INTRO(4) INTRO(4) Name intro - Introduction to System Boxes. Synopsis /b Description The name space of a Plan B application is made of a set of names that have boxes attached to them. This section describes the set of boxes that are expected to be available on a Plan B system. All of them are imported at prefixes starting with "/b", although some of them are also imported at conventional names like "/bin". The synopsis in each page shows the prefix for each system box along with the set of inner boxes supplied. Depending on the exact configuration some of these boxes may not be available; nevertheless, those missing can be imported from other network locations. Beware that once a system box is forgotten, there is no way to get back to it (unless it is also exported by the system to the network). This is not a problem since a new namespace starts with a standard set of system boxes imported to well-known prefixes. Appart from the set of boxes supplied by the system, there is a set of conventions that are important for system opera- tion. The conventions are changing quickly since Plan B is just born. Therefore, you should expect that most of the boxes shown in this section are likely to change as experi- ence with the system is gained. As of today, this is the typical hierarchy of boxes found in a name space: / bin b sys proc usr mem chan term fs con udp tcp doc INTRO(4) INTRO(4) 2 4 p95 bin include lib p98 386 port proc src b cmd tmp usr Those under /b are boxes from the local kernel. All other ones are prefixes where some other boxes (including the local ones) may be mounted. For example, /bin is usually a set of imports from either local /b/fs/bin boxes or from network boxes advertised as /bin. /bin contains boxes with binary code ready to be executed on available processors. /b contains kernel-supplied boxes. For boxes under /b you can refer to the following manual pages to see what services are provided by each one. /doc contains system documentation. Inner boxes named /doc/2 and /doc/4 contain the sections 2 and 4 of the user's manual. /p95 is the outter box for binaries, includes, and libraries dependent on the p95 architecture (Hosted on Plan 9 for ARM processors). It is expected to contain /p95/bin, /p95/include, and /p95/lib boxes. Following machine-dependent boxes have the same structure. /p98 is the outter box for p98 boxes (Hosted on Plan 9 for 386 processors). /386 is not used by now. The name is reserved for 386 depe- dent boxes that will be necessary after implementing a native version of the system for Intel based PCs. /port has the same structure of the machine-dependent boxes, but includes portable code that is expected to work on all architectures. Shell scripts go under /port/bin. /proc contains processor boxes used to start new programs. /src contains system source, both for kernel and user com- mands. /tmp is used to create temporary boxes. It is expected to be highly volatile. /usr is the outter box for user's boxes. User nemo uses /usr/nemo as his outter box. Beware that /b/usr serves a quite different purpose, since usr(4) is used to represent humans and not to contain user's boxes; i.e. INTRO(4) INTRO(4) /b/usr/nemo is the human known as Nemo to the system, as far as Plan B is concerned. Announces Some system boxes use to be announced to the network. This section describes which ones. Source /src/b See also Plan B: Boxes for network resources. Francisco J Balles- teros. The Box: A replacement for files. Francisco J Ballesteros and Sergio Arevalo. HotOS-VII. intro(1). Bugs Many, this section is not different and system boxes still have many bugs to fix.