Re: [9fans] iwp9 deadline extension

[Axel Belinfante]

as in Antwerp, Belgium?
that would be cool!

Axel.

On Aug 28, 2009, at 21:42 , Eric Van Hensbergen wrote:

Satelite conference locations in Antwerp and Oz may be be a bad idea  
assuming folks can accomodate crazy time differences.


Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 28, 2009, at 2:21 PM, erik quanstrom   
wrote:



On Fri Aug 28 15:09:25 EDT 2009, noah.ev...@gmail.com wrote:

We don't have any travel budget now does coraid have any sponsors
willing to fund travel?



that's a tough one.  my currency thus far has largely been
tom sawyering and cajolerie.  coraid and uga have helped
with facilities, but there is no money for travel.

the gsoc group had talked about using some of the google
money for such things.

in case this is not evident, it is okay to submit a paper
if you can't attend.

- erik

Re: [9fans] remote usb?

[Axel Belinfante]

For what it's worth:
VirtualBox has   USB over RDP.
I have no experience with this, though.

Axel.

On Dec 4, 2009, at 22:43 , Tim Newsham wrote:


Does remote USB make sense?  Would it be possible to boot
up a plan9 system on one machine, export its usb device to
another machine and run usbd there and have the second machine
make use of any usb device attached to the first machine?
Would the latency be too high?

Tim Newsham | www.thenewsh.com/~newsham | thenewsh.blogspot.com

Re: [9fans] rc shell UNIX port repository

[Axel Belinfante]

I have been using es  (by Paul Haahr and Byron Rakitzis)
for quite some years on unix, although effectively I did not use
most of its more advanced features.

"Es is an extensible shell. The language was derived from the Plan 9
 shell, rc, and was influenced by functional programming languages,
 such as Scheme, and the Tcl embeddable programming language. This
 implementation is derived from Byron Rakitzis's public domain
 implementation of rc.
[...]
"
quote above comes from
http://code.google.com/p/es-shell/source/browse/trunk/README

http://hawkwind.cs.toronto.edu:8001/mlists/es.html
http://code.google.com/p/es-shell


Axel.

On Dec 6, 2009, at 8:52 , Ciprian Dorin, Craciun wrote:


   P.S.: In my migration from Sh/Bash I've ended up deciding between
two candidates: scsh [...] and rc [...]
   So are there any other worthy alternatives?

Re: [9fans] What do you use plan 9 for?

[Axel Belinfante]

playing games (via 9vx) colfld, or sokoban, or rushhour
editing (via acme-sac)

Axel.

Re: [9fans] sheevaplug port available

[Axel Belinfante]

On Mar 8, 2010, at 16:42 , Mechiel Lukkien wrote:

does plan 9 have a writable nand flash file system that does wear- 
leveling

and such?


could that be among the code for the bitsy?

Axel.

Re: [9fans] more little hardware

[Axel Belinfante]

On Mar 17, 2010, at 20:13 , John Floren wrote:

On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 2:06 PM, Jack Johnson   
wrote:

On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 5:57 AM, Stuart Morrow
 wrote:
However, there is one "smart" feature that for me would be useful  
enough that
carrying a big chunky thing that lives for a quarter of a day on  
battery might
actually be worth it, and the feature is so damn trivial to do  
with Plan 9 -

setting/unsetting the ring tone to/from silent in a cron job.


I would like my ringtone volume to adjust periodically to the ambient
noise, which also seems fairly trivial.

What did you folks with bitsies and iPAQs find useful? Any of you
still packing one?

-Jack


I have fiddled with an iPAQ/bitsy on and off over the last few years.
What's really nice about it is that you get access to a "real
computer"; I booted wirelessly off my CPU server, which meant I had
access to all my files and music, which was nice because the bitsy's
sound hardware is supported. As long as you have a wireless
connection, it's the best way to use a PDA.


can agree to that.
used it to play music too, a bit.

there was a time when I occasionally used it as small terminal,
at the university, at home, or even elsewhere,
to connect via vnc to a session running on the desktop at the office.
with a tiny font, an xterm would be big enough to read email via mh.

I also used it on occasion when diagnosing plan 9 cpu server in
the server room - it was a nice small machine to bring there.

bulky it was - I have the bigger sleeve that allows
use of two thin pcmcia cards (e.g. wifi and hard disk).

I don't know exactly why I stopped using it...
somehow the use I had for it disappeared, I guess.

Axel.

Re: [9fans] more little hardware

[Axel Belinfante]

On Mar 17, 2010, at 20:13 , John Floren wrote:

On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 2:06 PM, Jack Johnson   
wrote:

On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 5:57 AM, Stuart Morrow
 wrote:
However, there is one "smart" feature that for me would be useful  
enough that
carrying a big chunky thing that lives for a quarter of a day on  
battery might
actually be worth it, and the feature is so damn trivial to do  
with Plan 9 -

setting/unsetting the ring tone to/from silent in a cron job.


I would like my ringtone volume to adjust periodically to the  
ambient

noise, which also seems fairly trivial.

What did you folks with bitsies and iPAQs find useful? Any of you
still packing one?

-Jack


I have fiddled with an iPAQ/bitsy on and off over the last few years.
What's really nice about it is that you get access to a "real
computer"; I booted wirelessly off my CPU server, which meant I had
access to all my files and music, which was nice because the bitsy's
sound hardware is supported. As long as you have a wireless
connection, it's the best way to use a PDA.




Sorry to spam a bit more, but memory is returning...
I wrote:


can agree to that.
used it to play music too, a bit.

there was a time when I occasionally used it as small terminal,
at the university, at home, or even elsewhere,
to connect via vnc to a session running on the desktop at the office.
with a tiny font, an xterm would be big enough to read email via mh.

I also used it on occasion when diagnosing plan 9 cpu server in
the server room - it was a nice small machine to bring there.


I also used it to play games (sudoku, rush hour)


bulky it was - I have the bigger sleeve that allows
use of two thin pcmcia cards (e.g. wifi and hard disk).

I don't know exactly why I stopped using it...
somehow the use I had for it disappeared, I guess.


and there was also the issue that suspend/resume was
not working for me, if I remember well
(though it has been working for others - did it work for you, John?)

and thus battery life was rather limited, unless I would
shutdown/reboot every time, which was less convenient.

Axel.

Re: [9fans] Harvey OS: A new OS inspired heavily by Plan 9

[Axel Belinfante]

I couldn’t resist looking, and found in http://www.osnews.com/comments/28699 


"Harvey is an effort to get the Plan 9 code working with gcc and clang”.

So, in a way it seems to be a port of Plan 9.

More details, including the feature list below, are at http://harvey-os.org 


Features

• AMD 64 bit
• Modern, simplified syscall system
• GCC toolchain means you can use gdb(!)
• Compile in Linux or OSX using Harvey's headers and libs, no need to 
change anything else
• Fast compilation of the whole system
• All Plan9 userland apps available
• Plans to add X11 with rio-like multiplexing, tty driver, new 
fileserver, native toolchain and more

I’m intrigued by the “compile … using Harvey's headers and libs, no need to 
change anything else” —
I guess that means that it will be easy to “port” stuff to Harvey?

The team list contains names well-known on this list...

I must say, it looks quite interesting, worth checking out.

Axel.

> On 25 Jul 2015, at 17:58, Ryan Gonzalez  wrote:
> 
> No clue. I'm guessing it's heavily inspired by Plan 9.
> 
> On July 25, 2015 3:34:13 AM CDT, "st...@quintile.net"  
> wrote:
> not sure what Harvey is... is it just plan9 ported to build on gcc?
> 
> if so does gcc run under Harvey?
> 
> does gcc run under plan9 now?
> 
> Steve
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 25 Jul 2015, at 01:43, Ryan Gonzalez  > wrote:
> 
>> https://medium.com/this-is-not-a-monad-tutorial/harvey-an-operating-system-with-plan-9-s-shadow-3081414e5f0b
>>  
>> 
>> 
>> I'm not affiliated with this whatsoever; I just saw it on Reddit and found 
>> it interesting.
>> 
>> I found this part particularly neat:
>> 
>> > We are working in ANSI POSIX environment to have most of well known tools 
>> > and programs that programmers or end users expects to have in a modern 
>> > operating system. Things that for traditional Plan 9 would be very 
>> > difficult to have.
>> 
>> -- 
>> Sent from my Nexus 5 with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
> 
> -- 
> Sent from my Nexus 5 with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

Re: [9fans] Mouse advice for Acme

[Axel Belinfante]

> >  I think I may have found the next best thing since the ScrollPoint:
> >  
> > http://www.askergoworks.com/products/1519/Evoluent-VerticalMouse---Silver-Black.aspx
> >
> >  Three... no, five buttons actually, plus the wheel.  Mac compatible.
> >  Ergonomic.
> 
> Did you buy one?  Is that picture showing the left-handed
> or right-handed version of the mouse?  I'm skeptical of
> the "turned sideways" idea -- if the picture shows the
> right-handed version, it looks like you'd have to put the
> mouse about 2 feet from the keyboard in order to not
> contort your wrist to use it.  Maybe it's the left-handed
> version, but it would be odd to picture the less popular model.

I think it shows the right-handed version, as illustrated
by the other picture:
http://www.askergoworks.com/Images/Products/1519/1519_550_L.jpg

I guess the idea is that you hold it somewhat like a joystick.

http://www.askergoworks.com/Images/Products/1519/1519_842_L.jpg

I'd say that ScrollPoint or wheel vs. horizontal or vertical
holding ought to be orthogonal features.

Axel.

Re: [9fans] Plan 9 refuses to boot from iMac

[Axel Belinfante]

> >  send the mac to me. I will fix it as I fixed Gorka's mac.
> >
> 
> You are always a blessing :-).

no macs were harmed in this activity of fixing?

:-)

Re: [9fans] Equis

[Axel Belinfante]

neat.

when I drawterm from a mac to a plan 9 box it works fine.
(once I realized that I can only use a DISPLAY of :0
 if localhost is a known system name,  which it wasn't on my system)

when I run it in plan 9 in parallels on the mac it looks a bit funny,
but if you learned to read and write slanted letters at school
everything is ok :-)

http://plan9.cs.utwente.nl/equis-parls.png

I have not investigated yet; do you have an idea?
anything I could/should try?

Axel.

Re: [9fans] Equis and parallels on mac (long!)

[Axel Belinfante]

> oh, nice bug you have there, what's the screen depth when that
> happens?

I feel stupid - how do I check screen depth?
ehm... I added xdpyinfo output at the end.

anyway, the main issue is not screen depth.

(ok. I see somewhat different colors for the twm bars
between parallels and drawterm, using same twm.
this might be creen depth related)

the main issue could very well be an issue in parallels.

it has something to do, not with when equis is started,
but with when a window is created in rio - whether
parallels is running full screen, or in a big window
(screen-sized) with top-left corner not at top-left of display.

when I run full-screen parallels, create a rio window there,
start equis, all works fine.
http://plan9.cs.utwente.nl/equis-parls2.png

when I have screen-sized parallels window running as window
among other mac windows, with top-left corner somewhere in
the middle of the screen, then create rio window and start
equis I get the slanted stuff.

I tried various times, and the issue is indeed about the
situation at the moment the rio window is created.
that situation seems to be rembered as part of the rio window:
once a rio window is created 'the wrong way', it does not help
to make the parallels window full-screen before starting equis.

it might be possible to see the difference in properties
of the created rio window, if I would known where to look.

when I put the parallels window non-full screen, but with
left border at left border of display, then create a rio window,
then make it full screen again and start equis it worked fine too.

when I move the parallels window to the right, create a rio window,
go full screen and start equis I get the slanted lines.

conclusion:
somehow the horizontal offset between left corner of parallels window
and left corner of display confuses parallels, or plan 9,
or the combination.
also, with the parallels window left-top corner in the middle
of the display, as soon as the fat plan 9 mouse cursor hits the
bottom of the display (or the off-screen bottom of the parallels window?)
a second small mouse cursor (the mac one) appears,
with an offset from the fat plan 9 one. which one is leftmost
depends on the horizontal position of the plan 9 cursor when it
hits the bottom (of display or parallels window, I don't know)
the second cursor disappears again either when it is the first
to go beyond the top or left border of the parallels window,
or when the plan 9 cursor hits such border first, then further
mouse movement pushes the mac mouse cursor to the plan 9 one
till they coincide and the mac mouse cursor disappears.

there is also some interaction with stuff in the dock.
when I see the two mouse cursors and they go low enough
the dock that was hidden at the bottom of the display unhides.
If I only see one mouse cursor that does not happen.

= drawterm =
bash-3.2$ name of display:slurp:0.0
version number:11.0
vendor string:The X.Org Foundation
vendor release number:6600
X.Org version: 0.0.6.600
maximum request size:  262140 bytes
motion buffer size:  256
bitmap unit, bit order, padding:32, LSBFirst, 32
image byte order:LSBFirst
number of supported pixmap formats:5
supported pixmap formats:
depth 1, bits_per_pixel 1, scanline_pad 32
depth 8, bits_per_pixel 8, scanline_pad 32
depth 16, bits_per_pixel 16, scanline_pad 32
depth 24, bits_per_pixel 24, scanline_pad 32
depth 32, bits_per_pixel 32, scanline_pad 32
keycode range:minimum 8, maximum 255
focus:  window 0x6a, revert to PointerRoot
number of extensions:4
RENDER
SHAPE
X-Resource
XInputExtension
default screen number:0
number of screens:1

screen #0:
  print screen:no
  dimensions:837x575 pixels (212x146 millimeters)
  resolution:100x100 dots per inch
  depths (6):1, 8, 16, 24, 32, 32
  root window id:0x35
  depth of root window:32 planes
  number of colormaps:minimum 1, maximum 1
  default colormap:0x20
  default number of colormap cells:2048
  preallocated pixels:black 0, white 16777215
  options:backing-store NO, save-unders NO
  largest cursor:837x575
  current input event mask:0xd0001d
KeyPressMask ButtonPressMask  ButtonReleaseMask
EnterWindowMask  SubstructureRedirectMask PropertyChangeMask   
ColormapChangeMask   
  number of visuals:1
  default visual id:  0x21
  visual:
visual id:0x21
class:TrueColor
depth:32 planes
available colormap entries:2048 per subfield
red, green, blue masks:0xff, 0xff00, 0xff
significant bits in color specification:8 bits

==

= parallels ===
name of display:10.211.55.3:0.0
version number:11.0
vendor string:The X.Org Foundation
vendor release number:6600
X.Org version: 0.0.6.600
maximum req

Re: [9fans] Bitsy's WaveLAN problem

[Axel Belinfante]

> > you might check out a few of the changes in the pc version of the
> >  driver.  (particularly parsekey.)
> 
> I just tried the PC version of the WaveLAN driver, but it does
> not seem to work better.
> 
> Since few hours, I am not able to run the Wi-Fi card anymore,
> even with a high timeout. It always crashes as reported in my
> first e-mail.

A while ago I tried to modify the PC version of the driver
to support changing the wep key without resetting the card -
functionality that is needed by the 802.1X stuff.

I copied what seemed to be the necessary bits from a lunix driver.
while I did get it working, I got carried away making other changes
inspired by the lunix driver, to the point where I no longer felt
like proposing it as a patch. I may help you, though.
I put it on sources under contrib/axel/wlanfastkey

I think I modified one interface between the driver and
its environment to pass through some additional information,
which means that it may not be a drop-in replacement.

Also, some time has passed since I did this, so it may lack
some changes that were made to the original driver.


Axel.

Re: [9fans] Bitsy's WaveLAN problem

[Axel Belinfante]

> > > I copied what seemed to be the necessary bits from a lunix driver.
> >  > while I did get it working, I got carried away making other changes
> >  > inspired by the lunix driver, to the point where I no longer felt
> >  > like proposing it as a patch. I may help you, though.
> >  > I put it on sources under contrib/axel/wlanfastkey
> >
> >  i don't understand.  if it adds 802.1x stuff, and fixes bugs
> >  why should it not be submitted?

too much gratious change, too much copy/paste hacking,
too little insight, (too little cleanup?)

> Maybe OS advocacy had gone to levels where the notion of adding things
> from other OS is frowned upon by those who did it, regardless of the
> code in question...

lack of confidence about quality of result,
especially when I saw more ether errors than I remembered seeing before.
"it seemed to work" does not feel so convincing.

Axel.

Re: [9fans] Bitsy's WaveLAN problem

[Axel Belinfante]

> I thought this might be a hardware problem, but it does not seem to be the 
> case.
> 
> I tried the Lucent ORiNOCO Classic Gold PC Card on my Slackware Linux
> laptop, and it seems to work fine with the "orinoco" driver. The
> driver load without any problem. I can scan and connect to an essid.
> Even the lights are switched on.
> 
> However, it would be a hardware problem from the iPaq PCMCIA sleeve.
> I will probably buy another to confirm that.

do you have a single or double slot sleeve?
the double slot sleeve needs extra code to work --
hmm... if you would have such one it wouldn't have worked at all
and you mentioned that it has somewhat worked, thus, single sleeve?

Re: [9fans] ssh - pine - "garbage" characters

[Axel Belinfante]

an alternative is to run a vnc session
on the remote (non-plan 9) machine and
use vncv to connect to it.

that might be useful if vt would not be able
to support all cursor control that pine needs.

Axel.

Re: [9fans] 9vx os x

[Axel Belinfante]

this is great!

> Please try it on 10.5 and see how it works.

I know you did not ask, but: on 10.4 it seems to work ok.

two minor UI nits:

 - the native version doesn't seem to support the scroll point(wheel?);
   the X11 version does (but somehow responds a bit slowish to it).

 - when I resize a window with B3 on border in the native version
   the red border responds much slower to movements with the mouse
   than in the X11 version (on 10.4)
   did not try it much, but overall it feels rather responsive, though

sidenote: I find it fascinating to see how the plan 9 gui responds
to resizing the window.


Axel.

[9fans] mac os x: x11 versus native when chording mouse leaves window

[Axel Belinfante]

I'm sorry I'm not contributing code, and
that the following is mac osx specific.
and it is only an observation.
(and I'm posting it why?
 because I'm looking for confirmation, maybe,
 and to point out one possible unexpected advantage of X11 over native.)

there appears to be a difference between handling of X11 windows and
native windows regarding what happens when
 - mouse cursor is in window
 - you start making a selection with b1
 - while making the selection you cross the window border
 - outside the window you press b2 or b3 to finish the chord

with the x11 window everything works as expected, at least on 10.4.11
with the native window the chord is not finished but instead the window
under the mouse gets select (or you end up in finder).

this seems to be independent of the actual application (acme-sac, 9vx).

the non-working with native window I encounter almost every day;
that it does work with X I only found minutes ago.

regarding 'code, code, code' I was annoyed to the point where I started
to wonder whether it would make sense to add something similar to the
'stay in the scroll bar while scrolling' feature, but then to
stay in the window while selecting.
to my surprise I found it actually working ok with X11 window.


Axel.

Re: [9fans] some group photos

[Axel Belinfante]

On Oct 14, 2010, at 9:32 , David du Colombier wrote:


And many thanks to ericvh that allowed people like me,
who could not afford the trip, to attend every talk through
livestream.com.

It was a lot of fun for us too.


amen to that.

Axel.

[9fans] old hardware, new install: adding uartisa to pcf solves ps2 keyboard issue

[Axel Belinfante]

Summary:

at new installation from live cd on old hardware, with  pcf  kernel  
the keyboard did not
work until I added a line  uartisato the pcf kernel config and  
compiled a new kernel.



Context:

while installing plan 9 using live cd(*) on ancient hardware(**) I  
noticed the following:


 1) with the 9pccd kernel on the live cd the ps2 keyboard works as  
expected

   (and when the kernel is starting, at some points the numlock light -
 the only light on on the keyboard - is switched off)

 2) after installation from the live cd,
when the 9pcf kernel prompts 'root is from' (the first prompt it  
gives)

   typing on the ps2 keyboard has no effect.
   also: numlock light remains on while the kernel starts

  unplugging and replugging the keyboard at that moment
  makes it change the lights (first: all on, then all off) and I can  
type again


The only significant difference seems to be in the kernel config files:
 pccd  does contain a line   uartisa   and   pcf  does not


building a new kernel with a line   uartisa   added to (a copy of)  
the  pcf  file(**)

gave me a kernel where the ps2 keyboard also worked without problems,
just like the 9pccd kernel of the live cd.


Searching the archive I found some posts of 2010 with subject 'kbd  
fail',

where a call to a setleds() function is mentioned - reading that made me
wonder whether my experience is related.



Axel.


*) obtained from the bell labs site, of 2011-08-06

 I also tried 9front live cd,
 but it didn't work, (error) messages I recall:
   - somehow it thinks it could only use very little memory has 8Mb (?)
   - several programs crashed using a rc boot script(?)
   - panic after a while

**)  amd-k6- 333Mhz, GA-586SGM motherboard, 64Mb memory
this hardware used to run plan 9 until a few years ago when
I found that a disk in my kenfs had crashed. I postponed fixing, a  
long time.

luckily my kenfs had mirrored worm disks, one of which seems to be o.k..
also the disk that holds the cache seems ok.

**) also the string bootpcf.out was updated, to reflect name of copy

[9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[Axel Belinfante]

Just curious what 9fans use, for home and/or work, to backup their macs.

time machine?
to a local (usb,firewire) disk?
or remote (time capsule, nas (not officially sanctioned by apple))?

or eat our own dog food and use eg. venti?
or tra?

or no backup necessary because everything important is already elsewhere?
(in the cloud, or in a version management system)

or?


context: we are reconsidering how to do this at work,
and prefer not to reinvent the wheel.

(at home I just backup my mac to a readynas box using time machine).


Sorry for the off-topic nature of this post, but the fact
that 9fans will be aware of less-common solutions like venti -
not to mention the presence of coraid people here -
made me look for experience/expertise here.

Regards,
Axel.

Re: [9fans] tcl, 9p

[Axel Belinfante]

since most of the follow-up discussion went sideways:

> Anyone know the state of the art of writing 9p clients/servers in tcl?

at some point in time it seemed to be  http://wiki.tcl.tk/15632
(but I seriously do hope you already found that)

Axel - nowadays also enjoying go