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Plan 9. Seriously. One person can understand the whole OS including the kernel. File servers coupled with 9p provide an excellent abstraction for distributing s

Plan 9. Seriously. One person can understand the whole OS including the kernel. File servers coupled with 9p provide an excellent abstraction for distributing services across networks. Source code is included and the build system is designed with cross platform baked in OUT OF THE BOX. All you need is a driver for the switch chip that serves it as a set of files you can read and write configuration commands to. With the right driver setup you could then configure the chip using human readable textual commands and use a script and standard cmd line tools to configure the switch. We could PXE boot plan 9 and leave the switch diskless. PXE booting plan 9 networks is brain dead simple and works out of the box.

wolverine876 3y ago
Interesting. What would it take to write the driver? Also, is Plan 9 maintained sufficiently?
- MisterTea 3y ago
  > What would it take to write the driver? Familiarity with plan 9 and its kernel along with a solid understanding of c. Plan 9 had its own c library which is close to c90 but much cleaner imo. Networking and threading libs are really nice. Driver might be in two parts like usb where the kernel driver serves up the usb controller and attached devices while user space file servers open the devices and serves them. e.g. a webcam is served as a video stream file. > Also, is Plan 9 maintained sufficiently? A community fork known as 9front is maintained and receives patches almost daily. http://git.9front.org/plan9front/plan9front/HEAD/info.html http://git.9front.org/plan9front/plan9front/HEAD/info.html and http://9front.org/releases/ http://9front.org/releases/ If you like videos here is a really nice channel of a plan 9 hacker: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7qFfPYl0t8Cq7auyblZqxA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7qFfPYl0t8Cq7auyblZqxA
rcxdude 3y ago
network booting core network infrastructure like switches seems like a good way to create interesting bootstrapping problems on a power outage.

wolverine876 3y ago

Interesting. What would it take to write the driver? Also, is Plan 9 maintained sufficiently?

MisterTea 3y ago
> What would it take to write the driver? Familiarity with plan 9 and its kernel along with a solid understanding of c. Plan 9 had its own c library which is close to c90 but much cleaner imo. Networking and threading libs are really nice. Driver might be in two parts like usb where the kernel driver serves up the usb controller and attached devices while user space file servers open the devices and serves them. e.g. a webcam is served as a video stream file. > Also, is Plan 9 maintained sufficiently? A community fork known as 9front is maintained and receives patches almost daily. http://git.9front.org/plan9front/plan9front/HEAD/info.html http://git.9front.org/plan9front/plan9front/HEAD/info.html and http://9front.org/releases/ http://9front.org/releases/ If you like videos here is a really nice channel of a plan 9 hacker: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7qFfPYl0t8Cq7auyblZqxA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7qFfPYl0t8Cq7auyblZqxA

rcxdude 3y ago

network booting core network infrastructure like switches seems like a good way to create interesting bootstrapping problems on a power outage.