I'm still puzzled by the “hw tlb loading disabled w/o sw loading available” warning displayed b... ]]> iru@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/iru/blog/2007-08-02-1_back http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/iru/blog/2007-08-02-1_back Thu, 02 Aug 2007 20:26:23 +0200 Working on o9fs has teached me many more things that I can count, but surely one of the most precious are the real need for simple code. Having no internet for almost two weeks, man pages and source code have been my best friends on the learning process. It could have been a real pain if I wasn't hacking on clean and simple 9P and, even being a unix-like os, the OpenBSD kernel. Even if some people don't like to hear this, good code *is* documentation. On the technical part the communication framework is almost totally finished and it's pretty usable. The filesystem can mount, resolve names (lookup was such a pain to get 'right'), open, and close files. Next step is working on Tread related stuff such as read (duh!) and readdir. I spent a great deal of time thinking about how directories should be implemented when the simplest way was obvious: a list of fids. Before going on th... ]]> dhains@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/dhains/blog/2007-08-02-1_Update_on_the_cocytus_file_server: http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/dhains/blog/2007-08-02-1_Update_on_the_cocytus_file_server: Thu, 02 Aug 2007 22:51:47 +0200 I've been somewhat of a recluse this summer, so for those of you who don't know, this project aim is to implement a read/write filesystem for Inferno with a Venti backend. The next few days I will be dissecting vacput (A nice tool written by Oksel) into a lib as it does somethings that we need in the fs, and it is deemed quicker then writing this same functionality from scratch. Once this is complete we will integrate this lib into a styx server (the fs) and make the appropriate mappings between styx calls and the lib. The end product should be a fs which mounts a venti root, caches modified blocks in memory until a time that it will sync these modified blocks back to the venti server. You can think our fs as an overlay for the traditional venti block pointer heirarchy, only it can point to either locally cached modified blocks or pure venti blocks. ]]> uriel@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/News/2007-08-02-1_Post-mid-term_changes http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/News/2007-08-02-1_Post-mid-term_changes Thu, 02 Aug 2007 02:24:28 +0200 First of all, I want to thank all the students and mentors who have worked hard to make this GSoC successful. The mid-term evaluations are over, and there are both good and bad news and some important changes on how we are going to work from now on. The good news: some projects have made amazing progress and are well underway to archive their main goals, congratulations to everyone who got this far. The bad news: many projects are way behind schedule, and what is worse, due to lack of open communication it is impossible to estimate what their exact status is and what changes need to be made to bring them back on track. During the first half of GSoC everyone got a free hand to organize their projects in any way they wanted, no requirements were made and there was no control of how projects were going. It was probably naive to assume things would work out fine this way, but it probably was a lesson we needed to learn. Starting next week every project should at least follow this basic requirements: * Students should post to their blog or in this list at least twice a week ... ]]> ameya@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/ameya/blog/2007-08-02-1_9load_page_table_setup http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/ameya/blog/2007-08-02-1_9load_page_table_setup Thu, 02 Aug 2007 19:49:35 +0200 Today i read the code in 9load's l.s file. I wanted to get information about the way 9load sets up paging for plan9 kernel. I figured out that 9load turns on paging. It identity maps first 16 MB of memory to 2 GB and above it. I find this quite odd, normally bootloader never uses paging, when kernel gets control it sets up the page tables. Now my next task is to check the startup code in kernel, and figure out how it uses this mapping, and if possible remove dependency from 9loads memory mapping. ]]> gammal@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/gammal/blog/2007-07-29-1_Cell_Memory_Management http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/gammal/blog/2007-07-29-1_Cell_Memory_Management Sun, 29 Jul 2007 03:47:31 +0200

Several bugs have been identified and fixed in the MMU code. Although the first user process still dies prematurely. I hope that we're close to finding the remaining issues. The simulator output has been very useful, although it's really a tedious task having to single-step through long runs of instructions to find where things go wrong.

Most changes have been done in l.s, an assembly file containing processor initialization code & other essential functions, and mmu.c, which has the MMU code specific to the Cell BE. This is a brief summary of the issues that were solved so far:

• As an enhancement, l.s now uses the TLBIA instruction to invalidate the whole TLB, instead of looping through all entries. This is both smaller & faster.
• The simulator was producing warnings about bad values used in specifying the TLB way. I found that a bit-mask used to specify the way had an invalid value.
• We're software-managing the TLB, and I found that in certain places, inconsistency is crea... ]]> iru@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/iru/blog/2007-07-26-1_init http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/iru/blog/2007-07-26-1_init Tue, 26 Jun 2007 20:25:16 +0200 hello, 9. this is my first post and i'm happy to announce my initial commit to the o9fs repo. the code is not as clean as i want it to be. this initial commit brings a new virtual filesystem which issues a Tversion message and fake a mount point. after finishing the communication framework i can get back to the real point (i.e. 9P and vfs). if anybody is wiling to give it a try (i doubt it) send me an email at iru.muzgo!gmail asking for instructions on how to install it. ]]> anant@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/anant/blog/2007-07-26-1_Mapping_9P_to_REST http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/anant/blog/2007-07-26-1_Mapping_9P_to_REST Mon, 15 Oct 2007 01:00:06 +0200 Now that the PHP bindings to libixp are somewhat usable, I've moved on to the JavaScript portion of my project. The first (and easier!) part of it is to map 9P to a RESTful scheme, so traditional web developers can use 9P without having to learn anything new. The PHP bindings to libixp was an important pre-requisite to achieve this: presenting a REST interface to an existing 9P serve would require a "bridge" at the middle, to convert REST requests to 9P requests and vice-versa with responses. This "bridge" may be present at any location that is mutually accessible by the client wanting RESTful access and the server providing the 9P service. This bridge can be easily coded in PHP using the new libixp bindings. To those not... ]]> ameya@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/ameya/blog/2007-07-18-1_B4_Laptop_Arrived http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/ameya/blog/2007-07-18-1_B4_Laptop_Arrived Wed, 18 Jul 2007 21:41:36 +0200 Today I got the B4 laptop. Its very fast compared to previous B1 machine. OLPC is making impressive progress. I also completed reading about paging and plan9 compiler and assembler papers. ]]> ameya@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/ameya/blog/2007-07-12-2_Things_to_do_next http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/ameya/blog/2007-07-12-2_Things_to_do_next Thu, 12 Jul 2007 21:13:54 +0200 I found out that plan9 kernel startup point is in l.s file.
  9load enables paging and maps first 16 MB of RAM identity mapped.
  OFW doesn't support this. Also plan9 assembly is somewhat different than GNU or Intel assembly. Looking at this issue I think I need to read following things first before proceeding further: 1. Paging - Page Tables Setup etc. 2. How to use Plan9 C compiler - Rob Pike 3. A Manual for Plan9 assembler - Rob Pike ]]> ameya@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/ameya/blog/2007-07-12-1_Open_Firmware_Client_Interface_Information http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/ameya/blog/2007-07-12-1_Open_Firmware_Client_Interface_Information Thu, 12 Jul 2007 11:47:51 +0200 While handling control to Operating System; OFW passes address of client interface handler in register EAX. So in Plan9 kernel we need to copy this value from EAX and store it in a variable. And we need to do this before somebody else overwrites EAX register. Rules for making OFW client interface call from Operating System: 1. CS nad DS selectors should point to flat 4GB segments. 2. EAX should contain pointer to argument array. 3. On return from OFW, EAX contains return value. ]]> nwf@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/nwf/blog/2007-07-11-1_Baby_dyngen. http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/nwf/blog/2007-07-11-1_Baby_dyngen. Wed, 11 Jul 2007 03:42:41 +0200 Substantive (if demo quality) progress has been made on the dynamic code translator, dyngen. Some demo code is available here (requires upstream dynld code, mirrored here). Commentary about the demo, dyngen, and next steps has been shunted to another file so as not to clog the blog page. Some updates have been made to the strategy paper to talk about a new translation buffer strategy (thanks to Eckhardt) and say a bit more about dynld, including discussion of an extension to make the immediate value folding dance easier for dyngen. ]]> ameya@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/ameya/blog/2007-07-10-2_First_OLPC_Program http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/ameya/blog/2007-07-10-2_First_OLPC_Program Tue, 10 Jul 2007 15:23:55 +0200 To check whether a program compiled using Plan9's compiler works on OLPC I wrote following program. This program fills OLPC's screen with Blue color. void _main(void) { int i=0; unsigned short *fb = (unsigned short *) 0xfd000000; for(i=0; i<1200*900;i++) { *fb = 0x0015U fb++; } } Here linear frame buffer start address is 0xfd000000.
  OLPC Screen Resolution is 1200x900.
  Color Depth is 16 bits.
  0x0015U is value for Blue color.
  I compiled this program using following commands, 8c color.c 8l -H5 -T0x100000 color.8 I got __8.out__ which was in ELF format. I wanted OLPC's open firmware to load this executable at 1MB so I gave -T0x100000 option to 8l. To execute this program, copy it to USB disk. Attached this USB disk to OLPC and boot the laptop. You need to p... ]]> ameya@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/ameya/blog/2007-07-10-1_Plan9_Tips http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/ameya/blog/2007-07-10-1_Plan9_Tips Tue, 10 Jul 2007 14:49:17 +0200 I want to documents some tips here, which are quite useful. Copying files from Plan9 to Linux using floppy:
  
  Create a 1.44 MB floppy image in linux, format it with FAT FS. Use it as 1st floppy disk in qemu.
  In Plan9, use following commands to access it:
  `a:`
  `cd /n/a:` Editing plan9.ini configuration file:
  
  Type following command in Plan9,
  `9fat:`
  `cd /n/9fat` Command to reboot / halt the system: `reboot fshalt` For PC 386:
  8c - is the C compiler
  8a - is the assembler
  8l - is the linker
  One typically needs to add u.h and libc.h files as headers for C programs. Important linker options for 8l are:
  -H5 = Output is generated with ELF header
  -l = Suppress default loading of startup files.
  -T0x100000 = Loads Text section at 1MB Default Entry symbol is `_main` Default Plan9 kernel configuration for PC is `pcf` Procedure for Compiling kernel:
  `cd /sys/src/9/pc`
  `mk 'CONF=pcf'` To compile kernel in ELF format I modified `/sys/src/9/pc/mkfile` ... ]]> anant@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/anant/blog/2007-07-09-1_Herald_the_PHP_9P_Client http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/anant/blog/2007-07-09-1_Herald_the_PHP_9P_Client Mon, 15 Oct 2007 01:00:06 +0200 I've given a few final touches to the 9P client for PHP. All the basic stuff should work (if they don't please let me know!), and I've written a script that shows some of the basic functionality that the client offers. Two actually, [this one][1] for the CLI SAPI and [this one][2] for the Apache2 SAPI. All they do is read files and show directory listings, but the scripts are a good place to see what the API is like, since there's no official documentation yet. I couldn't locate a proper PHP 5 server to actually host the second example, which would have been cool… but now we'll just have to make do with these screenshots I took off my browser (with the script running on my local Apache): * * * [ ![Startup Screen][3]][3] * * * Once you've put in the address, you'll get a directory listing of the root: * * * [ ![Viewer][4]][4] * * * While the CLI SAPI demo script also handles binary files quite well, this one will just send gibberish to your screen if you click on a binary file (text files work fine though). I'm still trying to figure out what's the best way of determining the MIME type of a file so I can send the appropriate HTTP header before transmitting the data itself,  so your browser would know how to interpret it. As for the server-side of things, the code is still in a state of flux and I'm not decided on what kind of API to offer. I'll probably take a break from this part of the project and move on the JS bindings, and then come back to tie this up in the end. That's not to ... ]]> ameya@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/ameya/blog/2007-07-08-1_Hello http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/ameya/blog/2007-07-08-1_Hello Sun, 08 Jul 2007 18:22:29 +0200 This my first post ! *Hello* _World_ !!! ]]> anant@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/anant/blog/2007-07-06-1_Some_more_on_Object_Oriented_PHP_Extensions http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/anant/blog/2007-07-06-1_Some_more_on_Object_Oriented_PHP_Extensions Mon, 15 Oct 2007 01:00:06 +0200 Hopefully this is the last of [the][1] [series][2] on Object Oriented PHP Extensions. We left the last post with a question of how to create objects of a certain class in a method of another. This is especially relevant to the libixp extension, since classes like IxpStat, IxpQid and IxpCFid don't have any constructors of their own, but are rather returned by methods of the IxpClient class. For example, an _open()_ on IxpClient returns a IxpCFid, and the IxpQid is a property of the IxpStat and IxpCFid classes. How do we get this to work? The helpful folks at #php.pecl on EFNet pointed me to a few [examples][3] in the existing PHP codebase that do this. First, you need to initialize an object - which essentially involves: * Calling _ALLOC_ZVAL_ on the zval. * Setting the type to OBJECT using _Z_TYPE_P_. * Calling _object_init_ex()_, which in turn will call the corresponding _create_object_ method for the class entry. * Setting the object's _refcount_ to 1. Once you've done this, most often you'd need to set up certain properties on the class object. In libixp's case, we need to populate IxpStat's, IxpCFid's or IxpQid's properties. You can create a method to populate each classes properties. I use a set of _PROP_SET_*_ macros to update properties correctly. Check out the [code][4] to clear things up - _object_instantiate()_ is the generic method for allocating memory for a object, and the _PHP_*_initialize()_ set of methods set properties for particular classes. These functions are... ]]> bnext@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/bnext/blog/2007-07-03-1_Now_what http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/bnext/blog/2007-07-03-1_Now_what Tue, 03 Jul 2007 19:54:02 +0200 Once I have a plugin structured program I have to load the VM with it. In order to do it I've written a 'firefox' configuration file, it's a copy of 'emu' configuration file but I've modified it introducing the flags and path's (include's) that it needs to compile inferno as a plugin. First I modify the mkfile and write a new variable "PLUG", then I put this new variable in the compilation objectives (OBJ variable), I put the 'firefox' config file in the CONFLIST, and I redefine the PLUG variable in 'firefox' so that PLUG point to the plugin structure code files. Then I have a shared object lib of 5 MB where the emu VM and the plugin structured program live together. Now Mozilla can use this lib, and the plugin loads, on the other hand, emu is not running, it's only loaded but not running. I could try to run emu writing a mainplugin procedure which is called from the plugin init cycle. This mainplu... ]]> bnext@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/bnext/blog/2007-06-27-2_Lets_talk_about_plugins http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/bnext/blog/2007-06-27-2_Lets_talk_about_plugins Wed, 27 Jun 2007 22:22:57 +0200 Ok, let's talk about plugins, Firefox plugins are written using the NPAPI (Gecko Plugin API: http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Gecko_Plugin_API_Reference), Mozilla provides an SDK and API in order to let programmers who want to build plugins build it without needing of the entire mozilla source code tree, you can get it here (http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Gecko_SDK). there are a lot of documentation right there, however most of these docs are incomplete. You can find examples and tests of using the npapi (http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Plugins:_Samples_and_Test_Cases). If I have to be honest, I couldn't even compile these examples without errors, I don't know if I'm a little bit clumsy... Then, what did I do? Well, the npapi is in C++ with O.O. and I want C pure, then I get the SDK and I write my own NPAPI interface, I write a C version of the needed files, based on the Gecko Plugin API Reference. I wrote two files, "npn_gate.c" and "npp_gate.c", these f... ]]> devin@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/devin/blog/2007-06-27-1_Getting_Inferno-Synth_Up_and_Running http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/devin/blog/2007-06-27-1_Getting_Inferno-Synth_Up_and_Running Sat, 26 Apr 2008 01:02:56 +0200 OMG Update! =========== Yes, ladies and gentlemen, an update! I will skip the pleasantries and announce, for the second time, I will be posting some updates on the development of [inferno-synth](http://code.google.com/p/inferno-synth). Perhaps this post is a little premature given I don't even have inferno on this machine yet. However, I'll be into the mix soon enough. Cheers, D ]]> bnext@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/bnext/blog/2007-06-27-1_First_time http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/bnext/blog/2007-06-27-1_First_time Wed, 27 Jun 2007 21:29:25 +0200 Hi people! I'm here, at last. Well, I'm Bnext and I'm building the Inferno Plugin for Mozilla Firefox (IPMF), from now on I hope to update the blog entries daily. I've uploaded my first code delivery ;) Ok, that's all, will go to the code :P ]]> nwf@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/nwf/blog/2007-06-22-1_Well_hello. http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/nwf/blog/2007-06-22-1_Well_hello. Fri, 22 Jun 2007 19:00:43 +0200 Apologies for the rather pronounced radio silence up until now, but I have been working with Eckhardt to produce a strategy paper. It identifies what seem to be key hurdles for getting the QEMU code generator working on Plan 9 (under kencc) and proposes at least one and usually more solution per problem. I would deeply appreciate feedback from any and all interested parties. My email address is nwfilardo@gmail.com. [Update: now using the absolute path for the paper. Thanks to Oksel for pointing out the need.] ]]> mjl@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/mjl/blog/2007-06-20-1_Ventisrv_compression http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/mjl/blog/2007-06-20-1_Ventisrv_compression Thu, 12 Jul 2007 14:43:45 +0200 ### Compression Work done since my [previous post](http://gsoc.cat-v.org/people/mjl/blog/2007-06-15-1_Vac_tools_in_inferno): Compression in ventisrv. As you might know now, ventisrv stores blocks from 1 byte to 56kb in size on disk. These blocks are immutable: cannot be (re)moved or modified. The typical block size is 8kb for normal data blocks, and usually smaller for directory entries and pointer blocks (but that's outside the scope of this post). Now [venti from Plan 9](http://plan9.bell-labs.com/magic/man2html/8/venti), and the [newer venti from Plan 9 From User Space](http://swtch.com/plan9port/man/man8/venti.html) try to compress a block before writing it to disk, and only if compression makes it smaller, they store it compressed. This saves disk space for many blocks. Ventisrv at first did not have the ability to compress blocks, but always stored them 'raw'. With the changes of this week, the option `-c` enables compression. It isn't on by default because the compression speed limits write throughput: Compression is expensive (more so in Limbo then i... ]]> uriel@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/News/2007-06-19-1_Fixed_RSS_feeds http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/News/2007-06-19-1_Fixed_RSS_feeds Tue, 19 Jun 2007 15:27:27 +0200 RSS feeds were broken for a while, they should be working properly again, sorry for the inconvenience. ]]> mjl@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/mjl/blog/2007-06-15-1_Vac_tools_in_inferno http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/mjl/blog/2007-06-15-1_Vac_tools_in_inferno Wed, 20 Jun 2007 18:18:36 +0200 ### news good news! the vacget, vacput and vacfs code of the ventivac project is now in the [inferno-os subversion repository](http://code.google.com/p/inferno-os/source). many thanks to charles forstyh. this makes it very easy to test that code, so please try it out. the patch to /appl/lib/venti.b ([mentioned here](http://gsoc.cat-v.org/people/mjl/blog/2007-06-06-1_Starting)) that was needed before, has been included in inferno-os svn as well, so no more patching is required. ventisrv and vcache are not in the inferno-os svn, so keep checking out the ventivac hg repository (it will also contain updates to the vac tools). ### ventisrv testing for testing, i've set up a ventisrv on gsoc.cat-v.org. note that it is for testing, so don't store your very important data in it, yet. for example, to write a file to it, try this: ; vacput -a net!gsoc.cat-v.org!venti welcome.txt vac:a39bc0605cc80c7dee50f02c2ef6c502e740c376 now lis... ]]> uriel@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/News/2007-06-14-1_First_general_IRC_meeting http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/News/2007-06-14-1_First_general_IRC_meeting Thu, 14 Jun 2007 01:58:24 +0200 I hope that all your projects are going well. Given that all projects should be underway by now, and that almost all participants got accounts at http://gsoc.cat-v.org now it is a good time to get together in irc and see what everyone is up to and discuss any issues anyone might have. Two irc meetings per week are planned, so don't worry too much if you can't attend one of them. The first one will be tomorrow at 22:00 UTC. The location as usual is #plan9-gsoc in irc.freenode.org (and don't forget that you probably can hold of someone there any time of the day or night if you have any questions or problems.) ]]> anant@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/anant/blog/2007-06-13-1_More_on_Object_Oriented_PHP_extensions http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/anant/blog/2007-06-13-1_More_on_Object_Oriented_PHP_extensions Mon, 15 Oct 2007 01:00:06 +0200 In the [last][1] post, I mentioned that the libixp sources may have to be modified to work around callbacks, but [Kris][2] quickly pointed out that there's a special _aux_ element meant specifically for developers to put whatever they like into. The _aux_ element is automatically passed to every callback function via the Ixp9Req struct: `struct Ixp9Req { Ixp9Conn *conn; Fid *fid; Fid *newfid; Ixp9Req *oldreq; Fcall ifcall; Fcall ofcall; void *aux; };` The aux element is created during the call to ixp_listen: `IxpConn *ixp_listen(IxpServer *s, int fd, void *aux, void (*read)(IxpConn *c), void (*close)(IxpConn *c));` Now how do we wrap this functionality in PHP land? The aux f... ]]> mjl@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/mjl/blog/2007-06-12-2_Ventisrv_bugfix http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/mjl/blog/2007-06-12-2_Ventisrv_bugfix Tue, 12 Jun 2007 18:16:32 +0200 a short note again. i just fixed a bug in ventisrv that caused it to misread the data file and spew error messages. that has been fixed now in the mercurial repository. there are also a few vacfs changes in there. so `hg pull` and try again please! ]]> mjl@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/mjl/blog/2007-06-12-1_Ventisrv_and_more http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/mjl/blog/2007-06-12-1_Ventisrv_and_more Tue, 12 Jun 2007 00:50:26 +0200 some news on the ventivac front. this post is mostly about how to use `ventisrv.b`, the (still work in progress) venti server. most of the code has been cleaned up a bit. not `vacfs.b` yet though, that one is next. the manual pages have been cleared up a bit. the biggest difference since my previous post has been that ventisrv is now closer to being a useful venti server. it should not be considered stable yet, and the file format might change as well, but i think it's worth a try now! ### so, where to start? the [ventisrv manual page (snapshot version)](http://ueber.net/vac/db235f56a68b2645d9723cf57469622fec46b0ec/ventisrv.html) should offer a decent introduction. if anything is unclear after reading it or questions got raised by it, please let me know so i can clarify the manual page. in short, if you want to run a venti server with a data file of 8 gigabytes and an expected mean blocksize of 8 kilobytes, executing the following commands starts a fresh ventisrv: echo -n > data echo -n > index # these first two only ... ]]> izaki@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/izaki/blog/2007-06-07-1_My_laptop_at_last http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/izaki/blog/2007-06-07-1_My_laptop_at_last Thu, 07 Jun 2007 14:13:35 +0200 Well, at last I have my laptop out from the technical service, so I don't have to share computer anymore. That means bbye lunix for the summer... And also that I don't have to do any more qemu "magic" to work with two synergy running machines. ]]> mjl@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/mjl/blog/2007-06-06-2_Mercurial http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/mjl/blog/2007-06-06-2_Mercurial Wed, 06 Jun 2007 13:56:41 +0200 just a short note. i put the source code so far in mercurial. it can be found at: [http://gsoc.cat-v.org/hg/ventivac/](http://gsoc.cat-v.org/hg/ventivac/) so, a `hg clone http://gsoc.cat-v.org/hg/ventivac/ my-ventivac` should suffice to get a copy. see the `README` on how to compile and install. enjoy! ]]> mjl@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/mjl/blog/2007-06-06-1_Starting http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/mjl/blog/2007-06-06-1_Starting Wed, 06 Jun 2007 02:30:01 +0200 Hi all. Here is a first progress report. To start with, here is some code in action: [http://ueber.net/vac/bc32a6a6f09395131bec9f34d75e7cfda4b1ffc7/](http://ueber.net/vac/bc32a6a6f09395131bec9f34d75e7cfda4b1ffc7/) This is an http interface to a venti server. The files are served by `vacfs.b`, which is a vac file server a lot like `vacfs` from Plan 9. The difference is that this one can serve arbitrary vac root scores: The root directory appears empty. Walking to a score tries to open that score as a vac root score and serves the contents of that vac. The current (work in progress, with at least one severe bug, be warned!) `vacfs.b` can be found in the vac archive referenced above. As a sidenote, the http interface is a scgi program that reads directories and prints out html. There are some more interesting bits in the archive. But note that these programs are not final, they may be removed/replaced/redesigned later on. And when I put this in the mercurial repository, I will also make a proper directory hierarchy and mkfile. Here is only a summary of the some... ]]> izaki@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/izaki/blog/2007-06-05-1_Updated_information http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/izaki/blog/2007-06-05-1_Updated_information Tue, 05 Jun 2007 20:56:03 +0200 Hello there! I've been updating the project pages. Take a look at them... What is missing? Any comments or questions you can find me on irc.freenode.net. Cheers! ]]> kris@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/kris/blog/2007-06-05-1_On_Ken http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/kris/blog/2007-06-05-1_On_Ken Sat, 09 Jun 2007 02:16:24 +0200 The Plan 9 compilers present an interesting challenge in porting. Because Plan 9 was, and is, a research operating system, the architects were allowed to throw away convention, and implement things in the best manner they were able. For the compilers, this has manifested in a number of ways. The most visable to the users is that ANSI C has been both extended and restricted, in ways which Plan 9 programmers generally find agreeable. But, for the compiler architect and porter, there are obvious, larger changes, which present obstacles to porting. To begin with, the system does not use the standard stack semantics of any given architecture. This used to read that, on Plan 9, the stack always grows away from 0, as I was misled to believe. Actually, on all architectures on Plan 9, the stack grows towards the lower address range, i.e. 0 Arguments and local variables are accessed at known offsets from the stack pointer, and the base register remains free for the compiler t... ]]> devin@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/devin/blog/2007-06-05-1_Getting_Started http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/devin/blog/2007-06-05-1_Getting_Started Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:22:33 +0200 Hello everyone! I am very excited to be working with plan9/inferno on such a unique project. There have been a number of ideas floating around with respect to the final goal of my [project](http://gsoc.cat-v.org/projects/inferno-synth/ "inferno-synth"). I hope to hash out in the coming days what some of the discussed aspirations for the project are, and more importantly, what is most feasible keeping in mind the time that will be required to develop these ideas. In the future, the hope is that we will be able to tackle several different ideas simply because the modular aspects of this project lend themselves to connecting with one another in meaningful ways, using the power of the Limbo programming language, and the architecture of the Inferno OS. ]]> uriel@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/News/2007-06-04_New_website_code_and_rss_feeds http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/News/2007-06-04_New_website_code_and_rss_feeds Mon, 04 Jun 2007 14:57:36 +0200 [Kris](/people/kris/) has been heavily reworking and cleaning up the code that runs this site (now can be found in the hg repo under [werc](/hg/werc)) including implementing rss feeds for all blogs! There have also been some minor improvements, like automatic blog setup for user and project blog directories and other minor fixes. Dave Eckhardt proposed that we have a table of projects that tracks the last commit and last blog post for each project, a prototype of this can be found in [/projects/table](/projects/table). Enjoy and please report any issues or suggestions in #plan9. ]]> kris@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/kris/blog/2007-06-03-1_Hello http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/kris/blog/2007-06-03-1_Hello Thu, 14 Jun 2007 20:38:13 +0200 For anyone interested, there's a `blogpost` script in `/home/kris/bin` which makes it easy to post to these blogs. The `-u` option sets the user (default `` `{whoami}``), and the `-t` option sets the title (defaults to the first line of your post. If you give a filename (or `-` for stdin), that is used, otherwise, `$EDITOR` (default `vi`) is run. Salutations, Kris Maglione ]]> izaki@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/izaki/blog/2007-06-02-1_Starting_up http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/izaki/blog/2007-06-02-1_Starting_up Sat, 02 Jun 2007 08:24:22 +0200 Hello world! I'll be posting my GSoC advances here. Stay connected... ]]> uriel@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/News/2007-05-31_More_information_about_gsoc_resources http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/News/2007-05-31_More_information_about_gsoc_resources Thu, 31 May 2007 10:51:08 +0200 I have created [a page](/about) that documents the resources and services provided by gsoc.cat-v.org, please take a look and let me know if there is anything else you would like to see. ]]> uriel@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/News/2007-05-30_Mercurial_web_interface http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/News/2007-05-30_Mercurial_web_interface Wed, 30 May 2007 10:23:16 +0200 I have setup the [web interface for the mercurial repos](/hg/), feel free to start pushing the repos for your projects under /gsoc/hg/. ]]> uriel@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/uriel/blog/2007-05-30_Making_progress http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/uriel/blog/2007-05-30_Making_progress Wed, 30 May 2007 12:48:50 +0200 Have made some progress with the gsoc.cat-v.org site and setup, a handful of brave souls have got accounts already, and i hope that most of the work left is to add some real content (I hope others will help out with that ;)) While fixing a bug in the blog code (all six lines of it), I found a neat trick: Given a list of paths, how to list the full paths of all files in those dirs ordered by file name: ; l = ( /foo /bar/baz/bax /) ; ls $l^'/./' | sort -t. +1 Enough for today, when I wake up I should announce the site to the gsoc list and try to setup an irc meeting for tomorrow so we can get things going. Thanks to everyone that helped debug and test things. ]]> anant@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/anant/blog/2007-05-30-1_Object_Oriented_PHP_Extensions http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/anant/blog/2007-05-30-1_Object_Oriented_PHP_Extensions Mon, 15 Oct 2007 01:00:06 +0200 Before I begin, if you're using Gentoo Linux, don't forget to [check out][1] the plan9port ebuild I recently made. The Summer of Code has officially started - and I will begin my blogging with a quick post on creating object-oriented extensions to [PHP][2], which is what the first phase of my project is all about ![:)][3] There isn't much documentation on building OO extensions apart from the [README][4] series in the PHP source. If you're looking to build a conventional procedural extension, however, I've found that the 3-part [tutorial series][5] on Zend by Sara Golemon is most useful. I've chosen the [libixp][6] (pronounced as lib9p, get it?) library to wrap over. libixp is a small and clean C library that helps you write 9P servers a... ]]> uriel@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/uriel/blog/2007-05-28-1_Hi_there http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/uriel/blog/2007-05-28-1_Hi_there Wed, 30 May 2007 13:00:47 +0200 Hullo! ^_^ ]]> uriel@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/News/2007-05-27_Site_is_up http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/News/2007-05-27_Site_is_up Wed, 20 Jun 2007 07:44:07 +0200 The first version of the Plan 9 GSoC site is up! Things are still being worked on, and most people don't have their accounts setup yet. The mercurial repos and 9P access will be next. Update: *Per-project blogs webpages were also broken, I fixed them now, all blogs should be working properly now*. ]]> devin@noreply.cat-v.org http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/devin/blog/._2007-06-27-1_Getting_Inferno-Synth_Up_and_Running http://gsoc.cat-v.org//gsoc/www/people/devin/blog/._2007-06-27-1_Getting_Inferno-Synth_Up_and_Running Sat, 26 Apr 2008 01:07:48 +0200 column = 1; line = 6; } ]]>