THM 2005-06-23 Summary (Plan 9 wiki)

Original agenda:

Documentation: status, people working on it, goals, resources.
Plan 9/Inferno/Limbo integration(native dis, auth, shared code, etc.)
Ports to new arches and coordination of kernel work (x86-64, Sparc, Xen, ...)
Tech transfer: p9p, dtLinux.
v9fs status report - ericvh
An update on the 9grid and cross-domain auth? - 20h

Notes taken by [email protected]. If there are inaccuracies please email the fix to me and I'll update the wiki or fix them in the wiki directly. All names are given as the IRC Nickname used during the meeting with punctuation omitted.

Ericvh was the moderator. The meeting went for slightly longer than one hour. The moderator allotted ten minutes for each topic.

DOCUMENTATION

Uriel asked for feedback about the curent documentation.

Newsh requested compiler and kernel documentation. Uriel noted that he is trying to get Boyd to document the compiler.

20h suggested that there should be an introduction to creating documentation to help recruit new documenters.

Uriel started a discussion about what belonged in the wiki and what belonged in more formal documentation.

Ericvh said that over time some wiki documentation should be formalized into /sys/doc and /sys/man. He offered that information should be annotated in the wiki for future migration to formal documentation.
Musasabi said that there should be a good Plan9 introduction document showing how to use Plan9 system components together.
Ericvh noted that v9fs exposure might offer the opportunity for people to publish such documents.
Ericvh pointed out that the wiki is a good place for tutorials, and while there is a lot of configuration tutorial material there is not good coverage of other topics.
Uriel said that the ports document from /sys/doc should be moved to the wiki.
Uriel said he has updated html documentation and asked how to submit it. Ericvh suggested putting them on sources and notifying Jmk and Russ.
Uriel noted that the updates were hand edits due to deficiencies in troff2html that would likely be hard to fix.

PLAN9/INFERNO INTEGRATION

Uriel asked if anyone is still working on native Dis.

Lucho responded that he has not done any new work for lack of time. He is not aware of anyone else doing any work but thinks the work would be useful especially for writing GUI applications.
CaptainWillard said dis is native on froggie (f2f notes that froggie is brucee's OzInferno box).

Uriel offered up the idea of merging Inferno into the Plan9 distribution.

20h said dtLinux 2.6 will have p9p and Inferno.

Uriel asked about code sharing "(specially kencc)" and auth compatibility. This started off a discussion on supporting Inferno's auth mechanisms.

Ericvh said it was a good idea to integreat Inferno's auth mechanisms int Plan9, p9p and v9fs.

F2f mentioned that the auth mechanisms are PKI based and Uriel offered that they may provide a solution to cross domain authentication in Grid computing. (This topic is discussed more later).

Cross stated a desire for a Kerberos KDC which Ericvh seconded.

The lack of manpower to do the actual work was discussed and Uriel decided to add the item to the wiki TODO list. Ericvh said that this would be a great community project and said we should resume discussions on the mailing list (9fans).

PORTS TO NEW ARCHITECTURES AND KERNEL WORK

Newsh said that he has not done any work on sparc recently and has started working on Xen 3.0 with Ron.

Uriel asked if Kuro has worked out issues of overlapping work with Jmk, but Kuroneko was not around and nobody could offer an answer.

Ericvh said that ppc64 work looks to be moving ahead but didn't have further details since he is not directly involved.

Ericvh also pointed out that he put a G5 ppc64 linux machine on the network for people to use. He also mentioned that IBM will be releasing its full system simulator for ppc64 (ppc970 GP/UL and rhype) any day now.
Cross asked which machines other than the fated Apple ppc machines might benefit from such a port and Ericvh mentioned the Ps/3 and Xbox 360.

Newsh asked about how the cell would be used and Ericvh said the PPC core would run Plan9 and provided some examples of how the SIMD cores might be used.

TECH TRANSFER PROJECTS (P9P, DTLINUX, V9FS)

Ericvh passed on a p9p update on behalf of Russ (who was not present). Work continues but nothing big is planned. Venti is working and available from the p9p CVS (although under a different module name). Russ and Jmk are going to put venti through its paces at the Labs and then roll it into p9p and Plan9.

20h is working on dtLinux 2.6 with some free time he has gotten recently. It will have p9p, Inferno and v9fs.

Ericvh also mentioned progress on a drawterm replacement under p9p which started off a discussion about drawterm and splitting up p9p into packages. The drawterm discussion:

p9p drawterm is progressing but Russ hasn't had time for it lately. It still needs work on the synthetic console and graphics devices.
Ericvh stated that dt2k has windows support and that there is talk of dropping the old drawterm completely. He also stated he has it working in ppc-linux.
Uriel asked who maintains dt2k, Ericvh pointed out that it is available at ucalgary (f2f's repository) and f2f eventually replied that it is unknown who current maintainer is.
20h stated an objection to p9p as a drawterm replacement due to its size and lack of modularity.
Uriel stated that a Limbo-based drawterm would be a good solution and be easy to do (once Plan9 authentication issues are addressed in Inferno).
Hyperion hinted that VNC is a viable alternative and Ericvh pointed out that VNC doesn't do everything that drawterm does.
Ericvh asked for promiment drawterm documentation on the wiki and Uriel agreed that a drawterm page should be made.

The discussion on finer grained packaging of p9p:

Newsh stated that taking a specific component, such as drawterm, out of p9p and providing binaries or sources seperately shouldnt be too hard. 20h offered skepticism that this would actually occur due to traditional lack of manpower.
Ericvh said he had talked to Russ about breaking up p9p and that Russ wasn't opposed to it but did not want the packaging to be too granular due to interdependencies.
Uriel stated that there should be a package of libraries and opined that developers want libraries seperate from the applications.
Cross argued that breaking up p9p will only increase complexity.
Some stated that p9p is too monolithic and others pointed out that Plan9 has traditionally been monolithic. The topic drifted towards the philosophical.
Ericvh pointed out that if the sources are removed p9p is quite small.

Ericvh said he packaged p9p for gentoo and submitted them, although the packages are "lost in their bugtracker."

9GRID AND CROSS-DOMAIN AUTH

20h stated that there are two proposed solutions that have been developed and are in use. One is his own in use for 9grid.de and the other is tip9ug's implementation in use at tip9ug.jp.

The potential for using Inferno's PKI-based authentication was suggested by Newsh and Uriel. 20h pointed out that the main obstacle is getting someone to write the code.

Ericvh expressed an interest in hosting some cross domain authentication server but may not be able to due to his network setup and a desire to maintain his current ability to authenticate against sources.

Nashi pointed out that you can log in to isengard.tip9ug.jp with either a sources account or a tip9ug account.

Nashi said his factotum patches are available at http://www.tip9ug.jp/who/nashi/9grid/p9sk1.c

Ericvh said that there should be a wiki to collect information about the cross-domain authentication systems and Newsh seconded this idea.

Uriel noted that there should be some coordination between the people working on cross-domain authentication. Ericvh pointed out that the wiki would aid in this.
Nashi said he would translate his page and place it on the wiki.
Quintile suggested a seperate mailing list and several people replied that 9fans would be suitable.

TEXT BASED INSTALL

The topic sponsor was idle and this topic was skipped at first and returned to when the sponsor returned.

Bakul expressed a desire to have a pre-canned automated installer that required no interaction.

Ericvh suggested that there should be an option to install a CPU server from the installer.

Newsh offered that this could be a shell script that is run post-install to upgrade a terminal to a CPU server.

Ericvh offered instead that it be a final step after the installer has finished the installation. He also asked for a volunteer but no one responded publically. Uriel said he would add the item to the wiki TODO page.

VESA SUPPORT

Uriel asked when VESA support would be in the install ISO. Nobody present was able to answer.

Uriel started off a discussion of wether the ISO should support both native and VESA drivers or only the VESA driver.

Hyperion pointed out that VESA did not work on his geforce2.
Ericvh stated that VESA was an important option during installs and suggested that it could be a boot argument or part of a companion boot floppy.
Uriel noted that 20h would like to remove native drivers to save space.
Uriel pointed out that VESA does not universally work and where it does may not work as well as native drivers in terms of selection of screen resolutions and refresh rates.
Ericvh pointed out that it would work more reliably than native drivers for LiveCDs and installers and that users could use native drivers after install if they so choose.

CHAOS

Ericvh called for a volunteer to moderate the next meeting.

Hyperion asked if the future direction of Xen 3.0 will adversely affect Plan9. Newsh and Ericvh answered that it will not since there are no plans for a Plan9 Domain 0.