Geoff Collyer's Plan 9 software

fourth edition software

• 64-bit version of the Plan 9 standalone file server (``Ken's fs''): adapted to 64-bit file sizes, offsets and block numbers. It also includes larger file name components (max. of 55 rather than 27 bytes), Intel gigabit Ethernet driver, better IDE disk support using DMA and RWM if available, file truncation via wstat, and automatic shutdown if an APC UPS warns of low power (courtesy Nigel Roles).

  Still to be done are the DMTMP bit, AoE support, possible interface to a venti store, and porting the upper part of the fs kernel to a cpu kernel.

  Note too that this kernel can be built as a 32-bit fs kernel, for compatibility with existing on-disk file systems. Thus one could use it just to pick up the other improvements.

  N.B.: This kernel has been folded into /sys/src/fs in the main distribution (17 Feb 2006), and is no longer available here.

• a modified scuzz(8) that permits larger values for -m and in general can read Exabyte tapes (tested on an Exabyte 8505 drive). Note that Exabyte drives are (or were) pretty stupid and so you have to give scuzz -m the exact block size; you can't guess high as on real tape drives. Common values were 1024, 10240 and 64512.
• /sys/src/cmd/ip/v6: ipv6 administration
• my old Unix rmsame ported to native Plan 9. It copes better with 64-bit qids, sizes, etc.
• V7 Unix's libdbm for Plan 9. As per Plan 9 convention, integers are stored in binary in the dbm files in an agreed-upon byte order (in this case, big-endian) so that files written by one architecture can be read on another.
• libmdbm for Plan 9 and (l)unix. Byte ordering is now done as per libdbm above. This port of mdbm can be compiled on Plan 9 or (l)unix (it has worked under APE); see the mkfile. There's a dbm command to permit interactive or shell-script access to mdbm databases; it evolved from a program to verify that mdbm was working correctly.
• palmld for 4th edition. palmld backs up and restores Palm PDAs.
• ifup script for configuring additional network interfaces
• various files to help you install Plan 9 on an ipaq (``bitsy'').
• a faster version of mandel, a Mandelbrot-set generator
• a faster version of maze, a maze generator and solver; this version also fixes a few bugs
• a faster version of rotzoomer, a screen distorter

third edition software

• the command file server, cmdfs.c; possibly obsoleted in 4th edition by execnet.

old broken software

• ovfs.broken.tgz is a 3rd or 4th edition file server to serve an overlaid view of other file servers. libthread was revised heavily after ovfs was written and ovfs hasn't been updated to match. It did work at one time, but only under light load. Under heavy load, it appeared to deadlock; probably it's doing too much explicit locking and not relying upon libthread enough to handle scheduling.