Why Plan-9?

[Harmon Seaver]

Steve Furlong wrote:

> Sunder wrote:
> >
> > Why Plan-9?  I'd say go with OpenBSD. :)  Built in crypto, built in
> > firewall, secure on installation without you needing to tweak stuff.  Hell
> > you can even tell it to encrypt swap pages.
>
> I'd really like to use OBSD for my always-on server, but there are a few
> shortcomings.

     Does OBSD have a kernel optimized for use as a router like linux does?
That's really important if you want a full-time router.
http://master-www.linuxrouter.org:8080/

Likewise, the linux bios would be very useful here -- does obsd have a bios
port?
www.linuxbios.org

(snip)


>
> - Encrypted file systems: I want my main server to have TCFS or
> equivalent, so if the machine is seized the feebs would see a tiny boot
> partition and a large, strongly-encrypted main partition. I tried a few
> encrypted file systems a while back, and the couple I found for OBSD
> weren't there yet, either; they typically dumped core when I tried to
> use them. (I see that Dr Evil posted a message on this subject last May
> on a list archived at Geocrawler, so I guess the shortcoming hasn't been
> fixed since I last looked at it in depth.)

     You need to look at the linux cryptoapi, which is fully functional at this
point
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/hvr/
 and which can also be used to encrypt both swap *and* boot partition if you
want (using initrd).

     I agree, Plan 9 looks very interesting, but then, so does MOSIX
http://www.mosix.org/ which is also a distributed (kernel implemented) OS based
on linux.

--
Harmon Seaver, MLIS
CyberShamanix
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