Plan 9 — The Documents (Volume 2)
Introduction
Plan 9 From Bell Labs (html | ps | pdf)
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 (html | ps | pdf)
Rob Pike, Dave Presotto, Ken Thompson, Howard Trickey, and Phil Winterbottom
What’s in a name?
The Organization of Networks in Plan 9 (html | ps | pdf)
Dave Presotto and Phil Winterbottom
Connecting the pieces. The details in the paper are outdated but the ideas still apply.
Security in Plan 9 (html | ps | pdf)
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 (html | ps | pdf)
Rob Pike
The starting point for C programming under Plan 9.
Changes to the Programming Environment in the Fourth Release of Plan 9 (html | ps | pdf)
Rob Pike
An overview of the changes to the C library since the Third Release.
APE — The ANSI/POSIX Environment (html | ps | pdf)
Howard Trickey
Moving C code between UNIX and Plan 9.
Acid: A Debugger Built From A Language (html | ps | pdf)
Phil Winterbottom
An overview paper about the Acid debugger.
Phil Winterbottom
The reference manual for the language and its libraries.
Maintaining Files on Plan 9 with Mk (html | ps | pdf)
Andrew G. Hume and Bob Flandrena
An introduction to Plan 9’s replacement for make.
Plan 9 Mkfiles (html | ps | pdf)
Bob Flandrena
The conventions for using mk in Plan 9.
A Manual for the Plan 9 assembler (html | ps | pdf)
Rob Pike
Things you’d rather not know.
User Interfaces
8½, the Plan 9 Window System (html | ps | pdf)
Rob Pike
An introduction to the (previous) window system and its unusual implementation.
Rc — The Plan 9 Shell (html | ps | pdf)
Tom Duff
An introduction to the new shell, complete with examples.
The Text Editor sam (html | ps | pdf)
Rob Pike
Sam is the standard editor on Plan 9.
Acme: A User Interface for Programmers (html | ps | pdf)
Rob Pike
A system with a more radical approach to programming and editing.
Plumbing and Other Utilities (html | ps | pdf)
Rob Pike
Inter-process communication that enlivens the interactive user interface.
Implementation
Hello World, or Καλημέρα κόσμε, or こんにちは 世界 (html | ps | pdf)
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 (html | ps | pdf)
Ken Thompson
The design and some internals of the compiler suite.
Adding Application Support for a New Architecture in Plan 9 (html | ps | pdf)
Bob Flandrena
The procedures necessary to add a new instruction set to Plan 9’s programming environment.
The Plan 9 File Server (html | ps | pdf)
Ken Thompson
The design of the central file server and its novel backup system.
Venti: A new approach to archival storage (html | ps | pdf)
Sean Quinlan and Sean Dorward
Archival block-level storage using secure hashes as block identifiers.
The IL protocol (html | ps | pdf)
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 (html | ps | pdf)
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 (html | ps | pdf)
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 (html | ps | pdf)
Paul Glick
Adminstering the suite of tools to drive PostScript printers.
Troff User’s Manual (ps | pdf)
Joseph F. Ossanna and Brian W. Kernighan
The old warhorse, updated for Unicode characters.
Gerard Holzmann
An introduction to a tool for analyzing parallel and distributed programs.
Installation
The Various Ports (html | ps | pdf)
The hardware requirements for the Plan 9 compilers and kernels.