thm 2005-08-15 Summary
D1273173064
Auriel
#Note: This summary only contains what I thought to be significant,
#interesting and/or funny. -- Hyperion
#
#Original agenda:
# *	Discusions, 'long winded design discussions' are not happening in
#	9fans as hoped
# *	Future of Plan 9
# *	Unix/Linux version of auth server - tony_t
# *	Plan B - nemo
# *	[9P | http://9p.cat-v.org] Reliability Project Status -
#	Gorka/[ericvh]
# *	Jim Getty's SNAP vision - [ericvh]
# *	Propaganda efforts and documentation issues - [uriel]
# *	future 9con(s) - [uriel]
# *	Installer plans/work(problems with lack of testing...)
#
#9P RELIABILITY PROJECT STATUS -- ERICVH
#
# *	Gorka has completed his initial port of Russ' recover application
#	to the current distribution. It allows one to recover a session
#	that is lost due to network error, server reboot, etc.
# *	It also has some functionality to support failing over to
#	alternate servers (assuming some sort of mirroring of resources) -
#	but we haven't tested that much.
# *	It works under both Plan 9 native and Plan 9 Ports. We are
#	currently putting the finishing touches on a paper describing how
#	it works and then we'll release to sources and p9p. Downside is it
#	incurs about a 2x performance penalty on loopback under Plan 9 and
#	8x penalty under p9p on Linux. This overhead is likely less visible
#	on higher latency connections than loopback. The only way around
#	the overhead would be to push the recovery code inside the kernel
#	instead of providing it as a user application.
# *	Axel asked if the paper discusses the resason of the performance
#	penalty? Eric said it should and the reason is copy overhead. The
#	extra overhead on p9p under Linux is inefficient threads.
# *	Eric said it's actually an interposer for 9p. So instead of
#! srv sources.cs.bell-labs.com
#you
#! recover sources.cs.bell-labs.com
#! mount /srv/sources.cs.bell-labs.com
# *	Uriel asked what was required for having a fallback server. Eric
#	said that for static file systems it could be some sort of
#	synchronous mirror - Plan B has some facilities for this, but we
#	haven't tried using them yet.
#
#PROPAGANDA EFFORTS AND DOCUMENTATION ISSUES -- URIEL
#
# *	Would be good to have some input on what direction to take with
#	the docs. So far I was trying to put as much stuff on the wiki as I
#	can, so at least nothing is lost.
# *	Vester added that openness on best practices would be good too.
# *	Uriel would like to setup a mirror of all papers, ideally on
#	sources. He also said that having a reliable sources web interface
#	would be nice, not being sure if linking to 9grid.de from the main
#	wiki is a great idea, mirrors are good, but not as reliable and
#	uptodate as sources itself. If sources was exported over the web
#	from it's main location it would be great.
# *	Zimba asked if there were a list of who is responsible for what.
#	Uriel explained that there isn't and that everyone is free to work
#	on what they like, coordination has been traditionally thur 9fans,
#	if you want to work on something, just do it, don't wait for anyone
#	to give you 'permision'.
#
#JIM GETTY'S SNAP VISION -- ERICVH
#
# *	Jim Getty's is pushing his vision of the way the universe should
#	look, particularly in the home network environment. If you look at
#	his OLS paper http://google.com/search?q=getty's+snap, you'll see
#	it looks somewhat familiar - very much like the Inferno/Plan 9
#	vision, at least on the high level. Jim seemed to be very open to
#	Plan 9 style ideas, so it may not be a bad carrier to push Plan 9
#	ideas. Plan 9 technology seems to provide a lot more of what he
#	wants than the alternatives he mentions in his paper(s). Getty's
#	was pushing "lots of devices talking to eachother".
# *	Charles Forsyth remarked: He is Jim Gettys, so that to get him
#	interested you need to show him something he thinks he can't do or
#	prove to him you can do it better.
#
#PLAN B -- GORKA
#
# *	We are probably packaging an image with everything for September.
#	So people can look at it an maybe merge whatever they like into
#	Plan 9. Our idea was to get the good ideas in it into sources. It
#	is running on a modified version of the kernel, but there have been
#	many strategy changes. The most changes which make it to sources,
#	the less we have to maintain.
#
#FUTURE 9CONS -- URIEL
#
# *	Uriel would like to organize a 9con in Madrid this fall
#	(Oct-Nov). He was talking with Anavarro, and counting on nemo and
#	his students to do most of the work (;-)).
# *	Gorka said he wanted to help with it. He could provide location.
#	He wanted to actually organize it. But got into many things and
#	couldn't. We may get money for bringing people willing to give
#	conferences. But he needs time to do the paperwork for that.
# *	Charles Forsyth was interested in coming.
# *	20h said we will have a place in the hacking center, for Plan 9,
#	on CCC (Chaos Computer Congress/Berlin by the Chaos Computer Club
#	[http://www.ccc.de]). CCC will be on 26-31 December. For more info
#	see [22C3]. Garbeam and uriel plan to give Plan 9 related talks.
#
#ANNOUNCE AND ADOPT AN OPEN SOURCE MODEL WITH AN OPEN CORE TEAM -- VT3
#
# *	Vester asked what do we want to do as a community?
# *	Hyperion thought we'd all like to see such a model, but it
#	depended on the Bell Labs developers.
# *	Uriel warned that many people are happy with the status quo;
#	Including Andrey, Eric, Axel, Gorka.
# *	20h remarked we have a half open source model, as you can take
#	out the distribution and publish it on your own and that noone
#	complained about the differences of the 9grid.de .isos.
# *	Charles said the best thing to show Plan9 is not-dead is to apply
#	it more, esp. to do interesting things (or boring things in an
#	interesting way). That's really why Linux surpassed BSD: hardly
#	because it was better, but programmers wrote for Linux. And to be
#	most accurate, universities supported it.
# *	Axel wondered if it's about marketing. Vester and XTL agreed it
#	is.
# *	20h thought about having something like User Mode Linux for Plan
#	9.
# *	Vester suggested if we want to stand out from other OSes then add
#	user auditing features. This is what corporations do to standard
#	Windows and *ix machines.
#
#PLAN 9 PORT TO THE MAC MINI -- DAVID ECKHARDT (CMU)
#
# *	What the students have runs and has run on a mini. There are N
#	pieces of 1-person-sized work. There is a relevance issue, though,
#	given that G5's don't have BATs and that Apple is ditching PPC.
#
#INSTALLER PLANS/WORK -- URIEL
#
# *	Uriel thinks that there is need to unify the
#	install/bootabe-system/floppy to make testing easier, right now
#	there are four slightly different kernel images in one part or
#	another of the install system, and depending which one you end up
#	with some things work or not.
# *	20h said one of the problem is that the kernel configuration
#	specifies where to boot from.
# *	Vester said network installs don't work correctly.
#
#AFTER-CHAOS
#
# *	Hyperion thought Plan 9 is "dead" as a research OS. He was very
#	happy about Plan B becuase it had a lot of new ideas and research.
#	Plan 9 had no such things lately.
# *	XTL and fgb agreed to some extent.
# *	Axel saw a link between what Hyperion said and Forsyth's remark
#	about being able to do/show interesting things.
# *	David Eckhardt thought a changelog on the web would increase
#	sense of life; And asked if there is an easy way to partially
#	automate it by periodically snarfing the descriptive text of
#	submitted patches? Uriel has a script that generates notification
#	emails when patches are accpeted, plog. He saw the problem is that
#	not all changes go through patch(1).
# *	20h pointed out that there is [http://www.tip9ug.jp/rlog/]
# *	Vester flailed a dead rabbit: No organization, no infrastructure,
#	no policies nor direction, then we'll be here again next year
#	discussing the same things. Doing the same things and expecting
#	different results is... Well, we need to resolve the internal
#	issues.
# *	Uriel thinks the issues won't be solved because there is deep
#	disagreements on the very existence and importance of those issues,
#	too many people just don't care. So the only way to change things
#	is thru action, we have to try as many things as possible and see
#	what works and what doesn't.
# *	20h recommended to get good looking girls and a TV show for Plan
#	9.
# *	David asked if the "mux" M.S. thesis
#	[http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/papers/plan9:jmhickey-meng.pdf] should
#	be on the "papers" page. He was partway through and found it
#	readable. It also is a "liveness" datum. Uriel noted that there is
#	a new [Papers] wiki page that eventually should replace the
#	unmaintained static papers page.
#
#PS
#
# *	20h's tip:
#! htfilefs -m /tmp http://www.9grid.de/plan9/plan9.iso; 9660srv; mount /srv/9660 /n/cdrom /tmp/plan9.iso;
#
#UNIX/LINUX VERSION OF AUTH SERVER -- TONY_T
#
# *	Skipped becuase tony_t were absent
#