, I've seen 9atom page, but I didn't find
any difference in hardware support viable for my notebook. And I didn't
understand much on other differences at this moment.

Post by Alexander Kapshuk
I haven't had it happen since I upgraded my kernel to 3.1.

Great! I'll upgrade it this evening.

Post by Alexander Kapshuk
For the moment, what I do is using tinycore from an usb instead (by
the way, tc's linux 3.0 works just fine).

Hm, sounds interesting - thanks for suggestion!

Post by Alexander Kapshuk
If you are using a modern version of 9vx (rminnich's repository at
bitbucket) you don't need to copy the contents of the iso, you can
just run 9vx with -r 9front.iso.

But I will not be able to modify fs, right? On the other hand, I can
mount/bind additional / to save changes there (as Jens suggested). Good.
Btw, should I mount the whole / or just some sub-directories?


Thanks for suggestions!

Anton.

[Federico G. Benavento]

Post by Alexander Kapshuk
What are the problems with trying to boot it natively?

As you correctly suggested, my wireless card isn't supported and connecting laptop through the Ethernet cable to my router located in another room is somewhat inconvenient. Also, I'm not sure if my video card (GMA 950 as listed in specs or 945GME as lspci says) works right (uhm, should I try realemu?)
Of course, I'll be glad if I'm wrong with this incompatibilities.

the graphics card works, I used to have it a 1280x800x32 in a compaq pressario

Post by Alexander Kapshuk
Have you tried Erik Quanstro's 9atom kernel?

Nope. I'll give it a try. Actually, I've seen 9atom page, but I didn't find any difference in hardware support viable for my notebook. And I didn't understand much on other differences at this moment.

it's not about the hardware support list, it's about the hardware listed actually working

so, yes 9atom

[Sergey Kish]

I love Gmail,

vx32-hg is already in AUR http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=28147

Maybe it should use rminnich/vx32 repo by default

/_hgroot/c
_hgroot="https://bitbucket.org/rminnich/vx32"
.

Jens,
vx32-hg is already in AUR
http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=28147Maybe it should use
rminnich/vx32 repo by default
/_hgroot/c_hgroot="https://bitbucket.org/rminnich/vx32".

[Sergey Kish]

Jens,
vx32-hg is already in AUR
http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=28147Maybe it should use
rminnich/vx32 repo by default
/_hgroot/c_hgroot="https://bitbucket.org/rminnich/vx32".

Post by Jens Staal

Post by yy

9vx-hg (checked out 2011.11.17) - cmd line (9vx -r 9front -u glenda)
9front iso image - 9front-1131.664b953bfdde (I've copied it's contents and
`chmod -R u+w`ed it)

If you are using a modern version of 9vx (rminnich's repository at
bitbucket) you don't need to copy the contents of the iso, you can
just run 9vx with -r 9front.iso.

That sounds very interesting! I packaged 9vx in AUR (
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=49816) and tried to put up a wiki
( https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/9vx). I have done some rather stupid
suggestions about how to deal with permissions and other stuff like that...
What I would like to know is if you can boot a plan9 system from iso via 9vx
as "persistent" partition whereas changes are saved to another directory (so
basically setting up a union mount between the iso and a directory) -
alternatively specifying an alternative path for $home using 9vx booting
from an iso.

[Jens Staal]

Post by Sergey Kish
Jens,
vx32-hg is already in AUR
http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=28147Maybe it should use
rminnich/vx32 repo by default
/_hgroot/c_hgroot="https://bitbucket.org/rminnich/vx32".

http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=28147 uses
http://code.swtch.com/vx32

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=49816 uses
https://bitbucket.org/rminnich/vx32

Another difference is that the second installs under a new directory
in /opt and my plan was to add extensions under this directory (for
example an installable plan9 rootfs)

This is however Arch-specific discussions and probably not suitable for 9fans.

The strategies of setting up a union-mounted rootfs with iso+directory
with proper user permissions with 9vx (some standardized startup
scripts) is far more interesting in general (and I was planning to put
up an AUR automatically updating the rootfs with the plan9 daily build
isos).

I had once plans of trying to make an automated build of NIX as a
PKGBUILD but I have not had time to look into how to do those things
as 9vx arguments.

[ron minnich]

If you're on linux, you should consider kvm + kvmtool + plan 9.

vx32 is incomplete. It has many problems. Nobody's had the time to
really fix it. It's nice that it works but you should not assume that
it's a solid piece of software; it's not.

ron

[erik quanstrom]

my only practical problem so far is DNS, which i suppose must be
single-threaded.

my experiment in wiring dns to a mach didn't work;
it was less stable than before. mttf measured in seconds.

- erik

[Charles Forsyth]

i have to say my experience is quite different.

% uname -aLinux pensomolto 3.0.0-12-generic #20-Ubuntu SMP Fri Oct 7
14:50:42 UTC 2011 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
ubuntu 11.10 but note that i use gnome not unity (because i want to use it).

i use 9vx, and have done for years. i use it as both a development
environment and a cross-development environment.
since i fixed the direction flag bug (which should be in the hg copy)
it has been just fine on my system.
in fact, i use a fairly old version of russ's with that change, and
one other small change, no others that i know.
it runs at least for weeks, with fairly solid work during that time,
all day. the plan 9 files are in the linux file system.
usually linux packs up somehow before 9vx.

my only practical problem so far is DNS, which i suppose must be
single-threaded.
ugh.

[Anton]

Post by ron minnich
If you're on linux, you should consider kvm + kvmtool + plan 9

AFAIK, kvmtool wasn't integrated into 3.1. Is it stable/mature enough to
run plan 9?

Post by ron minnich
i have to say my experience is quite different

Hm, that's odd. 9vx runs ok in ubuntu in tinycore, but not in arch. Maybe
the thing is in Arch's kernel config or patches (although, stock kernel is
quite vanilla...)?
Are there Arch users to confirm?

[Jens Staal]

Post by Anton

Post by ron minnich
If you're on linux, you should consider kvm + kvmtool + plan 9

AFAIK, kvmtool wasn't integrated into 3.1. Is it stable/mature enough
to run plan 9?

Post by ron minnich
i have to say my experience is quite different

Hm, that's odd. 9vx runs ok in ubuntu in tinycore, but not in arch.
Maybe the thing is in Arch's kernel config or patches (although, stock
kernel is quite vanilla...)?
Are there Arch users to confirm?

I have not had any problems, but I run the 9vx-hg package (could be a
vx32 version difference?). The freezing behaviour seems very strange -
something with the WM? I run dwm now and KDE before and did not
experience any freezes due to vx32 in either. The only crashes I have
experienced have been some experimental compiles (never succeeded under
9vx) using the Plan9 port of GCC 3.0, but those crashes were quite
graceful and did not bother the rest of my system.

[ron minnich]

9vx is very nice, I use it all the time, but it is also pretty easy
for me to drive it into a corner such that simple commands don't have
repeatable results -- memory corruption problems start to appear. If
you are having troubles, it is not necessarily your fault, and you may
be better off with a virtual machine instead of 9vx.

ron

[Charles Forsyth]

what do you do???

Post by ron minnich
but it is also pretty easy
for me to drive it into a corner such that simple commands don't have
repeatable results -- memory corruption problems start to appear.

[ron minnich]

just normal usage, mk install and such in the nix release, and there
are times that memory corruption happens. There's been a race in there
forever, and sometimes you hit it, and things start to go south.

ron

[Francisco J Ballesteros]

funny, it's working like a rock here. just fine.
maybe I've been lucky.

Post by ron minnich
just normal usage, mk install and such in the nix release, and there
are times that memory corruption happens. There's been a race in there
forever, and sometimes you hit it, and things start to go south.
ron

[Charles Forsyth]

Post by ron minnich
just normal usage, mk install and such in the nix release, and there
are times that memory corruption happens. There's been a race in there
forever, and sometimes you hit it, and things start to go south.

how many processors? oh. and which host system?

[andrey mirtchovski]

I can crash 9vx (latest from rminnich's repository) with regularity
just by trying to compile Go's 'cmath' package. hosted on OSX, 7 cpus
recognized by 9vx:

segment 0x3f000000 0x40000000
segment 0x1000 0x5a000
segment 0x5a000 0x6b000
segment 0x6b000 0x263000
1580 8g: unhandled fault va=162 [11000162] eip=4eb92
cpu0: registers for 8g 1580
FLAGS=0 TRAP=0 ECODE=0 PC=4EB92 USP=3FFFF5A0
AX 00000102 BX 00000001 CX 00000102 DX 3FFFF478
SI 000614AC DI 00236409 BP 00000000

[Skip Tavakkolian]

i run 9vx occasionally. a while back i built 9vx from ron's
repository. i was having problems with it under Ubuntu 10.04 x86_64,
where sometimes both cores were pegged at 100%; it was a problem with
linux (judging by ubuntu mailing lists). without changing 9vx, things
got stable after 10.10 (currently on 11.10). so, when in doubt,
suspect the host os.

% ls -l `{whatis 9vx}--rwxr-xr-x M 0 root root 5409005 Apr  9  2011
/usr/local/bin/9vx% uname -aLinux hpamd 3.0.0-12-generic #20-Ubuntu
SMP Fri Oct 7 14:56:25 UTC 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
-Skip

Post by Anton

Post by ron minnich
If you're on linux, you should consider kvm + kvmtool + plan 9

AFAIK, kvmtool wasn't integrated into 3.1. Is it stable/mature enough to
run plan 9?

Post by ron minnich
i have to say my experience is quite different

Hm, that's odd. 9vx runs ok in ubuntu in tinycore, but not in arch. Maybe
the thing is in Arch's kernel config or patches (although, stock kernel is
quite vanilla...)?
Are there Arch users to confirm?

I have not had any problems, but I run the 9vx-hg package (could be a vx32
version difference?). The freezing behaviour seems very strange - something
with the WM? I run dwm now and KDE before and did not experience any freezes
due to vx32 in either. The only crashes I have experienced have been some
experimental compiles (never succeeded under 9vx) using the Plan9 port of
GCC 3.0, but those crashes were quite graceful and did not bother the rest
of my system.

[erik quanstrom]

Post by Skip Tavakkolian
i run 9vx occasionally. a while back i built 9vx from ron's
repository. i was having problems with it under Ubuntu 10.04 x86_64,
where sometimes both cores were pegged at 100%; it was a problem with
linux (judging by ubuntu mailing lists). without changing 9vx, things
got stable after 10.10 (currently on 11.10). so, when in doubt,
suspect the host os.

!? the fact that one bug was found in linux doesn't imply that bugs are likely
in any host os. the oses are better tested than 9vx, so given no other information
i would conclude the opposite; 9vx is more likely at fault. and regardless, we
have little chance of fixing the os.

- erik

[Skip Tavakkolian]

i'll modify what i said to "... suspect the host os first". it's been
my experience that every autoupdate on Ubuntu and Windows brings in
its share of new bugs (hopefully less than the number of bugs it
fixes)

i run 9vx occasionally.  a while back i built 9vx from ron's
repository.  i was having problems with it under Ubuntu 10.04 x86_64,
where sometimes both cores were pegged at 100%; it was a problem with
linux (judging by ubuntu mailing lists). without changing 9vx, things
got stable after 10.10 (currently on 11.10). so, when in doubt,
suspect the host os.

!?  the fact that one bug was found in linux doesn't imply that bugs are likely
in any host os.  the oses are better tested than 9vx, so given no other information
i would conclude the opposite; 9vx is more likely at fault.  and regardless, we
have little chance of fixing the os.
- erik

[Anton]

Yep, with 3.1 9vx runs fine for an hour already. However, I want to
try installing Plan 9 natively. Tomorrow. Btw, why there are 9atom and
9front?
I mean, why they aren't joined together? What the difference between them?

Post by Skip Tavakkolian
i'll modify what i said to "... suspect the host os first". it's been
my experience that every autoupdate on Ubuntu and Windows brings in
its share of new bugs (hopefully less than the number of bugs it
fixes)

Post by erik quanstrom

Post by Skip Tavakkolian
i run 9vx occasionally. a while back i built 9vx from ron's
repository. i was having problems with it under Ubuntu 10.04 x86_64,
where sometimes both cores were pegged at 100%; it was a problem with
linux (judging by ubuntu mailing lists). without changing 9vx, things
got stable after 10.10 (currently on 11.10). so, when in doubt,
suspect the host os.

!? the fact that one bug was found in linux doesn't imply that bugs are

likely

Post by erik quanstrom
in any host os. the oses are better tested than 9vx, so given no other

information

Post by erik quanstrom
i would conclude the opposite; 9vx is more likely at fault. and

regardless, we

Post by erik quanstrom
have little chance of fixing the os.
- erik

[Skip Tavakkolian]

because 9fans not only agree to disagree, they also disagree to agree :)

Post by Anton
Yep, with 3.1 9vx runs fine for an hour already. However, I want to
try installing Plan 9 natively. Tomorrow. Btw, why there are 9atom and
9front?
I mean, why they aren't joined together? What the difference between them?

i'll modify what i said to "... suspect the host os first".  it's been
my experience that every autoupdate on Ubuntu and Windows brings in
its share of new bugs (hopefully less than the number of bugs it
fixes)

i run 9vx occasionally.  a while back i built 9vx from ron's
repository.  i was having problems with it under Ubuntu 10.04 x86_64,
where sometimes both cores were pegged at 100%; it was a problem with
linux (judging by ubuntu mailing lists). without changing 9vx, things
got stable after 10.10 (currently on 11.10). so, when in doubt,
suspect the host os.

!?  the fact that one bug was found in linux doesn't imply that bugs are likely
in any host os.  the oses are better tested than 9vx, so given no other information
i would conclude the opposite; 9vx is more likely at fault.  and regardless, we
have little chance of fixing the os.
- erik

[Yaroslav]

Post by Skip Tavakkolian
because 9fans not only agree to disagree, they also disagree to agree :)

+1

[Francisco J Ballesteros]

You mean -1, don't you?

Post by Skip Tavakkolian
because 9fans not only agree to disagree, they also disagree to agree :)

+1

[Rudolf Sykora]

Post by Skip Tavakkolian

Btw, why there are 9atom and 9front?
I mean, why they aren't joined together? What the difference between them?

because 9fans not only agree to disagree, they also disagree to agree :)

This, to be honest, doesn't say much.
However, recently I stumbled over this:
http://www.sptechweb.com/content/article.aspx?ArticleID=35742&print=true

Ruda

[Skip Tavakkolian]

it seems to me that cat-v.org is in the business of promoting itself.

i've had patches that were accepted and some that were rejected for
good reasons. please point out the rejected patches (which are also
kept) so that we can judge the veracity of the claims being made.

I have great respect for Geoff and what he has been and continues to
do for Plan 9.

-Skip

Post by Rudolf Sykora

Post by Skip Tavakkolian

Btw, why there are 9atom and 9front?
I mean, why they aren't joined together? What the difference between them?

because 9fans not only agree to disagree, they also disagree to agree :)

This, to be honest, doesn't say much.
http://www.sptechweb.com/content/article.aspx?ArticleID=35742&print=true
Ruda

[Lucio De Re]

Post by Skip Tavakkolian
I have great respect for Geoff and what he has been and continues to
do for Plan 9.

I'd like to add my voice to this. And I take exception to Schmidt
taking the glory for cwfs, which is Geoff Collyer's work and is not in
any way to be treated as a sequel to Fossil.

++L

[Stanley Lieber]

Post by Skip Tavakkolian
I have great respect for Geoff and what he has been and continues to
do for Plan 9.

I'd like to add my voice to this.  And I take exception to Schmidt
taking the glory for cwfs, which is Geoff Collyer's work and is not in
any way to be treated as a sequel to Fossil.

Schmidt didn't take credit for anything. The reporter asked about the
changes in 9front and we tried to explain; starting with an overview
of what Plan 9 is, and proceeding on to a description of the hows and
whys of the changes. The reporter drew his own conclusions and
presented them as facts (and sometimes, as quotes). The article is
filled with these sorts of inaccuracies.

No one involved with 9front saw the text of the article before it was posted.

-sl

[Lucio De Re]

Post by Stanley Lieber
No one involved with 9front saw the text of the article before it was posted.

I think you've explained your position reasonably, let's hope that
this serves as a lesson to those involved as well as to asnyone else
exposing to the press what can only be a controversial issue.

++L

[erik quanstrom]

Post by Skip Tavakkolian
because 9fans not only agree to disagree, they also disagree to agree :)

i'll agree to that!

- erik

[Charles Forsyth]

In this case, it seems to be less agreement or disagreement than
significantly different experiences. Some of that is caused by using
9vx differently, but it also happens that the version of 9vx that
others are using has a great many non-trivial differences with the
much older one I'm using, and also configuration options. They aren't
really directly comparable. Probably the only good advice is to "try
running it for a while with your particular workload and see how you
get on". If it does fail, however, and you're not doing anything too
demanding, and you're running Linux, ask me for a copy of the
executable I'm running to see if that fares any better.

[erik quanstrom]

Post by Rudolf Sykora
This, to be honest, doesn't say much.
http://www.sptechweb.com/content/article.aspx?ArticleID=35742&print=true

geoff did cwfs, and has done more to maintain the system
than the rest of us put together. he has my respect for that.

thanks, geoff.

- erik

[Francisco J Ballesteros]

I'm impressed by the work Geoff, and others do on Plan9, and I'm not
talking about 9front at all.
Jim, Charles, and others made an excellent port for amd64,
which is cleaner that any other system I've seen. We used that
as a starting point for nix.

I think is childish to fork a system because the code sent to maintainers
is either not desired or good enough or whatever. most of us have our
own set of changes and exchange them at will.

The good think in plan 9 has always been the quality of the system
and the quality of its code, and I'd like it to stay that way and thank
Geoff for keeping it that way.

Just look at files that change in sources. it's impressive the
amount of work still ongoing in plan 9.

As said before in this list, if you want Linux, you know where to
find it. I'm sure the standard there is not that high.

Post by erik quanstrom

Post by Rudolf Sykora
This, to be honest, doesn't say much.
http://www.sptechweb.com/content/article.aspx?ArticleID=35742&print=true

geoff did cwfs, and has done more to maintain the system
than the rest of us put together. he has my respect for that.
thanks, geoff.
- erik

[Stanley Lieber]

The work of Geoff and everyone inside and outside of Bell Labs who
have contributed over the years is greatly appreciated. Obviously,
none of us would be here talking about Plan 9 without their
contributions. It's because of their hard work that we have a base
from which to launch our experiments.

The article linked above is an example of poor journalism, complete
with misquotes and fabricated quotes. I made the unfortunate mistake
of entertaining the author's queries and inviting him to our IRC
channel. I take full responsibility for the misunderstandings, though
I wonder why we're all so credulous when it comes to articles on
websites.

9front exists to have fun and learn by working with the system. That's
what we're doing.

-sl

[Lucio De Re]

Post by Stanley Lieber
I take full responsibility for the misunderstandings, though
I wonder why we're all so credulous when it comes to articles on
websites.

Because that's the point of journalism. You ought to have made sure
that the community affected by the article was informed about its
inaccuracies. I do however appreciate your belated acknowledgements,
even though I'm not sure I'm speaking for anyone else.

++L

[Stanley Lieber]

 I take full responsibility for the misunderstandings, though
I wonder why we're all so credulous when it comes to articles on
websites.

Because that's the point of journalism.  You ought to have made sure
that the community affected by the article was informed about its
inaccuracies.  I do however appreciate your belated acknowledgements,
even though I'm not sure I'm speaking for anyone else.

I probably should have posted something here. The debacle was
discussed at length amongst the 9front co-conspirators. For what it's
worth, I apologize for any negative repercussions caused by agreeing
to be interviewed by sdtimes.com.

note:

Loading Image...

-sl

[Skip Tavakkolian]

A good clue might have been that they're "Sharepoint" experts.

On Thu, Nov 24, 2011 at 11:01 AM, Stanley Lieber

Post by Stanley Lieber
The article linked above is an example of poor journalism, complete
with misquotes and fabricated quotes.

[ron minnich]

Um, cinap, just FYI, I was not aiming at you or anyone else in
particular. Sorry if it sounded that way.

It's a holiday here, and not many other places, but still ... happy
-day everyone!

ron

[Francisco J Ballesteros]

neither am I.
I was saying it would have been much better to see which
one was the problem with patches and address it.
have fun.

Post by ron minnich
Um, cinap, just FYI, I was not aiming at you or anyone else in
particular. Sorry if it sounded that way.
It's a holiday here, and not many other places, but still ... happy
-day everyone!
ron

[c***@gmx.de]

so it is childish to replace 9load? or build a distribution that
uses the stable and robust cwfs instead of fossil? write an
audio layer? moving realmode and keyboard processing to userspace?
unify the boot process to to break into rc shell, so one can
at see what hardware got detected, poke at ctl files ect?

should have just put it in a tgz on contrib and expect someone
to find it so we finally get some test coverage?

sometimes, the plan9 boot cd doesnt even manage to get the kernel
loaded thanks to 9load.

9front doesnt support 64 bit 10000 core machines for sure,
thats what the real adults do! it only gets pc's booted
into a graphical rio with audio support more often.

these kidz from the peoples front of cat-v even managed to
write some working device drivers! (OMG! LINUX!!!!)

but this doesnt matter these days i guess, because we'll run
our builds in p9p or 9vx on our shiny new macbooks instead.

grow up cinap! grow up!

--
cinap

[erik quanstrom]

Post by c***@gmx.de
so it is childish to replace 9load? or build a distribution that
uses the stable and robust cwfs instead of fossil? write an
audio layer? moving realmode and keyboard processing to userspace?
unify the boot process to to break into rc shell, so one can
at see what hardware got detected, poke at ctl files ect?

my intention here is not to offend. i like you, i like your code.
but i think this defense misses the point entirely.

if folks have a problem with 9front it is not technical. folks don't
get that far. it is because 9front appears to have defined itself in criticism
of people (not code). and further defined itself by some offensive files.
this makes 9front appear less than serious. to be honest, it's one
of the reasons i've stopped following 9front.

to paraphrase a saying in mathematics, it's not enough to be good
you must also be humble. why do you think dennis' ideas took
over?

- erik

[Uriel]

if folks have a problem with 9front it is not technical.  folks don't
get that far.  it is because 9front appears to have defined itself in criticism
of people (not code).  and further defined itself by some offensive files.
this makes 9front appear less than serious.

9front seems to me to define itself as: having fun while getting
useful stuff done. With an emphasis in *fun* and in not taking
anything too seriously, while one the technical side favoring
simplicity and things that work.

This might not be exactly the same original Plan 9 values, but seems
close enough. Of course in 9front there is also an element of trolling
and poking fun at itself and anything else, and I will be happy if
cat-v.org takes the blame for that.

 to be honest, it's one of the reasons i've stopped following 9front.
to paraphrase a saying in mathematics, it's not enough to be good
you must also be humble.  why do you think dennis' ideas took
over?

I think an important form of humility is not taking yourself too
seriously. For an example of this see Dennis' Anti-Foreword to The
UNIX-HATERS Handbook: http://simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf

9front can't claim to reach such exquisite levels of "seriousness",
but it tries.

I suspect one of the reasons why 9front exists is because some people
in the Plan 9 community this days seem to take themselves and the
whole project a bit too seriously.

Which is kind of weird for a project called after an Ed Wood film.

uriel

[erik quanstrom]

Post by Uriel
9front seems to me to define itself as: having fun while getting
useful stuff done. With an emphasis in *fun* and in not taking
anything too seriously, while one the technical side favoring
simplicity and things that work.
This might not be exactly the same original Plan 9 values, but seems
close enough. Of course in 9front there is also an element of trolling
and poking fun at itself and anything else, and I will be happy if
cat-v.org takes the blame for that.

 to be honest, it's one of the reasons i've stopped following 9front.
to paraphrase a saying in mathematics, it's not enough to be good
you must also be humble.  why do you think dennis' ideas took
over?

I think an important form of humility is not taking yourself too
seriously. For an example of this see Dennis' Anti-Foreword to The
UNIX-HATERS Handbook: http://simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf
9front can't claim to reach such exquisite levels of "seriousness",
but it tries.
I suspect one of the reasons why 9front exists is because some people
in the Plan 9 community this days seem to take themselves and the
whole project a bit too seriously.
Which is kind of weird for a project called after an Ed Wood film.

uriel, what you say would make sense if the "jokes" didn't include putting
mein kampf in /lib.

- erik

[Jacob Todd]

The constitution and the gettysburg address are in there, too.

Post by erik quanstrom

Post by Uriel
9front seems to me to define itself as: having fun while getting
useful stuff done. With an emphasis in *fun* and in not taking
anything too seriously, while one the technical side favoring
simplicity and things that work.
This might not be exactly the same original Plan 9 values, but seems
close enough. Of course in 9front there is also an element of trolling
and poking fun at itself and anything else, and I will be happy if
cat-v.org takes the blame for that.

to be honest, it's one of the reasons i've stopped following 9front.
to paraphrase a saying in mathematics, it's not enough to be good
you must also be humble. why do you think dennis' ideas took
over?

I think an important form of humility is not taking yourself too
seriously. For an example of this see Dennis' Anti-Foreword to The
UNIX-HATERS Handbook: http://simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf
9front can't claim to reach such exquisite levels of "seriousness",
but it tries.
I suspect one of the reasons why 9front exists is because some people
in the Plan 9 community this days seem to take themselves and the
whole project a bit too seriously.
Which is kind of weird for a project called after an Ed Wood film.

uriel, what you say would make sense if the "jokes" didn't include putting
mein kampf in /lib.
- erik

[Lucio De Re]

Post by Jacob Todd

Post by erik quanstrom
uriel, what you say would make sense if the "jokes" didn't include putting
mein kampf in /lib.

The constitution and the gettysburg address are in there, too.

Is this balanced by having "The Diary of Ann Frank" in there, too?

++L

[c***@gmx.de]

no, but the communist manifesto ;)

--
cinap

[c***@gmx.de]

/lib/mainkampf is part of an ongoing project to make
venti sha-1 hashes easy to remember by translating
them into hitler-speeches.

--
cinap

[Dan Cross]

Post by c***@gmx.de
/lib/mainkampf is part of an ongoing project to make
venti sha-1 hashes easy to remember by translating
them into hitler-speeches.

It's also, frankly, offensive.

[Lyndon Nerenberg]

Post by Dan Cross

Post by c***@gmx.de
/lib/mainkampf is part of an ongoing project to make
venti sha-1 hashes easy to remember by translating
them into hitler-speeches.

It's also, frankly, offensive.

I think 'disgusting' describes it better.

[Dan Cross]

Post by Lyndon Nerenberg

Post by Dan Cross

Post by c***@gmx.de
/lib/mainkampf is part of an ongoing project to make
venti sha-1 hashes easy to remember by translating
them into hitler-speeches.

It's also, frankly, offensive.

I think 'disgusting' describes it better.

That's certainly true of the work (mein kampf) itself.

- Dan C.

[hiro]

Mein Kampf was clearly not included to promote Nazi ideals, as Germans
(who are probably the target audience) aren't even allowed to possess
this book. So in practice the joke punishes every law-abiding German
citizen by disallowing them to download 9front.

[Dennis den Brok]

Post by hiro
Mein Kampf was clearly not included to promote Nazi ideals, as Germans
(who are probably the target audience) aren't even allowed to possess
this book. So in practice the joke punishes every law-abiding German
citizen by disallowing them to download 9front.

Possession of "Mein Kampf" is not illegal in Germany. It just cannot be
published at the moment because the respective rights are with the state
of Bavaria until 2016, when the text will enter the public domain.

--
Dennis den Brok

[Anthony Martin]

Post by c***@gmx.de
/lib/mainkampf is part of an ongoing project to make
venti sha-1 hashes easy to remember by translating
them into hitler-speeches.

Well now that it's gone, how about using
excerpts from Industrial Society and its
Future?

I can send a patch to add /lib/kaczynski.

Anthony

[Skip Tavakkolian]

this reasoning is so ridiculous that i have to believe you're trolling.

the U.S. Constitution has been the foundation for the rule of law in
this country for 200+ years, and the Gettysburg address honored the
fallen and the ideals -- equality for all men -- that they died for.
why would anyone think that racist propaganda or hate speech should
have equal space in /lib?

some 70 million people were killed during WWII, partly because some
people believed the propaganda that is Mein Kampf. there's nothing
funny about that.

please, grow up!

-Skip

Post by Jacob Todd
The constitution and the gettysburg address are in there, too.

Post by erik quanstrom

Post by Uriel
9front seems to me to define itself as: having fun while getting
useful stuff done. With an emphasis in *fun* and in not taking
anything too seriously, while one the technical side favoring
simplicity and things that work.
This might not be exactly the same original Plan 9 values, but seems
close enough. Of course in 9front there is also an element of trolling
and poking fun at itself and anything else, and I will be happy if
cat-v.org takes the blame for that.

 to be honest, it's one of the reasons i've stopped following 9front.
to paraphrase a saying in mathematics, it's not enough to be good
you must also be humble.  why do you think dennis' ideas took
over?

I think an important form of humility is not taking yourself too
seriously. For an example of this see Dennis' Anti-Foreword to The
UNIX-HATERS Handbook: http://simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf
9front can't claim to reach such exquisite levels of "seriousness",
but it tries.
I suspect one of the reasons why 9front exists is because some people
in the Plan 9 community this days seem to take themselves and the
whole project a bit too seriously.
Which is kind of weird for a project called after an Ed Wood film.

uriel, what you say would make sense if the "jokes" didn't include putting
mein kampf in /lib.
- erik

[Stanley Lieber]

On Sun, Nov 27, 2011 at 12:34 PM, Skip Tavakkolian

Post by Skip Tavakkolian
this reasoning is so ridiculous that i have to believe you're trolling.
the U.S. Constitution has been the foundation for the rule of law in
this country for 200+ years, and the Gettysburg address honored the
fallen and the ideals -- equality for all men -- that they died for.
why would anyone think that racist propaganda or hate speech should
have equal space in /lib?
some 70 million people were killed during WWII, partly because some
people believed the propaganda that is Mein Kampf. there's nothing
funny about that.
please, grow up!

Loading Image...

[Iruatã Souza]

I like some of the fun in 9front, /lib/theo in special, and I dislike
the idea of having the US constitution in /lib.
But my point is that I think it is a little bit too much having Mein
Kampf in there. It seems to me some people needed attention and adding
such a disgusting text to the tree was the obvious way to get it. As
was pointed out, people need to grow up, and I should add that one
should only make jokes that one can sustain outside the internet.
As a mostly silent contributor to 9front, I think we have interesting
technical stuff to put forth and that kind of 'look how I am
controversial' game is not one of them.

On Sun, Nov 27, 2011 at 4:34 PM, Skip Tavakkolian

Post by Skip Tavakkolian
this reasoning is so ridiculous that i have to believe you're trolling.
the U.S. Constitution has been the foundation for the rule of law in
this country for 200+ years, and the Gettysburg address honored the
fallen and the ideals -- equality for all men -- that they died for.
why would anyone think that racist propaganda or hate speech should
have equal space in /lib?
some 70 million people were killed during WWII, partly because some
people believed the propaganda that is Mein Kampf. there's nothing
funny about that.
please, grow up!
-Skip

Post by Jacob Todd
The constitution and the gettysburg address are in there, too.

Post by erik quanstrom

Post by Uriel
9front seems to me to define itself as: having fun while getting
useful stuff done. With an emphasis in *fun* and in not taking
anything too seriously, while one the technical side favoring
simplicity and things that work.
This might not be exactly the same original Plan 9 values, but seems
close enough. Of course in 9front there is also an element of trolling
and poking fun at itself and anything else, and I will be happy if
cat-v.org takes the blame for that.

 to be honest, it's one of the reasons i've stopped following 9front.
to paraphrase a saying in mathematics, it's not enough to be good
you must also be humble.  why do you think dennis' ideas took
over?

I think an important form of humility is not taking yourself too
seriously. For an example of this see Dennis' Anti-Foreword to The
UNIX-HATERS Handbook: http://simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf
9front can't claim to reach such exquisite levels of "seriousness",
but it tries.
I suspect one of the reasons why 9front exists is because some people
in the Plan 9 community this days seem to take themselves and the
whole project a bit too seriously.
Which is kind of weird for a project called after an Ed Wood film.

uriel, what you say would make sense if the "jokes" didn't include putting
mein kampf in /lib.
- erik

[Skip Tavakkolian]

Post by erik quanstrom

Post by Uriel
9front seems to me to define itself as: having fun while getting
useful stuff done. With an emphasis in *fun* and in not taking
anything too seriously, while one the technical side favoring
simplicity and things that work.
This might not be exactly the same original Plan 9 values, but seems
close enough. Of course in 9front there is also an element of trolling
and poking fun at itself and anything else, and I will be happy if
cat-v.org takes the blame for that.

 to be honest, it's one of the reasons i've stopped following 9front.
to paraphrase a saying in mathematics, it's not enough to be good
you must also be humble.  why do you think dennis' ideas took
over?

I think an important form of humility is not taking yourself too
seriously. For an example of this see Dennis' Anti-Foreword to The
UNIX-HATERS Handbook: http://simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf
9front can't claim to reach such exquisite levels of "seriousness",
but it tries.
I suspect one of the reasons why 9front exists is because some people
in the Plan 9 community this days seem to take themselves and the
whole project a bit too seriously.
Which is kind of weird for a project called after an Ed Wood film.

uriel, what you say would make sense if the "jokes" didn't include putting
mein kampf in /lib.
- erik

hopefully the 9front kids understand that /lib is not a real library;
it is not required to have a copy of every a piece of drivel ever
written.

-Skip

[Andrés Domínguez]

Post by erik quanstrom

Post by Uriel
I suspect one of the reasons why 9front exists is because some people
in the Plan 9 community this days seem to take themselves and the
whole project a bit too seriously.
Which is kind of weird for a project called after an Ed Wood film.

uriel, what you say would make sense if the "jokes" didn't include putting
mein kampf in /lib.

I thought this was a disgusting joke by Eric. Sorry Eric!

Andrés

[Lucio De Re]

Post by c***@gmx.de
so it is childish to replace 9load? or build a distribution that
uses the stable and robust cwfs instead of fossil? write an
audio layer? moving realmode and keyboard processing to userspace?
unify the boot process to to break into rc shell, so one can
at see what hardware got detected, poke at ctl files ect?

Is it out of the question to set up a CodeReview facility and apply it
to the entire Plan 9 source tree? Maybe I ought to try it.

Is it too late to merge Plan 9, 9front and NIX by applying patches as
the Go Authors do with their stuff?

++L

[Stanley Lieber]

Post by Lucio De Re
Is it too late to merge Plan 9, 9front and NIX by applying patches as
the Go Authors do with their stuff?

The divergence is probably already too wide for merging with simple
patches, but 9front's changes are of course available to anyone. I
believe cinap has also submitted some of it back to Geoff.

On a related note: I don't believe the existence of the various forks
is necessarily an indicator of fractious intent. Rather, the forks
provide a "safe area" to explore changes and practices that are either
too new, too questionable, or simply too numerous to be considered for
inclusion in the Bell Labs release at the present time. It's natural
that like-minded individuals, sensing their common interest, will
congregate and undertake this sort of activity as a group.
Historically, forks of Plan 9 are nothing new. See: Plan B, Octopus,
9atom, etc.

Which brings me to the question of Nazi humor.

Loading Image...

-sl

[Lucio De Re]

Post by Francisco J Ballesteros
I'm impressed by the work Geoff, and others do on Plan9, and I'm not
talking about 9front at all.
Jim, Charles, and others made an excellent port for amd64,
which is cleaner that any other system I've seen. We used that
as a starting point for nix.

Out of curiosity: 9front makes high claims about device drivers, are
these compatible with Plan 9 (and NIX)? If so, is there a list?

++L

[Stanley Lieber]

Post by Lucio De Re
Out of curiosity: 9front makes high claims about device drivers, are
these compatible with Plan 9 (and NIX)?  If so, is there a list?

A handful of device drivers have been written from scratch. Some
devices started working when their PCI IDs were added to existing
drivers. Most of 9front's drivers will probably work with any Plan 9
(I know Erik has adopted at least the BCM57xx driver for 9atom). I'm
not sure how much AC97, HDA and SB16/ESS rely upon 9front's changes to
how audio is handled; cinap should be able to answer audio related
questions. Wacom WACF004/WACF008 support is provided by a userland
program that relies upon a small change to the serial port driver.

The following page is a fairly complete list of 9front's new features:

http://code.google.com/p/plan9front/wiki/features

while this page describes the hardware that is currently seeing the
most testing:

http://code.google.com/p/plan9front/wiki/KnownWorkingHardware

-sl

[Lucio De Re]

Post by Stanley Lieber
A handful of device drivers have been written from scratch. Some
devices started working when their PCI IDs were added to existing
drivers.

A bit like pulling teeth, isn't it? It is natural to become defensive
of one's efforts, but that also leads to categorising those against
whom defenses are erected as the enemy; how else does one justify
them?

Plan 9 is _not_ 9front's enemy except in the imagination, let's not
make it so in real life.

My vote, in this world of democratic revolution, is to persuade nemo,
forsyth, cinap, jim and geoff to be a starting core of moderators for
a Code Review of Plan 9. Takers?

++L

[c***@gmx.de]

theres a new miniport originaly based on the ac97 driver for the
audio devices.

sb16 driver was rewritten mainly to get interrupt free output
in emulators like qemu and bochs. required minimal changes to
the legacy dma controller code.

hda driver was written from scratch.

all audio drivers support controlling the output buffer delay.

there where some changes to usb hci drivers to support controlling
the buffer delay on isochronous endpoints.

some big changes to the userspace usb parts. instead of providing
a special framework to write usb userspace drivers that all run
in the usbd host process to provide a single service, we split
them into separate programs again that are free to choose whatever
they want.

usb audio driver rewritten from scratch. (very minimalistic,
but supports delay control)

the usb storage driver got sd partition support.

hotplugging usb devices works differently. usb drivers get started
by a rc script. thers a new devshr device that acts as a global
mount table (its like /srv just also having a "mount" part).

with this, usb filesystems just register ther 9p channels to
devshr and it becomes visible on /dev or /shr.

usb storage devices get auto mounted when they contain a fat
partition.

theres usb-ptp camera support, behaves identical to
usb mass storage case.

fixed rtl8169 as it used to stop receiving packets from time
to time causing huge delays.

bcm ethernet was written from scratch.

keyboard input works differently. kernel exports a #b/scancode, #b/leds
files, #c/cons returns 0 bytes on read. theres no input processing
(uart, kbd) in the kernel anymore. kbdfs does all the input
processing and exports the usual files plus a new /dev/kbd
wich is also multiplexed by rio and used by programs like
games/doom to get keyboard input.

using eriks sata and ide drivers with some adaptions. pci ids,
enabling dma by default, fix some problems with dma+atapi
on qemu/bochs.

many vga changes. aux/vga now uses devpnp to enumerate the
pci devices. vesa screenblanking. amd geode driver support.
utf-8 support for cga.

no #P/realmode anymore. no 16bit code in kernel, e820 scan
done by bootloader.

thats all i can remember for hardware related stuff right now.

--
cinap

[Lucio De Re]

Post by c***@gmx.de
theres a new miniport originaly based on the ac97 driver for the
audio devices.
sb16 driver was rewritten mainly to get interrupt free output
[... snip ...]

Yeow!

Post by c***@gmx.de
no #P/realmode anymore. no 16bit code in kernel, e820 scan
done by bootloader.
thats all i can remember for hardware related stuff right now.

... and a pretty good memory, too!

Sounds like irreconcilable differences, does that mean divorce is
inevitable? :-) :-) :-)

++L

[c***@gmx.de]

drivers should be pretty portable.

there are more drastic changes like the eqlock function
that touched many places. its basicly a normal qlock()
that can error() out when the process gets a note or
gets killed.

--
cinap

[Francisco J Ballesteros]

I'd like to say here that I'm sorry if my mail in this thread
did hurt any feelings. That was not my aim, again.

I know all of us keep a local copy in one way or another,
but I'd like to suggest that all of us keep on sending patches and
code to bell labs; that's the least we can do, considering the
excellent code base those guys gave us in the first place.

Regarding the codereview suggestion, nix is already under
code review, and we intend it to be not just a research system, but
also a kernel that could be used as a 64bits plan 9 system. All of you
are more than welcome to send CLs there.

Also, we are trying to make our changes in a way that they could
help the stock distribution, which is, again, what I said would be
better than doing them in incompatible ways.

cheers

[Lucio De Re]

Post by Francisco J Ballesteros
Also, we are trying to make our changes in a way that they could
help the stock distribution, which is, again, what I said would be
better than doing them in incompatible ways.

I understand this is going to be difficult, I don't expect anyone to
take this on right now, but I still maintain that there ought to be a
single Plan 9 distribution and that nix and 9front ought to be
derivable from this.

And Code Review ought to be at the core of it.

As additional justification, I'd like to point out that the nix
sources are alien to me and I don't have the space to install nix and
run it so as to contribute to its development, whereas any changes to
the original Plan 9 distribution affects my working environment
directly, which makes it trivial to submit changes if I develop them.

Maybe a middle ground would be to extract from Plan 9, nix and 9front
all the code that is not platform specific (like the Go code, for
example) and maintain that independently of the platforms. The
divergent platforms could then be kept as small as possible.

++L

[Francisco J Ballesteros]

Post by Lucio De Re
hereas any changes to
the original Plan 9 distribution affects my working environment
directly, which makes it trivial to submit changes if I develop them.

That's what I was saying. We are working in nix in such a way that we
hope the code we are working on could be used by the stock Plan 9
in the future. So, it's a fork, but we are still trying to cooperate with
everyone else.

[Lucio De Re]

Post by Francisco J Ballesteros
That's what I was saying. We are working in nix in such a way that we
hope the code we are working on could be used by the stock Plan 9
in the future. So, it's a fork, but we are still trying to cooperate with
everyone else.

Branching seems to be a black hole, though: there is no easy way to
bring forks into line with each other unless the divergences are few
and very small. In my particular case, there is no way that I can
progress from Plan 9 to nix, so there is no room for me to contribute
to nix.

Now, if we can isolate the portions of the Plan 9 distribution that
can grow equally for all forks (9front, nix) from the, hopefully
smaller, portions that define the different platforms, we will have a
world in which contributions, mechanically, can be propagated
everywhere. By making the different sections as small as possible,
preferably actively trying to shrink them by propagating changes
between them as frequently as possible, we may cause them to converge.

But the keyword here is "actively" and demands the allocation of
resources or, at minimum, intent that is absent in a competitive
environment.

++L

[Charles Forsyth]

surely it only makes sense that when forks appear the knives come out.

[Lucio De Re]

Post by Charles Forsyth
surely it only makes sense that when forks appear the knives come out.

I guess this is part of the reason I follow 9fans so avidly :-)

++L

[Charles Forsyth]

A timely discussion before producing any code is usually more profitable.

Post by Lucio De Re
And Code Review ought to be at the core of it.

[Lucio De Re]

Post by Charles Forsyth
A timely discussion before producing any code is usually more profitable.

Unarguably. But a code review system makes sure that lack of
discussion is corrected before it is too late. And prior discussion
seems pretty scarce around Plan 9. Unless of course IRC is where it
all happens, in which case I guess I just don't qualify to comment.

Post by Charles Forsyth

Post by Lucio De Re
And Code Review ought to be at the core of it.

[erik quanstrom]

Post by c***@gmx.de
drivers should be pretty portable.
there are more drastic changes like the eqlock function
that touched many places. its basicly a normal qlock()
that can error() out when the process gets a note or
gets killed.

ha! i've written this function independently a few times.
and applied it to a few well-chosen places. i stopped short
because i wondered if postdawn (e.g. after schedinit() is
called), qlock() shouldn't always be an eqlock().

i see this problem most often with networking code. the
the first reader is interruptable, but readers 2..n are not.

i'd love to hear other opinions on how to solve this problem.

- erik

[erik quanstrom]

Post by Stanley Lieber
(I know Erik has adopted at least the BCM57xx driver for 9atom). I'm

although it's in there, it doesn't work with the bcm57xx hardware i have.
so cavet emptor.

- erik

[Stanley Lieber]

Post by erik quanstrom

Post by Stanley Lieber
(I know Erik has adopted at least the BCM57xx driver for 9atom). I'm

although it's in there, it doesn't work with the bcm57xx hardware i have.
so cavet emptor.

You might want to re-synch. Recent changes have caused the BCM5755 in
my Thinkcentre M55 to start working.

-sl

[erik quanstrom]

still not working; doesn't even reset.

i've taken a pass at cleaning up the code. the biggest change
is using style(6) formatting. also, coherence() is missing when
entering ring entries, since the posted write of the ring ptr can
pass the memory writes of the ring entry, from the perspective
of the pci root complex. and transmit wasn't careful enough
not to run into its head. (checking the chip isn't good enough.
you have to not run over your own unfreed bps.)

- erik

[Steve Simon]

re: etherbcm.c

thanks,

Again it will have to wait till monday for me to try.

BTW I'am not sure if I emphasised enough how grateful I am for all your
patient work in getting SSE working.

Its great to make progress on this, though the performance of opera +
linuxemu + equis (fgb's X11 server) is not great. Its enough to drag
my 3.5Ghz P4 to its knees just browsing around!

Having said this there avenues for optimisation, but I need to
measure and not guuess (no matter how tempting :-) where the problems lie.

-Steve

[erik quanstrom]

Post by Steve Simon
BTW I'am not sure if I emphasised enough how grateful I am for all your
patient work in getting SSE working.

really it's no problem. it's something that i'd worked on before,
and had to leave behind.

ideally, i'd like to be able to use sse with 8[acl]. but that means
that i (a) have to figure out how to make /proc/$pid/regs work with
sse/nonsse or (b) need to come up with a new arch that's a lot like
8/386/pc. perhaps 4/p6/p6. p6 was the first sse2-implementing arch.

- erik

[Charles Forsyth]

once 64-bit plan 9 (in whatever guise) is stable, you might just as
well use that for SSE.
i did think about putting the 6c changes back into 8c, but there are
still x86-32 systems that offer
only 387s. mind you, with an SSE [subset] emulator to replace fp387.c,
those systems might
just as well use emulated SSE. i can't imagine people do much FP on
them, especially using Plan 9.

Post by erik quanstrom
ideally, i'd like to be able to use sse with 8[acl].

[erik quanstrom]

fixed for my hw. the really key bit was setting the endianness
properly. this may have been set up by your pxe hardware or bios,
if your bcm chip was built-in.

i've updated 9atom with this driver.

- erik

[ron minnich]

Post by erik quanstrom

Post by Rudolf Sykora
This, to be honest, doesn't say much.
http://www.sptechweb.com/content/article.aspx?ArticleID=35742&print=true

geoff did cwfs, and has done more to maintain the system
than the rest of us put together.  he has my respect for that.
thanks, geoff.

Absolutely. What was interesting when I was frequently updating
sysfromiso was watching the continuous flow of improvements in code
from Bell Labs. But in the Plan 9 style, the number of lines changed
could be small in number, yet potent in impact. Plan 9 is very much
alive. It lacks the near continuous code churn of many open source
projects -- a virtue! -- while continuing to add new support for new
hardware and code improvements. Changes are not made for change sake;
they are made because they make real improvements in the system. It's
hard not to like that.

ron

[yy]

What I would like to know is if you can boot a plan9 system from iso via 9vx
as "persistent" partition whereas changes are saved to another directory (so
basically setting up a union mount between the iso and a directory) -
alternatively specifying an alternative path for $home using 9vx booting
from an iso.

I've written a small script to help with this. From the comments:

# Usage: 9vxi [9vx options]
# If set, $localroot is used as root,
# and $home as the home directory.
# If localroot is not set. search for it:
# first in the cwd, then at $HOME.
# initrc is ignored. Other options are
# just passed to 9vx.
#
# If found, $home/lib/profile is used,
# else a default profile is supplied.

If you have a plan9.iso file in your $HOME directory, running 9vxi
without arguments should be enough to boot from that iso file with an
usable environment: $HOME is used as your home directory, ramdisk
provides a writable /tmp and the plumber uses glenda's rules. If you
need something fancier (for example, binding a writable source tree
from a sysfromiso repository), create a lib/profile file.

[Jens Staal]

Post by yy

What I would like to know is if you can boot a plan9 system from iso via 9vx
as "persistent" partition whereas changes are saved to another directory (so
basically setting up a union mount between the iso and a directory) -
alternatively specifying an alternative path for $home using 9vx booting
from an iso.

# Usage: 9vxi [9vx options]
# If set, $localroot is used as root,
# and $home as the home directory.
# first in the cwd, then at $HOME.
# initrc is ignored. Other options are
# just passed to 9vx.
#
# If found, $home/lib/profile is used,
# else a default profile is supplied.
If you have a plan9.iso file in your $HOME directory, running 9vxi
without arguments should be enough to boot from that iso file with an
usable environment: $HOME is used as your home directory, ramdisk
provides a writable /tmp and the plumber uses glenda's rules. If you
need something fancier (for example, binding a writable source tree
from a sysfromiso repository), create a lib/profile file.

Awesome! Thanks!

I will look into it.