[9fans] Plan 9 C compiler for Xtensa CPUs

[Cyber Fonic]

I was reading the post Why Didn't Plan 9 Succeed
 on Hacker News.

Made me think that Plan 9 for IoT system of systems could be viable.

To that end, ESP-32 modules look capable enough to run Plan 9, but is there
a Plan 9 C compiler for Xtensa ISA CPUs?

Re: [9fans] Plan 9 C compiler for Xtensa CPUs

[Cyber Fonic]

Does anybody have any suggestions as to what it would take to create a C
compiler for Xtensa (it is basically a 32 bit sorta-like RISC architecture)?

Since C compilers do exist for Xtensa (both Arduino and ESIF) , is it at
all possible to port Plan 9 C compilers using a "host" compiler as a
semi-bootstrap?

Or would it be more effectively to use an existing Plan 9 system, grab the
sources for a similar compiler, e.g. MIPS and start building a Xtensa /
ESP-32 specific one?

On Fri, 26 Jul 2019 at 20:31, Charles Forsyth 
wrote:

> I was thinking of doing that since I've got an ESP-32 for some reason
>
> On Fri, Jul 26, 2019 at 7:38 AM Cyber Fonic  wrote:
>
>> I was reading the post Why Didn't Plan 9 Succeed
>> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20527650> on Hacker News.
>>
>> Made me think that Plan 9 for IoT system of systems could be viable.
>>
>> To that end, ESP-32 modules look capable enough to run Plan 9, but is
>> there a Plan 9 C compiler for Xtensa ISA CPUs?
>>
>>

Re: [9fans] Plan 9 C compiler for Xtensa CPUs

[Cyber Fonic]

The emergent problem with IoT is the lack of security.  From my
understanding of Plan9's architecture. 9p protocol and the "root-less"
security model suggests to me that a Plan9 swarm of IoT devices could be
the "killer app" where Plan9 emerges on the strength of the vision of
decades ago.  Looking at other RT OSes the security models are often bolted
on.  Plan9 worked well on IBM PC era hardware. An ESP-32 has more resources
and better networking than the early PCs.  From my tinkering and reverse
engineering of IoT devices, almost all use 8266 based WiFi and often in
conjunction with a uController. An ESP-32 is dual processor and with
sufficient I/O for most simple tasks.  With IoT, in general, you don't need
a lot of I/O, you simply throw more CPUs into the mix.

On Sat, 10 Aug 2019 at 08:55, Skip Tavakkolian 
wrote:

> I'm not sure if the effort would be worth it; but if you add support for
> esp32, I think it would be better for the os to be something like the one
> you had in kencc for AVR (*) or possibly Russ' libtask, rather than Plan 9.
> Staying with FreeRTOS would need removal of GCC specific things from OS and
> dealing with lots of drivers in C++.
>
> The Cortex-M based mpus (e.g. Teensy 4 with Cortex M7 @ 600MHz) seem more
> appropriate for an "embedded" Plan 9.
>
> (*) for those who have not seen it, it is here:
> % ls -l /n/sources/contrib/forsyth/avr*
> --rw-rw-r-- M 518 bootes sys 251227 Sep  4  2011
> /n/sources/contrib/forsyth/avr.9gz
>
> On Fri, Aug 9, 2019 at 2:36 PM Charles Forsyth 
> wrote:
>
>> Since the resources are small if not tiny, a little systems analysis and
>> design is probably needed, but it looks like a bit of fun, until the
>> inevitable moment of "why am I here?".
>>
>> On Fri, Aug 9, 2019 at 4:50 PM Charles Forsyth 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> The device I've got is ESP32-WROOM-32. None of the boards I've seen that
>>> use it bother with external memory,
>>> so memory is limited, especially the way it's partitioned.
>>>
>>> On Fri, Aug 9, 2019 at 3:50 PM Charles Forsyth <
>>> charles.fors...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> The ESP32 has got several MMUs. The characteristics are different
>>>> depending on the part that a given MMU accesses (flash, ROM, SRAM, external
>>>> memory).
>>>> Some things are accessed using Memory Protection Units instead, which
>>>> control access by Process ID, but don't do mapping. Others including some
>>>> of the SRAMs are accessed through
>>>> an MMU that can do virtual to physical mapping. The MMUs for internal
>>>> SRAM0 and 2 choose protection for a given physical page as none, one or all
>>>> of PIDs 2 to 7, with the virtual address that
>>>> maps to it. PIDs 0 and 1 can access everything. PID 0 can execute
>>>> privileged instructions.
>>>> A large chunk of SRAM (SRAM 1) has only Memory Protection and no
>>>> translation. The external memory MMU is the most general (most
>>>> conventional).
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Aug 9, 2019 at 3:19 PM Bakul Shah  wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> esp32 doesn’t have an mmu, right?
>>>>>
>>>>> On Jul 26, 2019, at 03:30, Charles Forsyth 
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> I was thinking of doing that since I've got an ESP-32 for some reason
>>>>>
>>>>> On Fri, Jul 26, 2019 at 7:38 AM Cyber Fonic 
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> I was reading the post Why Didn't Plan 9 Succeed
>>>>>> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20527650> on Hacker News.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Made me think that Plan 9 for IoT system of systems could be viable.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> To that end, ESP-32 modules look capable enough to run Plan 9, but is
>>>>>> there a Plan 9 C compiler for Xtensa ISA CPUs?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>

Re: [9fans] Plan 9 C compiler for Xtensa CPUs

[Cyber Fonic]

For IoT deployments, I suppose that one processor core on the ESP32 could
run the WiFi / networking stack and the other act as a CPU-like server and
thus run a small number of servers to expose the interface(s) in a 9P
mountable fashion to more powerful nodes.  A RT-ish kernel might suffice in
most practical use cases - it is IoT after all.  In my vision for Plan9 IoT
I never considered running file-server or terminal server on ESP-32
hardware. There are more capable nodes which would be better suited for
those purposes.  Of course, these observations presume that the 9p protocol
provides sufficient security against any ESP-32 node going rogue for
whatever reason.

It has been said :  "The 'S' in IoT stands for security".  If Plan9 can
address that deficiency of the current state of the art for IoT devices,
then it would be a worthwhile exercise.

On Mon, 19 Aug 2019 at 00:12, Charles Forsyth 
wrote:

> There is another existing variant of ESP32 with flash and RAM, and that
> one would provide the external memory MMU.
> It seems there could be a range from a small RT-ish kernel, with and
> without a user mode, on little ESP32, to a Plan 9 kernel with a few
> specialised processes on the bigger one.
> An Inferno-like system might also straddle the boundaries.
>
> On Sat, Aug 10, 2019 at 5:18 PM Charles Forsyth 
> wrote:
>
>> At a glance it looked as though the MMUs for the on-chip stuff were more
>> suitable for Unix Seventh Edition (no later) than "full" Plan 9.
>> The MMU for the external memory looked fine, but as I said, the device
>> I've got, and several other boards based on WROOM seem not
>> to bother with external memory. I didn't look widely, though.
>>
>> The processor is adequate, I think, but double == float (there's only
>> single precision).
>>
>> The existing systems use one processor for applications, and the other
>> mainly for communications.
>>
>> I haven't had a lot of spare time, but I did the assembler and am about
>> 3/4 through the loader.
>> For the most part it's a straightforward RISC.
>> Might do the disassembler next to help debug the rest, and finally the
>> compiler.
>>
>> On Sat, Aug 10, 2019 at 10:11 AM Cyber Fonic 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> The emergent problem with IoT is the lack of security.  From my
>>> understanding of Plan9's architecture. 9p protocol and the "root-less"
>>> security model suggests to me that a Plan9 swarm of IoT devices could be
>>> the "killer app" where Plan9 emerges on the strength of the vision of
>>> decades ago.  Looking at other RT OSes the security models are often bolted
>>> on.  Plan9 worked well on IBM PC era hardware. An ESP-32 has more resources
>>> and better networking than the early PCs.  From my tinkering and reverse
>>> engineering of IoT devices, almost all use 8266 based WiFi and often in
>>> conjunction with a uController. An ESP-32 is dual processor and with
>>> sufficient I/O for most simple tasks.  With IoT, in general, you don't need
>>> a lot of I/O, you simply throw more CPUs into the mix.
>>>
>>> On Sat, 10 Aug 2019 at 08:55, Skip Tavakkolian <
>>> skip.tavakkol...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'm not sure if the effort would be worth it; but if you add support
>>>> for esp32, I think it would be better for the os to be something like the
>>>> one you had in kencc for AVR (*) or possibly Russ' libtask, rather than
>>>> Plan 9. Staying with FreeRTOS would need removal of GCC specific things
>>>> from OS and dealing with lots of drivers in C++.
>>>>
>>>> The Cortex-M based mpus (e.g. Teensy 4 with Cortex M7 @ 600MHz) seem
>>>> more appropriate for an "embedded" Plan 9.
>>>>
>>>> (*) for those who have not seen it, it is here:
>>>> % ls -l /n/sources/contrib/forsyth/avr*
>>>> --rw-rw-r-- M 518 bootes sys 251227 Sep  4  2011
>>>> /n/sources/contrib/forsyth/avr.9gz
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Aug 9, 2019 at 2:36 PM Charles Forsyth <
>>>> charles.fors...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Since the resources are small if not tiny, a little systems analysis
>>>>> and design is probably needed, but it looks like a bit of fun, until the
>>>>> inevitable moment of "why am I here?".
>>>>>
>>>>> On Fri, Aug 9, 2019 at 4:50 PM Charles Forsyth <
>>>>> charles.fors...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> The device I've g

Re: [9fans] Plan 9 security

[Cyber Fonic]

I don't think OpenBSD will run on an ESP-32.  That is part of the problem
with IoT, the nodes are made on the cheap and thus use the cheapest viable
network capable device.

On Tue, 20 Aug 2019 at 00:54, Ethan Gardener  wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 19, 2019, at 12:53 PM, Cyber Fonic wrote:
> >
> > It has been said : "The 'S' in IoT stands for security". If Plan9 can
> address that deficiency of the current state of the art for IoT devices,
> then it would be a worthwhile exercise.
>
> Plan 9 may have a decent security model, but it's never been audited.
> Auditing a codebase, even one as small as Plan 9's, is a lot of work.  Are
> you willing to make a start on it?
>
> If you want something free and already audited, with more security
> features, (but perhaps not quite the same convenience,) look into OpenBSD.
>
> --
> I love that *Open*BSD is so *security*-focused!
>
>

Re: [9fans] Plan9 on virtual machine in Mac os

[Cyber Fonic]

I have been using Russ Cox's 9vx  on OS/X Mavericks
with considerable success.  The only issue being that I need to connect a
Logitech 3 button mouse via a Unifying RF dongle (BlueTooth mice don't work
for me).

Although 9vx is somewhat minimal, I download sources as I require them
from 9p.io
website .

Richard Millers Plan9 port 
works fine for me on an older RPi - B (?)  using the same mouse that I use
with MBP.

Personally I find the 9vx environment more to my liking as I can edit code
with vim, use Finder, etc using OS/X concurrently with Plan9 -- yes, I know
that is heretical to die-hard Plan9 folks, but I'm a *nix guy foremost and
a Plan9 newbie.

Pardon the confusion over which model RPi I am using. I have several from
different releases and I get confused as to which one I am using at any
given time. Swapping SDHC cards, etc



On Wed, 25 Mar 2020 at 12:33, Mark Everett  wrote:

> Mostly a lurker so far, but wanted to try the actual system rather than
> plan9port.  But sometimes getting actual hardware up an running is a steep
> first step :-)
> 
> Does anyone know of a virtual machine running on current Mac OS that hosts
> plan9?  Preferably one that isn’t too difficult to set up….
> 
> Also, I’m a little unclear on what the advantages/disadvantages of the
> various forks of plan9 are best on, their audience, etc. And it seems
> somewhat difficult to determine where to find the code for the different
> forks. Most likely I’m just not paying attention….
> 
> I do have a pi 4 but probably not the one with the wall wart fix. Is Mr.
> Miller’s code all in one place? Where is it publicly available?
> 
> Is there some repository for add-on file systems ala 9P2000 in one place.
> If not the actual code, perhaps pointers to the actual repositories.
> 
> Sorry if it appears that I’m not digging in to find this information
> myself, but I can’t seem to find the end of the string to pull…
> 
> Thanks in advance.
> 
> Lurker Mark
> 

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Re: [9fans] Plan9 on virtual machine in Mac os

[Cyber Fonic]

As for strings to pull, try:

String 1 

String 2 

Hope that helps !  It's where I launched my research from.


On Wed, 25 Mar 2020 at 12:33, Mark Everett  wrote:

> Mostly a lurker so far, but wanted to try the actual system rather than
> plan9port.  But sometimes getting actual hardware up an running is a steep
> first step :-)
> 
> Does anyone know of a virtual machine running on current Mac OS that hosts
> plan9?  Preferably one that isn’t too difficult to set up….
> 
> Also, I’m a little unclear on what the advantages/disadvantages of the
> various forks of plan9 are best on, their audience, etc. And it seems
> somewhat difficult to determine where to find the code for the different
> forks. Most likely I’m just not paying attention….
> 
> I do have a pi 4 but probably not the one with the wall wart fix. Is Mr.
> Miller’s code all in one place? Where is it publicly available?
> 
> Is there some repository for add-on file systems ala 9P2000 in one place.
> If not the actual code, perhaps pointers to the actual repositories.
> 
> Sorry if it appears that I’m not digging in to find this information
> myself, but I can’t seem to find the end of the string to pull…
> 
> Thanks in advance.
> 
> Lurker Mark
> 

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Re: [9fans] Alternative to fine-grained mouse usage?

[Cyber Fonic]

I used to have serious CTS issues from using a mouse.  Clenching a mouse
and fine motor movement became physiologically incompatible actions for me.

My simple low cost solution is to have a USB connected Logitech trackball
under my right hand (I'm right handed) and a common wheel USB mouse with
the optical window taped over under the left hand. Moving the mouse has no
effect on the cursor/pointer.

So I position the cursor/pointer with my right hand, rolling the trackball,
sometimes gingerly. When I have the spot right, I raise my right hand so
that the pointer stays put and then click or scroll as required with the
left hand.

On Thu, 1 Jul 2021 at 11:16, Dworkin Muller 
wrote:

> I have physical issues with trying to perform fine-grained mouse
> operations (uncontrollable small hand tremors).  The net effect is
> that anything more much specific than window selection is difficult
> and takes several seconds - pretty much the antithesis of the study
> results that showed that editing using the mouse to point to where you
> want to type, select text, etc was as efficient as keyboard-driven
> edit.  To give an idea of the scale of the problem, it's difficult to
> get the mouse positioned into the scrollbars or the command bar of
> acme windows, let alone point between two specific characters for
> inserting new text.
> 
> So, my question is, are there any viable alternatives for use with
> Plan9?  Throwing special hardware at the problem unfortunately isn't
> all that viable mainly due to budgetary issues - all the other
> environments I use support keyboard short-cuts for just about
> everything, so it's hard to justify spending any significant amount of
> money for what is essentially a low-priority hobby.
> 
> If the answer is just to use sam, I can do that, but it doesn't really
> help the problem of needing to copy/paste previous commands in
> terminal windows, etc.
> 
> Hopefully I'm missing something obvious
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Dworkin

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Re: [9fans] tinyemu - riscv emulator

[Cyber Fonic]

I had difficulty in getting tinyEmu from contrib/miller/tinyemu.tar
working. So I downloaded from Fabrice Bellard's web site and finally got it
running the Linux that is referenced on his web site.

I also have Richard Miller's RISC-V compiler compiled under x386 Plan9. BUT
... I can't find anything by searching on the various forums as to how to
get Plan9 working with tinyemu.

The almost year old post:
https://www.mail-archive.com/9fans@9fans.net/msg39198.html suggests that it
does work, but I can't find any Plan9 image to download nor any reference
as to how to port to RISC-V.

What am I missing?  Where should I be looking?


On Sun, 29 Nov 2020 at 07:14, Richard Miller <9f...@hamnavoe.com> wrote:

> Fabrice Bellard's tinyemu risc-v emulator, adapted for Plan 9, is
> now on 9p.io in contrib/miller/tinyemu.tar
> 

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Re: [9fans] tinyemu - riscv emulator

[Cyber Fonic]

The make command failed with dependency on slirp module.
The download from Fabrice's website included slirp and the make ran to
completion.

My *real unsolved issue* is that I don't understand how to create a version
of Plan9 that
boots and runs on tinyemu.  I confirmed that tinyemu itself runs fine
because I have
a version of Linux (via Buildroot?) running on tinyemu.

Alternatively an image that could be loaded with tinyemu configuration
would be useful.
That is, having files to specify with the *bios* and *kernel* parameters in
the configuration file.

The only notes on booting Plan9 that I could find are all for PC hardware.
Maybe I'm not looking in the right places.



On Mon, 8 Nov 2021 at 21:44, Richard Miller <9f...@hamnavoe.com> wrote:

> > I had difficulty in getting tinyEmu from contrib/miller/tinyemu.tar
> > working.
> 
> Can you be a bit more specific about your difficulty? How far did you
> get, what exactly didn't work?
> 
> To use networking, your Plan 9 kernel needs bridge(3) configured in.
> In tinyemu.tar there's an example bridge.rc script that shows how to
> set up a tunnel to bridge the tinyemu simulated network onto the real
> network.
> 

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Re: [9fans] tinyemu - riscv emulator

[Cyber Fonic]

Thank you for the nudges towards the right direction.
Self-inflicted confusion :  I'm running 9vx and forgot that I was mk'ing an
emulator to run within an emulator.

After a lot of fiddling with libraries, dependencies I got tinyemu to
compile and run.

When I execute:  tinyemu bridge.cfg
It can't find *9tecpu.bin*.
I presume that it's the Plan9 kernel.
Any suggestions as to what steps to take in order to generate it?





On Tue, 9 Nov 2021 at 02:40, Richard Miller <9f...@hamnavoe.com> wrote:

> > The make command failed with dependency on slirp module.
> 
> I don't think plan 9 has a 'make' command. If you just run 'mk'
> on plan 9 in the tinyemu directory, it uses the mkfile there
> and there's no slirp dependency.
> 

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Re: [9fans] tinyemu - riscv emulator

[Cyber Fonic]

Thanks for the lead.

Checked Geoff Collyer's web site  and
the release of the Plan9 kernels for RISC-V are imminent.

I'll wait for Geoff to release the new kernels.
In the meantime I have some low-level programming work with your compiler
and tinyemu running on a Raspberry Pi 2B.


On Wed, 10 Nov 2021 at 02:04, Richard Miller <9f...@hamnavoe.com> wrote:

> > It can't find *9tecpu.bin*.
> > I presume that it's the Plan9 kernel.
> > Any suggestions as to what steps to take in order to generate it?
> 
> Up to now the procedure for getting the 9k riscv kernel source
> is to ask its author (Geoff Collyer) for a copy.
> 

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Re: [9fans] NIX experience

[Cyber Fonic]

Whilst there are many HPC workloads that are well supported by GPGPUs, we
also have multi-core systems such as Ampere One and AMD EPYC with 192 cores
(and soon even more).
I would think that some of the Blue Gene and NIX work might be relevant on
such hardware.

On Sat, 28 Dec 2024 at 15:18, Anthony Sorace  wrote:

> I've thought for a while now that NIX might still have interesting things
> to say in the middle of the space, even if the HPC origins didn't work out.
> Probably most of us are walking around with systems with asymmetrical cores
> ("performance" vs. "efficiency") in our pockets right now; it seems like
> there's lots of space to explore *how* differently to manage these cores
> (as opposed to just spinning them up or not when needed but treating them
> as "regular").
>
> I think it's a good idea. But...
>
> > On Dec 27, 2024, at 08:32, Paul Lalonde 
> wrote:
> >
> > There is very little compute that's "cpu-limited" at multi-second scales
> that can't benefit from these approaches, hence the death of non-GPU
> supercomputing.
> 
> This is really good framing... even if it's bad for my idea. 🤣 "Compute
> that's "cpu-limited" at multi-second scales" really cuts out most
> applications at modern scale. Plenty of things like pro workflows, but the
> higher up you move there, the more likely you're pushing to GPUs anyway. I
> think the window isn't 0, but it's shrunk quite a bit.
> 

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[9fans] Plan9 C compiler targetting WASM

[Cyber Fonic]

My Google-fu is not coming up with any definitive results.

Does anybody know of any implementation of Plan9 C compiler targeting WASM ?

On a related note: I believe there was some work being done to target
RISC-V. I can't remember who or where it was located.

Appreciate any references or comments that you might have.

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Re: [9fans] Plan9 C compiler targetting WASM

[Cyber Fonic]

I admire the cross-compilation capabilities of Plan9. Compared to gcc and
Clang, Plan9 C compilers appeal to my sense of aesthetics. There are some
utilities that I would like to port to browser environments and I am loath
to use plan9port sources and thus wrangle with gcc, etc.

I totally concur with Nicklaus Wirth:  "Increasingly, people seem to
misinterpret complexity as sophistication, which is baffling -- the
incomprehensible should cause suspicion rather than admiration."

On Thu, 19 Dec 2024 at 00:20, gnufan42 via 9fans <9fans@9fans.net> wrote:

> > Does anybody know of any implementation of Plan9 C compiler targeting
> WASM ?
> 
> I don't think there is one. I found a project that claims to be a
> WebAssembly port of Plan9 not long time ago:
> https://github.com/xphung/plan9_webasm, and they used Emscripten. If you
> want a Plan9 C compiler targeting WASM you'll probably have to make one
> yourself, although I could be wrong.
> 
> Would you mind to share your use case?
> 

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