9grid
D1405841332
Aglenda
#The name 9grid has been used for two separate but related projects.
#
#An early grid of Plan 9 servers at Bell Labs and the University of
#Calgary was called [9grid |
#http://plan9.bell-labs.com/9grid/index.html]. It is generally closed
#and not very much used.
#
#More recently, private individuals and organizations have created a
#handful of public-access servers and also use the name 9grid.
#
#No active servers are known at the moment. Please list them here if
#they become available.
#
#Each of these servers runs its own authentication domain. For
#accounts, see the details on the above web sites.
#
#OPEN PROBLEMS
#
#Open research problems remain in turning the loosely-associated
#collection of machines above into a true grid of machines, with
#cross-domain authentication, access controls, resource discovery,
#and perhaps even load balancing.
#
#The rest of this page sketches proposed solutions to some of these
#problems.
#
#AUTHENTICATION
#
#We need to establish a consensus on how a griduser should be
#authenticated on a gridnode.
#
# *	Proposal 1: [multiauthdom | http://www.r-36.net/multidomauth.tgz]
#	by 20h
# *	Proposal 2: [factotum patch |
#	http://www.tip9ug.jp/who/nashi/9grid/p9sk1.c] by tip9ug.
# *	Proposal 3: implementing SPKI
#
#Proposal 1 and 2 seemingly agreed on assigning gridusers' name in
#the form of "username@authdom". Plan 9 kernel surprisingly accepts
#this notation. The same notation could be used on Proposal 3 too
#once implemented.
#
#LOCAL FILESTORE
#
#On gridnodes, accesses by a griduser are treated as none access to
#the local filesystem unless the user is registered to the
#filesystem. We need to offer a secure way to grant gridusers the
#right to store files on the gridnode. ramfs(1) can be used in many
#cases, but you might want to remember that Plan 9 has the 1.8GB
#limitation of installable memory, and also, it could be hard to do
#quota in ramfs.
#
#The following proposals are to provide gridusers a way to store
#their files on a fossil on gridnodes. Quota on these proposals can
#be done by running some instance of fossil on a partition other than
#/dev/sdC0/fossil or on an ordinary file on the fossil from which the
#gridnode booted from.
#
# *	Proposal 1: create a "rwxrwxrwx sys sys" directory named by a
#	random string and pass the secret pathname to a griduser.
# *	Proposal 2: make a [helper program |
#	http://www.tip9ug.jp/who/nashi/9grid/mkgdir.c] which will add the
#	griduser on a fossil and create a "rwx------ griduser sys"
#	directory in the fossil.
#
#LIMITING NETWORK ACCESS
#
#Some admins would want to restrict the gridusers to access network
#from the gridnode considering DDoS. We need to provide a way to give
#gridnodes' admins the choice if they want to give or not to give the
#access to the local network interface.
#
# *	Proposal 1: patch the kernel so that only the hostowner and none
#	can access '#I' (ip(3) device) and '#l' (ether(3) device).
# *	Proposal 2: for gridusers, omit the binding of '#I' and '#l' to
#	/net and set RFNOMNT. This can be done by setting up gridusers'
#	environments properly.
#
#SETTING UP THE GRIDUSERS' ENVIRONMENTS
#
#We need a way to construct gridusers' environments on a gridnode.
#Environments means... the namespace in Plan 9.
#
# *	Proposal: patch [cpu.c | http://www.r-36.net/cpu_home.c] so that
#	if there is "@" in the username construct the namespace according
#	to [/lib/namespace.grid | http://www.r-36.net/namespace.grid].
#	cpu.c also sets RFNOMNT if necessary.
#
#RESOURCE DISCOVERY
#
#We need a way to discover other 9grid nodes.
#
#PARALLEL PROGRAMING PARADIGM
#
#We need a version of [MP |
#http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~mirtchov/lanlp9/mp/index.html]
#adopted to 9grid framework.
#