15 ms·

A Week with Plan 9

226 points by simonpure 6y ago

jsolson 6y ago
It's not entirely abandoned. A few years ago Brad Fitzpatrick dropped by my desk because the latest Google Compute Engine virtualization stack rollout had broken Plan 9 on GCE. This was interfering with cutting a new Go release (the official releases ran on VMs running Plan 9). I don't remember the specific breakage, but that was the day we added Plan 9 to the stable of operating systems we run in our CI regression suite against new VM releases. I don't know if the Go releases are still done on Plan 9, but it seems likely that's still an active use of the OS.
- Technically 6y ago
  I know that Russ Cox & Rob Pike both still use plan9.
  - housel 6y ago
    Do we know what distribution they use?
    - Technically 6y ago
      No; however, drivers are pretty easily portable among the distros. The differences are mostly userspace details and driver selection. I can't imagine they have difficulty navigating their own setups.
    - smorrow 6y ago
      http://aiju.de/b/mac http://aiju.de/b/mac
- jeromenerf 6y ago
  Some people in the go team were indeed part of the plan9 team, Rob Pike and Russ Cox to mention a few. Iirc Russ Cox ported Plan9 userspace to Linux when he moved to google, somehow out of frustration. Thanks for that, using acme on Unix is like a hot summer late afternoon fresh beer. Or whatever fresh beverage of your fancy.
  - floren 6y ago
    Acme on Unix is almost as good as Acme on Plan 9, but I can't stress enough how great it is on a real Plan 9 system inside rio. p9p acme does introduce multi-line tag displays, though, which is hugely convenient when I want to keep track of lots of line numbers or hold a bunch of Edit commands.
    - sleepydog 6y ago
      The multi-line tag also helps a lot outside of plan9 because the file paths on plan9 tend to be shorter thanks to the per-process namespaces. e.g. instead of /home/$user/projects/foo you can just bind that to /prj/foo or whatever you like.
  - jsolson 6y ago
    I certainly knew about the connections between Go (and so very much other stuff at Google) and Plan 9. I was surprised, at the time, to see the OS itself in use in a production role. Just another example of unexpected tools getting the job done.
    - butterisgood 6y ago
      Coraid produces ATA over Ethernet storage platforms shipping their own fork of Plan 9 on the devices. If I had a need for it, or could justify the cash, I'd get one just to play around!
      - rbanffy 6y ago
        I once almost bought a massive Xerox printer from a graphics shop that was decommissioning it. It had a Xerox Star (running some specialized software) for its brains. In the end, the workstation was so completely fused to the printer I'd end with a car-sized workstation.
  - butterisgood 6y ago
    Plan9Port works on Mac OS, Linux, several BSDs etc, and I'm nearly 100% certain existed before Russ moved to google. It pre-dates Go by a bit for sure, and Go was already underway at Google with Rob Pike before Russ came over (per my recollection). That said, I too use plan9port, on my mac, for Acme mainly. Russ just fixed up the thread library so it works more uniformly (and correctly) on all platforms - including Apple Silicon.
- MisterTea 6y ago
  > I don't know if the Go releases are still done on Plan 9, but it seems likely that's still an active use of the OS. Go still builds. It's just difficult to build it out of the box on 9 because of bootstrap issues. Though not sure if the latest 9 build bug was squashed.
  - ori_b 6y ago
    Yes, it is working on the latest releases. Note that for 9front tip, there's one small patch that you need: https://github.com/golang/go/pull/43533 https://github.com/golang/go/pull/43533
runjake 6y ago
> This is a fringe Operating System No, TempleOS was a fringe operating system. Plan 9 was a legitimate research operating system developed by computer scientists who had a key role in the development of UNIX and other highly-regarded pieces of software. Plan 9-based technologies are a part of most, if not all, operating systems today (even Windows!). But, a fun article, and I'm always happy to see Plan 9 crop up from time to time. It's at risk of being forgotten, but shouldn't be.
- Technically 6y ago
  > Plan 9-based technologies are a part of most, if not all, operating systems today (even Windows!). 9p is indeed a great technology—I would have also thrown in utf-8—but most of plan9's ideas remain quite fringe. I would pay a ton of money for an OS with both bind and browser support. Plumber is still leagues better than anything offered by macs/linux/windows. That said, I don't see "fringe" as being mutually exclusive with "legitimate". TempleOS had some features that other OS's could use, too—its use of hyperlinking is actually really cool.
  - iuguy 6y ago
    > TempleOS had some features that other OS's could use, too—its use of hyperlinking is actually really cool. If you want to see what doldoc and plumbing in one system might look like, check out Oberon[1]. [1] - http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/ http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/
  - butterisgood 6y ago
    9p is being used by Microsoft in WSL2 to access host files from linux over v9fs - last time I looked anyway.
- ChrisSD 6y ago
  > It's at risk of being forgotten Not by HN at least. It comes up fairly regularly in one context or another. Though usually when someone is bemoaning some aspect of POSIX or Linux.
- 6y ago
pjmlp 6y ago
> Plan 9 is as filled with unpolished brilliance as Mozart’s Requiem. It’s the Sagrada Familia of Operating Systems. It’s creators left long ago but people keep building on the scaffolds. If nothing else, it’s a collection of fantastic ideas never intended for mass consumption. This is The Holy Mountain of Operating Systems. Yes, they moved into Inferno, and implemented Alef ideas in Limbo. http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/ http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/ The forgotten legacy from Plan 9 authors, and influence on Go original design.
- nix23 6y ago
  >Yes, they moved into Inferno, and implemented Alef ideas in Limbo. No to 9front, 9legacy AND Inferno.
  - spijdar 6y ago
    The creators of plan9 are not involved in 9front, and I don't think they were ever involved with 9legacy, unless I've missed something. I believe 9front's (rather colorful) user manual pointedly remarks that the original authors of plan9 have long since abandoned the project.
    - nix23 6y ago
      >The creators of plan9 are not involved in 9front Nor are they in Inferno anymore, but one big name Forsyth in 2017
  - floren 6y ago
    Pike, Thompson, Presotto, Collyer, McKie, none of these people contribute to either 9front or 9legacy, beyond providing the original Plan 9 code base which underlies all the forks.
    - nix23 6y ago
      And nor do they to inferno: https://bitbucket.org/inferno-os/inferno-os/commits/?page=3 https://bitbucket.org/inferno-os/inferno-os/commits/?page=3
hbiden2020 6y ago
Hunter Biden's child porn is on twitter. Arrest Hunter Biden! Arrest Jack Dorsey!
michaelhoffman 6y ago
> 9Front And Surprise Auschwitz What the actual fuck. At first I thought this was some joke in poor taste by the blog post, but in fact he is referring to the use of Nazi death camp imagery in the documentation. That's not cool.
- NelsonMinar 6y ago
  It's hideous. What the fuck is wrong with people?
  - iuguy 6y ago
    ahem http://code.9front.org/hg/plan9front/log?rev=mein+kampf http://code.9front.org/hg/plan9front/log?rev=mein+kampf
    - ori_b 6y ago
      Yes, the person who committed it was a high school teenager at the time. Maturity and good taste isn't generally associated with high schoolers. It was tasteless. And it was reverted. My family is full of holocaust survivors. My grandmother passed through Auschwitz. 10 of her 12 siblings did not. I am fairly heavily involved in 9front. I have never had any issues with anyone in that project -- certainly none to do with antisemitism.
      - iuguy 6y ago
        If you feel you have to tell me that your family is full of holocaust survivors before you tell me you're involved in a software distro, something is very wrong. This is software not biker gangs. I'm not judging you. I hope you understand that. One or two other people maybe, but not you. I've not called anyone a Nazi. I didn't commit Mein Kampf twice. I didn't put an Auschwitz joke in the manual. Neither did you. It was this[1] that convinced me to spend time with Plan 9. I've spoken to some really nice 9Front users and contributors. I've read and watched cool things by people like mycroft, Sigrid and yourself. Then at the other end of the scale there's this: ahem http://code.9front.org/hg/fqa.9front.org/log?rev=rails.jpg http://code.9front.org/hg/fqa.9front.org/log?rev=rails.jpg And for shits and giggles, this: ahem http://code.9front.org/hg/fqa.9front.org/rev/2c6ef22d5a74 http://code.9front.org/hg/fqa.9front.org/rev/2c6ef22d5a74 For every person you explain to, there are many more who just call you all a bunch of Nazis. People have slid into my DMs and just outright openly called everyone in 9Front nazis for over a week now. The idea is ridiculous yet it persists. That's obviously not the association you want for yourself, but it's one you're aware of or you wouldn't be here. It's happening right now here: https://mastodon.social/@Ludonaut/105555232277945673 https://mastodon.social/@Ludonaut/105555232277945673 - that's just one place, there are plenty others. My Signal's full of it, Telegram too. Memes, some pretty personal, the lot. You can't whack-a-mole that association. All you can do is choose to change it or choose to own it. EDIT: Seems I can't reply to Ori directly so here it is: No I'm not insinuating you're a Nazi sympathizer. I wouldn't. The whole point of my reply is that you are not and I know you are not but lots of others won't draw that conclusion and you won't be able to correct them all. If I thought you were involved in that sort of shit I'd come straight out with it. Ok Ori, you believe what you want to believe. I've been 100% up-front about everything so far. If you're relying on insinuations then you're reading into stuff that just isn't there. You're the third 9Front guy to come at me, and I'm done trying to be polite about it so I'll withdraw. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m3GuoaxRNM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m3GuoaxRNM
pedrow 6y ago
I enjoyed this article and was impressed with how far the author got in each day's exploration. I always thought Plan9 should have had a comeback as part of the "Internet of Things" given its deep support for networking and its modest hardware requirements (it was designed in the 90s.)
- enriquto 6y ago
  let's make that happen! install a plan9 vm and start doing your regular work in there.
- generalizations 6y ago
  The problem is drivers. They haven't kept up so far as I know and the list of supported hardware is short. Personally I'd love for that to change, but it isn't something I can do.
  - ori_b 6y ago
    The list of supported hardware is short, but surprisingly accessible. It's likely that random bargain bin hardware will not be fully supported, but with a few minutes of research it's easy to pick out something that will -- like used Thinkpad. We even managed to get arm64 support on the Raspberry pi before Ubuntu. :)
the_only_law 6y ago
The more I read about some of the operating systems eventually died out (mostly), the more disappointed I am that the only realistic options for workstation/server OS’s are Windows and a handful of Unix-like systems.
- flenserboy 6y ago
  I would be very curious to see a list of features which were available in defunct OSes that are not available or only available via kludge these days. There are some great ideas still out there in the wild.
  - nix23 6y ago
    Have a look at Multics and what Unix missed out implementing. VMS also really interesting. And for sure Plan9.
  - rakoo 6y ago
    BFS (the BeOS File System) had very cool features, especially for the time (see https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/07/the-beos-filesystem/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/07/the-b...): - 64-bit, journaled, UTF-8 capable, extended attributes: things that are standard today but novel at the time - It had "live queries" meaning feeds into file changes. AFAIK only NTFS has that today with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USN_Journal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USN_Journal. Inotify is a hack: have you tried monitoring your root folder ?
  - jolmg 6y ago
    I've heard wonders of Lisp OSes, but haven't tried one.
    - fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
      Interlisp/Medley has sort of revived as an application that runs on your computer: https://interlisp.org/ https://interlisp.org/ There’s also Mezzano which is a relatively new, from scratch Common Lisp implementation on bare metal: https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano Finally, if you know where to look, it’s possible to setup a Symbolics VM on Linux, which is somewhat interesting to poke around in (all the manuals available out of the box are pretty interesting to read through.)
rckrd 6y ago
Minikube uses a 9p FS for sharing files between host and VM. Fairly easy to implement, and runs completely in user space
jsrjenkins 6y ago
Has Emacs ever been ported to Plan9 and if not how difficult would it be?

226 points by simonpure 6y ago

It's not entirely abandoned. A few years ago Brad Fitzpatrick dropped by my desk because the latest Google Compute Engine virtualization stack rollout had broken Plan 9 on GCE. This was interfering with cutting a new Go release (the official releases ran on VMs running Plan 9). I don't remember the specific breakage, but that was the day we added Plan 9 to the stable of operating systems we run in our CI regression suite against new VM releases. I don't know if the Go releases are still done on Plan 9, but it seems likely that's still an active use of the OS.

Technically 6y ago
I know that Russ Cox & Rob Pike both still use plan9.
- housel 6y ago
  Do we know what distribution they use?
  - Technically 6y ago
    No; however, drivers are pretty easily portable among the distros. The differences are mostly userspace details and driver selection. I can't imagine they have difficulty navigating their own setups.
  - smorrow 6y ago
    http://aiju.de/b/mac http://aiju.de/b/mac
jeromenerf 6y ago
Some people in the go team were indeed part of the plan9 team, Rob Pike and Russ Cox to mention a few. Iirc Russ Cox ported Plan9 userspace to Linux when he moved to google, somehow out of frustration. Thanks for that, using acme on Unix is like a hot summer late afternoon fresh beer. Or whatever fresh beverage of your fancy.
- floren 6y ago
  Acme on Unix is almost as good as Acme on Plan 9, but I can't stress enough how great it is on a real Plan 9 system inside rio. p9p acme does introduce multi-line tag displays, though, which is hugely convenient when I want to keep track of lots of line numbers or hold a bunch of Edit commands.
  - sleepydog 6y ago
    The multi-line tag also helps a lot outside of plan9 because the file paths on plan9 tend to be shorter thanks to the per-process namespaces. e.g. instead of /home/$user/projects/foo you can just bind that to /prj/foo or whatever you like.
- jsolson 6y ago
  I certainly knew about the connections between Go (and so very much other stuff at Google) and Plan 9. I was surprised, at the time, to see the OS itself in use in a production role. Just another example of unexpected tools getting the job done.
  - butterisgood 6y ago
    Coraid produces ATA over Ethernet storage platforms shipping their own fork of Plan 9 on the devices. If I had a need for it, or could justify the cash, I'd get one just to play around!
    - rbanffy 6y ago
      I once almost bought a massive Xerox printer from a graphics shop that was decommissioning it. It had a Xerox Star (running some specialized software) for its brains. In the end, the workstation was so completely fused to the printer I'd end with a car-sized workstation.
- butterisgood 6y ago
  Plan9Port works on Mac OS, Linux, several BSDs etc, and I'm nearly 100% certain existed before Russ moved to google. It pre-dates Go by a bit for sure, and Go was already underway at Google with Rob Pike before Russ came over (per my recollection). That said, I too use plan9port, on my mac, for Acme mainly. Russ just fixed up the thread library so it works more uniformly (and correctly) on all platforms - including Apple Silicon.
MisterTea 6y ago
> I don't know if the Go releases are still done on Plan 9, but it seems likely that's still an active use of the OS. Go still builds. It's just difficult to build it out of the box on 9 because of bootstrap issues. Though not sure if the latest 9 build bug was squashed.
- ori_b 6y ago
  Yes, it is working on the latest releases. Note that for 9front tip, there's one small patch that you need: https://github.com/golang/go/pull/43533 https://github.com/golang/go/pull/43533

runjake 6y ago

> This is a fringe Operating System No, TempleOS was a fringe operating system. Plan 9 was a legitimate research operating system developed by computer scientists who had a key role in the development of UNIX and other highly-regarded pieces of software. Plan 9-based technologies are a part of most, if not all, operating systems today (even Windows!). But, a fun article, and I'm always happy to see Plan 9 crop up from time to time. It's at risk of being forgotten, but shouldn't be.

Technically 6y ago
> Plan 9-based technologies are a part of most, if not all, operating systems today (even Windows!). 9p is indeed a great technology—I would have also thrown in utf-8—but most of plan9's ideas remain quite fringe. I would pay a ton of money for an OS with both bind and browser support. Plumber is still leagues better than anything offered by macs/linux/windows. That said, I don't see "fringe" as being mutually exclusive with "legitimate". TempleOS had some features that other OS's could use, too—its use of hyperlinking is actually really cool.
- iuguy 6y ago
  > TempleOS had some features that other OS's could use, too—its use of hyperlinking is actually really cool. If you want to see what doldoc and plumbing in one system might look like, check out Oberon[1]. [1] - http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/ http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/
- butterisgood 6y ago
  9p is being used by Microsoft in WSL2 to access host files from linux over v9fs - last time I looked anyway.
ChrisSD 6y ago
> It's at risk of being forgotten Not by HN at least. It comes up fairly regularly in one context or another. Though usually when someone is bemoaning some aspect of POSIX or Linux.
6y ago

pjmlp 6y ago

> Plan 9 is as filled with unpolished brilliance as Mozart’s Requiem. It’s the Sagrada Familia of Operating Systems. It’s creators left long ago but people keep building on the scaffolds. If nothing else, it’s a collection of fantastic ideas never intended for mass consumption. This is The Holy Mountain of Operating Systems. Yes, they moved into Inferno, and implemented Alef ideas in Limbo. http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/ http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/ The forgotten legacy from Plan 9 authors, and influence on Go original design.

nix23 6y ago
>Yes, they moved into Inferno, and implemented Alef ideas in Limbo. No to 9front, 9legacy AND Inferno.
- spijdar 6y ago
  The creators of plan9 are not involved in 9front, and I don't think they were ever involved with 9legacy, unless I've missed something. I believe 9front's (rather colorful) user manual pointedly remarks that the original authors of plan9 have long since abandoned the project.
  - nix23 6y ago
    >The creators of plan9 are not involved in 9front Nor are they in Inferno anymore, but one big name Forsyth in 2017
- floren 6y ago
  Pike, Thompson, Presotto, Collyer, McKie, none of these people contribute to either 9front or 9legacy, beyond providing the original Plan 9 code base which underlies all the forks.
  - nix23 6y ago
    And nor do they to inferno: https://bitbucket.org/inferno-os/inferno-os/commits/?page=3 https://bitbucket.org/inferno-os/inferno-os/commits/?page=3

hbiden2020 6y ago

Hunter Biden's child porn is on twitter. Arrest Hunter Biden! Arrest Jack Dorsey!

michaelhoffman 6y ago

> 9Front And Surprise Auschwitz What the actual fuck. At first I thought this was some joke in poor taste by the blog post, but in fact he is referring to the use of Nazi death camp imagery in the documentation. That's not cool.

NelsonMinar 6y ago
It's hideous. What the fuck is wrong with people?
- iuguy 6y ago
  ahem http://code.9front.org/hg/plan9front/log?rev=mein+kampf http://code.9front.org/hg/plan9front/log?rev=mein+kampf
  - ori_b 6y ago
    Yes, the person who committed it was a high school teenager at the time. Maturity and good taste isn't generally associated with high schoolers. It was tasteless. And it was reverted. My family is full of holocaust survivors. My grandmother passed through Auschwitz. 10 of her 12 siblings did not. I am fairly heavily involved in 9front. I have never had any issues with anyone in that project -- certainly none to do with antisemitism.
    - iuguy 6y ago
      If you feel you have to tell me that your family is full of holocaust survivors before you tell me you're involved in a software distro, something is very wrong. This is software not biker gangs. I'm not judging you. I hope you understand that. One or two other people maybe, but not you. I've not called anyone a Nazi. I didn't commit Mein Kampf twice. I didn't put an Auschwitz joke in the manual. Neither did you. It was this[1] that convinced me to spend time with Plan 9. I've spoken to some really nice 9Front users and contributors. I've read and watched cool things by people like mycroft, Sigrid and yourself. Then at the other end of the scale there's this: ahem http://code.9front.org/hg/fqa.9front.org/log?rev=rails.jpg http://code.9front.org/hg/fqa.9front.org/log?rev=rails.jpg And for shits and giggles, this: ahem http://code.9front.org/hg/fqa.9front.org/rev/2c6ef22d5a74 http://code.9front.org/hg/fqa.9front.org/rev/2c6ef22d5a74 For every person you explain to, there are many more who just call you all a bunch of Nazis. People have slid into my DMs and just outright openly called everyone in 9Front nazis for over a week now. The idea is ridiculous yet it persists. That's obviously not the association you want for yourself, but it's one you're aware of or you wouldn't be here. It's happening right now here: https://mastodon.social/@Ludonaut/105555232277945673 https://mastodon.social/@Ludonaut/105555232277945673 - that's just one place, there are plenty others. My Signal's full of it, Telegram too. Memes, some pretty personal, the lot. You can't whack-a-mole that association. All you can do is choose to change it or choose to own it. EDIT: Seems I can't reply to Ori directly so here it is: No I'm not insinuating you're a Nazi sympathizer. I wouldn't. The whole point of my reply is that you are not and I know you are not but lots of others won't draw that conclusion and you won't be able to correct them all. If I thought you were involved in that sort of shit I'd come straight out with it. Ok Ori, you believe what you want to believe. I've been 100% up-front about everything so far. If you're relying on insinuations then you're reading into stuff that just isn't there. You're the third 9Front guy to come at me, and I'm done trying to be polite about it so I'll withdraw. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m3GuoaxRNM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m3GuoaxRNM

pedrow 6y ago

I enjoyed this article and was impressed with how far the author got in each day's exploration. I always thought Plan9 should have had a comeback as part of the "Internet of Things" given its deep support for networking and its modest hardware requirements (it was designed in the 90s.)

enriquto 6y ago
let's make that happen! install a plan9 vm and start doing your regular work in there.
generalizations 6y ago
The problem is drivers. They haven't kept up so far as I know and the list of supported hardware is short. Personally I'd love for that to change, but it isn't something I can do.
- ori_b 6y ago
  The list of supported hardware is short, but surprisingly accessible. It's likely that random bargain bin hardware will not be fully supported, but with a few minutes of research it's easy to pick out something that will -- like used Thinkpad. We even managed to get arm64 support on the Raspberry pi before Ubuntu. :)

the_only_law 6y ago

The more I read about some of the operating systems eventually died out (mostly), the more disappointed I am that the only realistic options for workstation/server OS’s are Windows and a handful of Unix-like systems.

flenserboy 6y ago
I would be very curious to see a list of features which were available in defunct OSes that are not available or only available via kludge these days. There are some great ideas still out there in the wild.
- nix23 6y ago
  Have a look at Multics and what Unix missed out implementing. VMS also really interesting. And for sure Plan9.
- rakoo 6y ago
  BFS (the BeOS File System) had very cool features, especially for the time (see https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/07/the-beos-filesystem/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/07/the-b...): - 64-bit, journaled, UTF-8 capable, extended attributes: things that are standard today but novel at the time - It had "live queries" meaning feeds into file changes. AFAIK only NTFS has that today with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USN_Journal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USN_Journal. Inotify is a hack: have you tried monitoring your root folder ?
- jolmg 6y ago
  I've heard wonders of Lisp OSes, but haven't tried one.
  - fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
    Interlisp/Medley has sort of revived as an application that runs on your computer: https://interlisp.org/ https://interlisp.org/ There’s also Mezzano which is a relatively new, from scratch Common Lisp implementation on bare metal: https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano Finally, if you know where to look, it’s possible to setup a Symbolics VM on Linux, which is somewhat interesting to poke around in (all the manuals available out of the box are pretty interesting to read through.)

rckrd 6y ago

Minikube uses a 9p FS for sharing files between host and VM. Fairly easy to implement, and runs completely in user space

jsrjenkins 6y ago

Has Emacs ever been ported to Plan9 and if not how difficult would it be?