Grave Robbers from outer space using 9P2000 under Linux
Eric Van Hensbergen, Ron Minnich · 2005
This paper describes the implementation and use of the Plan 9 distributed resource protocol 9P under the Linux 2.6 operating system. The use of the 9P protocol along with the recent addition of private name spaces to the 2.6 kernel creates a foundation for seamless distributed computing using Linux. We review the design principles and benefits of Plan 9 distributed systems, go over the basics of the 9P protocol, describe 9P extensions to better support UNIX file systems, and show some example Linux distributed applications using 9P to provide system and application services. We conclude by providing a performance analysis of the protocol versus NFS for sharing a static file system.