> Also, not so much from the perspective of a standalone terminal, just general > questions: > > What's the inter-relationship/difference between the following two commands: > 'auth/keyfs' and 'auth/wrkey'? I've read their respective man pages, but I'm > still a bit hazy on what exactly are the roles of those two commands (assuming > no arguments are supplied).
auth/keyfs provides the authentication database. this is run on the auth server. awuth/wrkey writes the host keys into nvram. this needs to happen on every cpu server encluding the auth server. this enables the hostowner to boot unattended. otherwise someone would need to be at the console to type in the authdomain, hostowner, and password. on a pc nvram is typically not usuable, so a 512-file plan9.nvr in 9fat or a 512-byte prep partition named nvram serves this purpose. > > Why is sysname= not documented in plan9.ini(8)? Just an oversight? because it's not set there. ndb/cs sets sysname. see comments in /rc/bin/cpurc. > There seems to be somewhat of an ambiguity regarding "workstation-class" > terminals, vs. the "dumb" terminals - it seems not totally unreasonable for > someone to have their "personal workstation" setup as a cpu/auth terminal. i think you may be missing the distinction. a terminal in plan 9 is simply a personal machine. computing power or hardware capabilities have nothing to do with it. a cpu server is a shared resource. there's also often an assumption that cpu servers that provide services like authentication are always available. > e.g. I _think_, that if one were simply wanting to get a _single_ plan 9 box > running on a typical moderately powered pc, that one should just go for a cpu > kernel running auth, vs. a term kernel? -- of course this is assuming one has > no interest in setting up a "proper" plan 9 environment for whatever reasons. option c. i would (and have) set up a cpu server running auth and the fs and use drawterm instead of a terminal. given two machines, i would still use drawterm and use the second machine to run either a stand-alone fileserver or only a fs on a cpu kernel. - erik
