Plan 9 Resource Sharing for Linux News

I'm trying to clean up the v9fs web presence a bit by leveraging some of the new sourceforge tools. Bear with me.

v9fs Bug Tracking moved to http://bugzilla.kernel.org -- all relevant bugs have been transfered from the sf.net bug-tracker and the trackers have been shut-down.

The v9fs kernel code was merged into Linux's 2.6.14 development tree last week - marking a fairly major transition for the v9fs project. Over the next few weeks I'm turning my focus onto some stability issues and the user-space support applications in order to help encourage its adoption and use. Thanks to everyone who has helped in the past with bug-reports, code, and suggestions.

A small number of cleanups and bug-fixes. v9fs code fully merged with Linux 2.6.13 release. Hopefully this version of the code will make it into 2.6.14 mainline.

New release of the v9fs kernel code primarily consisting of responses to comments from the LKML mailing list. Some minor feature extensions and corner-case bug fixes. CVS is now pretty much fully-deprecated, if you are interested in up-to-date source revisions, pull them the v9fs-2.0 git repository on http://www.kernel.org/git

Code cleanup and a few bug-fixes for special files.

Hi everyone, we're proud to announce v2.0 of our 9P2000 file system driver support for Linux.

OVERVIEW

V9FS is a distributed file system for Linux which provides an implementation of the Plan 9 resource sharing protocol 9P. It can be used to share all sorts of resources: static files, synthetic file servers
(such as /proc or /sys), devices, and application file servers (such as FUSE).

BACKGROUND... read more

New versions of both the kernel client and the application server. Changes have been pretty minimal between release-candiates so we should be releasing 2.0 proper soon and then beginning work on the 2.1 branch. The BK repository is no longer available, but a cogito repository is now up at rsync://v9fs.graverobber.org/v9fs (w/a partially working web interface at http://v9fs.graverobber.org\).

Latest release candidate for v9fs has been released. There are several small style clean-ups as well as some minor bug-fixes in this release.

New release candidate for both the client and server, mostly small cleanups this release.

Tim Newsham wrote a 9P client and server in pure Python.

The source and documentation can be found at http://lava.net/~newsham/plan9/

This release is mostly a code-cleanup of rc1 based on suggestions/feedback from linux kernel-mentors. There are also a few bug fixes in the error-cases and some new documentation.

Please review the code, try it out on your systems, and send any and all feedback.

Big changes are mostly around reworking how we handle file_info, FIDs, and when we clunk. I also fixed a handfull of bugs as I came across them. I'm not entirely happy with the code at this point, but it is functional. My plan is to do another pass to clean things up (including finally getting around to rewriting the Rerror mapping code), incorporate any changes from the v9fs-developers community, and call that RC2, which I will then release to LKML.... read more

Major changes this go-round is mmap support. Another notable milestone is this is the first release which passes all fsx tests. Please, please, please start beating on the code and report any problems to me.

Major changes in this release include support for special files (character and block devices, named pipes, socket files, and hard links).

Some minor bug fixes to older 9P2000.u changes along with added support for symlinks. Next set of changes will include support for other special files (devices, fifos, etc.)

Please note that this release of the client and server are somewhat dependent on eachother, please update both your client and server at the same time or you may run into problems.

The biggest set of changes in this release involve moving to the revised 9P2000.u proposal. Some bugs were fixed involving chmod, chown, and rename as well.

New test tarball available with fixes for chmod, chown, and rename along with some minor cleanups. Next release will attempt to conform to the draft 9P2000.u standard.

In preparation for submission to LKML, I've moved over to using Bitkeeper for the kernel driver. I'll probably try to keep CVS in sync (at least for a while) and I'll continue issuing tarballs, but for those that want the bleeding edge, it can now be cloned from http://linux-v9fs.bkbits.net

We'll be gearing up for frequent releases as we roll towards a 2.0 release and submission to the official kernel tree. Please send detailed bug reports as you find system instability.

I've created a test5 release which incorporates a bunch of changes lucho checked in to clean stuff up and fix bugs. I also created a pre2 release of u9fs which should work on either ppc or x86. I'm going to try to get back to pushing out new changes every week as we approach code-reviews and release of 2.0.

Russ Cox has released a new version of plan9port(AKA. Plan 9 from User Space):

There is a big update to Plan 9 port available now, at http://swtch.com/plan9port

The most significant user-visible change is that the entire system is documented. Intro(1) is a good starting point.

The most significant code change is that the thread library now uses pthreads and ucontext(3) when possible. This means that programs should work properly on Linux 2.6 now, and that real threading can be used on SunOS and Mac OS X now. It also means porting the system is easier -- there's no sparc assembly at all in the tree, for example. Finally, it means that various hangs people saw when using the acme Edit command are finally gone.... read more

I've released a test4 tarball which contains the major re-write to accomodate linux kernel style guidelines. The code appears to be stable, but needs to be tested more.

In other related good news, the v9fs paper was accepted to Freenix 2005.

Ericvh is organizing a Plan 9 BoF at OSDI scheduled for Monday 6 Dec 7PM in Barcelona I room (right after IBM Research BoF); various other personalities from the Plan 9 and v9fs communities are expected to attend, including Ron Minnich from LANL and Russ Cox from MIT/Bell Labs.

In the next month there will be least two other events related to Plan 9 technologies:

Twente9con 2004 in the Netherlands: http://plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/Twente9con_2004/... read more

The rewrite branch has been merged to the tip. It is not completely stable. If you are interested in stability, stick with test3 for now. If you are interested in helping out, go ahead and play around with the CVS version. Please be careful though - I make no guarantees about this version yet, it could crash your system or make it otherwise unusable.

I'll continue to work on this, but the first half of next week is OSDI, so I'm not sure how much attention I can give it.... read more