If you were following along with my previous article, then you probably have a working installation of 9front OS on a Linode virtual machine that you can access through a LISH pseudoterminal. In the following article, I will attempt to walk through the process of creating a cpu, auth and fs server, which will allow you to spawn a virtual desktop from any non-9front OS using drawterm.
For the purpose of this installation, I will assume that 9front was installed with the device drive name of sd00, sysname of cirno and the hjfs filesystem.
Invoke the DHCPCD server. Print the configured network database information, noting the values for ip=, ipmask= and ipgw= (these will be used later).
term% ip/ipconfig
term% cat /net/ndb
ip=10.0.2.15 ipmask=255.255.255.0 ipgw=10.0.2.2
sys=cirno
dom=cirno.hsd1.wa.comcast.net
Mount 9fat file.
term% 9fs 9fat
Open the plan9.ini file using sam /n/9fat/plan9.ini or your preferred editor (i.e. acme, sam, etc). Add the service=cpu and nobootprompt= lines per the example below.
bootfile=9pc64
bootargs=local!/dev/sd00/fs -m 147
mouseport=ps2
monitor=vesa
vgasize=1024x768x16
nobootprompt=local!/dev/sd00/fs -m 147 -a tcp!*!564
service=cpu
Configure the auth server non-volitile ram host owner, name and password key.
term% auth/wrkey
authid: [glenda]
authdom: [9front]
secstore key: ↵
password: [glenda’s password]
Start keyfs, which needs to be loaded every time you want to modify the users key, and modify the user key for glenda.
term% auth/keyfs
term% auth/changeuser [glenda]
Password: [same as password used for nvram step]
Confirm Password: [same as password used for nvram step]
assign new Inferno/POP secret? (y/n): n
Expiration date (YYYYMMDD or never)[never]: ↵
Post id: ↵
User's full name: ↵
Department #: ↵
User's email address: ↵
Sponsor's email address: ↵
user glenda installed for Plan 9
Enable the Plan 9 and Netkey keys for the host user.
term% auth/enable [glenda]
Open the network database using sam /lib/ndb/local. Near the bottom of the file, uncomment and modify the following lines using the values obtained in Step 1. Take not of the ip= value which ends with 0.
auth=cirno authdom=9front
ipnet=9front ip=10.0.2.0 ipmask=255.255.255.0
ipgw=10.0.2.2
dns=10.0.2.2
auth=cirno
dnsdom=9front
cpu=cirno
fs=cirno
Now it’s time to reboot your system.
term% fshalt -r
Now comes the fun part. From a non-plan9 OS, download and install the cpu client application. Note that the version linked is a fork of Russ CoX’s drawterm. Once installed, launch the application, specify the server cpu IP address, user (glenda) and password.
Once connected, mount the web file system and start the rio window manager.
webfs
rio -i riostart
Optionally, we can edit the host user’s profile via sam $home/lib/profile and add those lines right below fn cpu% { $* }.
Special thanks to Youtuber C0tl43 and his video “Setting up a 9front cpu+auth+fs standalone server”, which inspired and helped create this article.