/sys/doc/ Documentation archive

Plan 9 Documents (Volume 2)

(This is a mirror of the papers at http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/)

Introduction

Plan 9 From Bell Labs
Rob Pike, Dave Presotto, Sean Dorward, Bob Flandrena, Ken Thompson, Howard Trickey, and Phil Winterbottom
An overview of the system; read at least this paper before you install.
The Use of Name Spaces in Plan 9
Rob Pike, Dave Presotto, Ken Thompson, Howard Trickey, and Phil Winterbottom
What's in a name?
The Organization of Networks in Plan 9
Dave Presotto and Phil Winterbottom
Connecting the pieces. The details in the paper are outdated but the ideas still apply.
Security in Plan 9
Russ Cox, Eric Grosse, Rob Pike, Dave Presotto, and Sean Quinlan
An overview of the security architecture.

Programming

How to Use the Plan 9 C Compiler
Rob Pike
The starting point for C programming under Plan 9.
Changes to the Programming Environment in the Fourth Release of Plan 9
Rob Pike
An overview of the changes to the C library since the Third Release.
APE - The ANSI/POSIX Environment
Howard Trickey
Moving C code between UNIX and Plan 9.
Acid: A Debugger Built From A Language
Phil Winterbottom
An overview paper about the Acid debugger.
Acid Manual
Phil Winterbottom
The reference manual for the language and its libraries.
Maintaining Files on Plan 9 with Mk
Andrew G. Hume and Bob Flandrena
An introduction to Plan 9's replacement for make.
Plan 9 Mkfiles
Bob Flandrena
The conventions for using mk in Plan 9.
A Manual for the Plan 9 assembler
Rob Pike
Things you'd rather not know.

User Interfaces

8½, the Plan 9 Window System
Rob Pike
An introduction to the (previous) window system and its unusual implementation.
Rc - The Plan 9 Shell
Tom Duff
An introduction to the new shell, complete with examples.
The Text Editor sam
Rob Pike
Sam is the standard editor on Plan 9.
Acme: A User Interface for Programmers
Rob Pike
A system with a more radical approach to programming and editing.
Plumbing and Other Utilities
Rob Pike
Inter-process communication that enlivens the interactive user interface.

Implementation

UTF-8 - Hello World or Καλημέρα κόσμε or こんにちは 世界
Rob Pike and Ken Thompson
The details about Plan 9's character set: the Unicode Standard plus an ASCII-compatible encoding.
Plan 9 C Compilers
Ken Thompson
The design and some internals of the compiler suite.
Adding Application Support for a New Architecture in Plan 9
Bob Flandrena
The procedures necessary to add a new instruction set to Plan 9's programming environment.
The Plan 9 File Server
Ken Thompson
The design of the central file server and its novel backup system.
Venti: A new approach to archival storage
Sean Quinlan and Sean Dorward
Archival block-level storage using secure hashes as block identifiers.
The IL protocol
Dave Presotto and Phil Winterbottom
A description of the Internet protocol Plan 9 uses for internal communication.
Lexical File Names in Plan 9, or, Getting Dot-Dot Right
Rob Pike
A vexing old problem solved: how to make pwd get the right answer in the face of multiply-bound directories.
Process Sleep and Wakeup on a Shared-memory Multiprocessor
Rob Pike, Dave Presotto, Ken Thompson, and Gerard Holzmann
A detailed study of a central issue in the Plan 9 kernel.

Miscellany

A Guide to the Lp Printer Spooler
Paul Glick
Adminstering the suite of tools to drive PostScript printers.
Using SPIN
Gerard Holzmann
An introduction to a tool for analyzing parallel and distributed programs.

Installation

The Various Ports

The hardware requirements for the Plan 9 compilers and kernels.