NLUUG 2005 SPRING DAY
D1138235689
Arsc (135.104.9.92)
#We hope to show the operating system Plan 9 from Bell Labs at the
#[NLUUG spring conference 2005 | http://www.nluug.nl/events/vj05/].
#
#We intend to give an impression of what Plan 9 is, and what (in our
#opinion) its strong points (and maybe also its less strong points)
#are. In accordance with the theme of the spring conference, we hope
#to be able to give an overview of how Plan 9 ``does'' email, but we
#do not intend to limit ourselves to that. :-) We will bring some
#machines for demo, and some papers to browse, and maybe some
#demo/install cd's for those interested enough to give it a try.
#
#Those interested enough to give it a ``test drive'' may do so by
#firing up a ``live cd'' (image downloadable from the Plan 9 page,
#link below), or by requesting an account on one or more of the
#public access Plan 9 installations, and downloading the Plan 9
#remote desktop tool ``drawterm(8)'' for graphical access.
#
#Developed by the people who devised UNIX and C at Bell Labs, Plan 9
#takes OS development back into the realm of research. While UNIX can
#be said to be a research tool the OS principles remain largely the
#same throughout all developments. Plan 9 is an attempt to work on
#the operating system concepts from the ground up, reworking the
#whole idea using modern technology.
#
#It is difficult to say in only a few words what Plan 9 offers over
#Unix. For me, the main feature is _integration_, on many levels,
#giving us an integrated, distributed system, potentially on
#heterogeneous hardware, in which we have unified and transparent
#access to the resources available on the machines in the system. For
#example (in more or less random order):
#
#Integration of maintenance.
# *	All files live on a central file server; an authentication server
#	takes care of checking a user's credentials; disk-less cpu-servers
#	provide processing power; disk-less terminals (simple machines with
#	graphical screen, keyboard and mouse) provide user access to the
#	system, but contain no ``state'' -- all ``state'' (all that may
#	need to be updated, maintained) is kept on the file-server (data)
#	and on the authentication server (user administration). That said,
#	it is very well possible to run Plan 9 on a single machine, even
#	though running a multi-machine set-up is more interesting.
#
#Integrated access to the past.
# *	The usual file servers for data storage have integrated backup
#	facilities that allow transparent access to the files as they were
#	yesterday, or one year ago, or... Apart from the direct use --
#	oops, edited this file and now it's worse than yesterday's version,
#	let's retry using that one, we can easily get at it using a command
#	well-name yesterday(1) -- it also provides historical information,
#	for example [The nightly snapshots of the Plan 9 kernel from
#	February 27, 1990 to March 25, 2003 |
#	http://swtch.com/plan9history/] give an interesting view into the
#	Plan 9 development process.
#
#Integrated/unified access to resources, both local and remote.
# *	All resources are uniformly (even more than in Unix) acessable
#	via the file system interface (open, read, write, close, etc. -- no
#	ioctl, if necessary, the interface to a resources is provided via
#	multiple files, e.g. one for data, another to read/write control
#	messages). A network file protocol, 9P, offers remote access to
#	resources (the absence of ioctl makes this really transparent).
#	This allows Plan 9 to have commands that are similar in nature to
#	ssh and NFS but provide better integration between the local and
#	remote system and work more transparently. To provide access to a
#	new resource, it is sufficient to write a file server for it, that
#	dynamically serves the interface files that provide access to the
#	resource, like /proc in Unix. Such file servers typically run in
#	user space.
# *	A particular remote resource is the sources file server at bell
#	labs on which the ``current'' version of Plan 9 is always available
#	(together with its past). The usual procedure to update one's Plan
#	9 installation -- replica(1) -- simply mounts the sources and
#	copies over the files that have been added or changed since the
#	last update. To see what has changed one can simply run diff to
#	compare local files with those on the sources file server.
#
#Integration of heterogenous hardware.
# *	Each Plan 9 system has cross compilers for all supported
#	architectures. Doing cross-compilation is as simple as setting an
#	environment variable to indicate the target architecture before
#	starting a build. A simple naming scheme allows object files,
#	executables and libraries for multiple architectures to live
#	together on a single system. Per-process namespaces and union-mount
#	and bind allow for a uniform view of the system: /bin/ls always is
#	the program to list files, indepent from the architecture on which
#	it is run.
#
#Integrated single-signon.
# *	The program ``factotum(4)'' acts as the authentication agent and
#	key manager for a user. In combination with the ``secure (file)
#	storage'' server for persistent, secure, storage of keys (also
#	accessed via ``secstore(1)'') this gives one single-signon for the
#	authentication protocols supported by factotum.
#
#More information can be found at:
#
# *	[The Plan 9 page | http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/]:
#	distribution (freely available under lucent public license),
#	papers, documentation, etc.
# *	[Plan 9 Wiki |
#	http://plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/plan_9_wiki/]: information
#	pertinent to installing, configuring, and using plan 9, but also
#	what people do like about plan 9.
#
#Plan 9 ideas are being brought to Unix variants (Solaris, *BSD,
#Linux, ...) for example in the following projects:
#
# *	[v9fs | http://v9fs.sf.net]: 9P clients, servers and tools for
#	Linux and *BSD.
# *	[Plan 9 from User Space | http://swtch.com/plan9port/] (aka
#	plan9port): A port of the bulk of the Plan 9 software to Unix,
#	including libraries and tools.
#
#[Inferno | http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/] is a spin-off project
#that provides a compact operating system designed for building
#distributed and networked systems on a wide variety of devices and
#platforms based on the same concepts and technologies as Plan 9.
#Inferno can be run ``hosted'' on top of Windows and many Unix
#variants, or even as plug-in in some webbrowser, or ``natively'' on
#the bare hardware.
#
#One application of the Plan 9 ideas worth mentioning here is the
#[9grid | http://www.9grid.net/] where one uses the distributed
#nature of Plan 9 to do grid computing without needing specific grid
#toolkits - the basic features already present in Plan 9 suffice.
#
#------------------------------------------------------ 
#This page is linked from the [NLUUG Voorjaarsconferentie 2005 |
#http://www.nluug.nl/events/vj05/inleiding.html] page.
#