Forwarded message:
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 1998 00:33:14 GMT From: Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> Subject: plan 9 features (Re: autonomous agents (fwd))
Sounds interesting. I am not familiar with plan 9 besides the enthusings of a colleague reminiscing about the work done at York Univ, UK with plan 9.
Java has a lot going for it as a candidate due to portability and code distribution support. I think the only thing missing from java is the bidding and scheduling mechanisms. Your other forwarded message on plan 9 looks interesting also.
I have been working on a potential distributed data haven model using the Plan 9 architecture. I have finaly amassed enough machines where I can actualy dedicate the i/o, process, and file servers on seperate machines. The problem that I see for the immediate future is getting nodes that don't happen to reside on my premises for additional testing in about a year. I don't have a clue to how to get people to spend $400 bucks for the software (which the ATT license prohibits from commercial use) *and* dedicate several machines to the enterprise. But I'm not going to give up, maybe some folks will volunteer just to do it...:) I took the liberty of forwarding the man page for the auth() function to the cpunks list. It describes the 56-bit DES based authentication mechanism. I personaly don't care for DES so at some point I will be looking to replace that mechanism with an alternative. I also need to take some time and look at porting the Plan 9 file server adapter for Unix to Win95/NT. Either that or I mount the file systems to a suitably enhanced Linux box and then export from there. This would imply that the Win95/NT boxes need to be on the physical network of the Linux box or else excessive opportunities for MITM attacks are present. Not that simply being on the same network provides complete protection either. I hope that OpenNT will provide enough Unix-like features to minimize the port effort. The Plan 9 mechanism also needs to be enhanced in such a way that besides the access token involving encryption the actual transfer of packets are also content encrypted. This has potential compatibility problems with un-enhanced Plan 9 servers that I haven't had a chance to look at. Once I have a system up and running it will allow non-Plan 9 systems to access the resources by using what is called 'hand-held DES encryptors'. Unfortunately, there is not a real description of how this is to be accomplished in a real-world manner. My hope is to have something available sometime this summer that will allow folks to play with it at least in a limited way. If you get the chance and have the resources you should look into at least getting the Plan 9 documents. They're like $150 but call and verify that price since I didn't this morning. Also note, there are now two releases of Plan 9 floating around out there. The only distinction I am aware of is one is the 'old' release and the current is the 'new' release. Don't have a clue as to how to tell them apart or what compatibility problems will exist. My best estimate is that in about a month I will have the resources to install and begin developing the model. I am currently between employers (I don't work at Tivoli-IBM anymore) so I'm job hunting in the Austin area over the next few weeks. I'll make reports to the list on the results as I manage to get results. I don't know about Java on Plan 9, I'll look into it. Take care. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make | | violent revolution inevitable. | | | | John F. Kennedy | | | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage@ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|