the fact that the networking works differently is
a problem for a number of other applications, too.
dns, snoopy, aoe, cec come immediately to mind
as useful stuff that won't work with 9vx.

On Fri, 2008-07-18 at 15:00 -0400, erik quanstrom wrote:

I was about to ask this very question (and say THANK YOU
to Russ for another awesome piece of software), but now
that you've mentioned it could you, please, elaborate
on why implementing proper ethernet was rejected?

Thanks,
Roman.

P.S. Either that or just a pointer to the existing
discussion ;-)

http://9fans.net/archive/2008/07/310

to paraphrase with my understanding, the feeling is that
9vx will be easier to admin if the host takes care of the
networking, dns, etc. that makes sense for many applications.

but what i'd really like is a drawterm replacement with its own
local devices. without local devices, there isn't much of an
advantage over drawterm — unless your cpu server many
ms away. graphics over the internet can be a bummer.

- erik

On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 1:20 PM, erik quanstrom coraid.com> wrote:

Well, I use vx32 as a terminal for both lguest and remote machines. No
real need for venfi/fossil. For edit, I import; to build etc. I cpu in
an acme window so i get the error stuff.

don't really want fossil/venti on vx32 yet, too slow (I tried it some
time last week). But it's a great terminal, much nicer than drawterm
for me.

ron

Like I said before, please add the local devices you want.
Just don't make them mandatory.

Russ

You've spent more time talking about this than
it would have taken to just implement the extra
pieces you want or need, like /net/ipifc and /net/ether.
The low-level OS grunge work is already done thanks
to p9p. It's just a few lines of code.

Or, if you are so inclined, you can port the entire
existing Plan 9 IP stack. That's more than just a
few lines of code.

Either way, complaining isn't nearly as effective as doing.

Russ

I have used octopus to access my plan 9 system over links
with 150ms of RTT I admit "graphics" are mostly faces and simple
vector graphics. Considering that for file viewers you copy
the files to a viewer device in the terminal, it all behaves reasonably.

The drawback is that you get very nervous regarding losing your
system due to power outages at the university :)

what's the advantage over drawterm in this configuration?

- erik

On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 6:31 PM, erik quanstrom quanstro.net> wrote:

latency. The interactive program (e.g. acme) is on my machine, not on
a remote machine. Rio is local. And so on.

ron

In the case you quote, you'd have many of the advantages
of a standalone Plan 9 terminal, like local handling of graphics
and the mouse, the ability to connect to many machines
simultaneously, the ability to withstand those machines
rebooting, and so on. It depends a lot on what you're doing.

Here's another example.

For about seven years I had the luxury of running Plan 9
as my day-to-day system, but I couldn't easily keep doing
that and work with the people around me at MIT; around
2003, I gave it up and switched to FreeBSD and Linux.
(You'll note that's when the p9p CVS logs begin.)
I haven't booted an actual Plan 9 terminal in a couple of years.

Since then, I've had the smaller luxury of running Plan 9
as a venti server, now atop some nice hardware we bought
from Coraid. The Coraid box has a tiny, slow IDE flash disk
for a root file system, fine...