A Pi-Powered Plan 9 Cluster • Hacker News Board

Re: A Pi-Powered Plan 9 Cluster

#11

Post by psychoslave » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 9:03 AM UTC

varispeed wrote: post #10

While this looks cool it is far from useful. I took time to build such cluster with the Pies and shortly after it landed in the box of things I may need in the future. It's just too slow to do anything useful. Watching stuff compile or even boot was like watching paint dry. It is much better to get a bunch of used NUC if you are space conscious or just get VMWare Workstation or similar tool to simulate number of mach…

Come on, it’s just plain beautiful. Sure it might not be very useful as a modern desktop, but just looking at the result, it looks like a peace of art to me.

The person probably enjoyed doing it, most likely didn’t harm anyone in the process, and possibly learnt some things on the road.

Not everything need to be useful beyond the joy of doing it.

Re: A Pi-Powered Plan 9 Cluster

#12

Post by zhte415 » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 9:06 AM UTC

pandatigox wrote: post #4

Does anyone have a link to that monitor? It looks uber cute!

Looks a lot like this but with a different stand https://www.beetronics.com/12-inch-monitor-white (i.e. probably not that :) but similar).

Re: A Pi-Powered Plan 9 Cluster

#13

Post by ClumsyPilot » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 9:09 AM UTC

varispeed wrote: post #10

While this looks cool it is far from useful. I took time to build such cluster with the Pies and shortly after it landed in the box of things I may need in the future. It's just too slow to do anything useful. Watching stuff compile or even boot was like watching paint dry. It is much better to get a bunch of used NUC if you are space conscious or just get VMWare Workstation or similar tool to simulate number of mach…

I second this - the PI's are great for hacking and hardware, but obsession with PI for compute does not make sence.

Any used PC/NUC/Intel Atom board is much, much faster and some cost around the same.

Re: A Pi-Powered Plan 9 Cluster

#14

Post by OskarS » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 9:16 AM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #13

varispeed wrote: post #10

While this looks cool it is far from useful. I took time to build such cluster with the Pies and shortly after it landed in the box of things I may need in the future. It's just too slow to do anything useful. Watching stuff compile or even boot was like watching paint dry. It is much better to get a bunch of used NUC if you are space conscious or just get VMWare Workstation or similar tool to simulate number of mach…

I second this - the PI's are great for hacking and hardware, but obsession with PI for compute does not make sence. Any used PC/NUC/Intel Atom board is much, much faster and some cost around the same.

I think the utility is more with experimenting with distributed computing technologies in a relatively affordable way, with hardware that is familiar and simple to set up.

Re: A Pi-Powered Plan 9 Cluster

#15

Post by monadic2 » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 9:25 AM UTC

varispeed wrote: post #10

While this looks cool it is far from useful. I took time to build such cluster with the Pies and shortly after it landed in the box of things I may need in the future. It's just too slow to do anything useful. Watching stuff compile or even boot was like watching paint dry. It is much better to get a bunch of used NUC if you are space conscious or just get VMWare Workstation or similar tool to simulate number of mach…

Hacker news: a catalogue only of useful things

Re: A Pi-Powered Plan 9 Cluster

#16

Post by yyyuutt » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 9:33 AM UTC

varispeed wrote: post #10

While this looks cool it is far from useful. I took time to build such cluster with the Pies and shortly after it landed in the box of things I may need in the future. It's just too slow to do anything useful. Watching stuff compile or even boot was like watching paint dry. It is much better to get a bunch of used NUC if you are space conscious or just get VMWare Workstation or similar tool to simulate number of mach…

You can get a bunch of refurbished micro PCs coming out of corporates on ebay for a cheap price. Pis are nice but with cases and power supplies they aren't so cheap and storage is a hassle.

Re: A Pi-Powered Plan 9 Cluster

#17

Post by TabTwo » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 9:36 AM UTC

aap_ wrote: post #8

What did this have to do with plan 9? This post is mostly about building a cute case and keyboard for 4 raspis. No clustering and almost no plan 9 involved at all.

I thought the same. Just booting the first rpi and it ends where the real fun would start.

Re: A Pi-Powered Plan 9 Cluster

#18

Post by rwmj » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 9:37 AM UTC

varispeed wrote: post #10

While this looks cool it is far from useful. I took time to build such cluster with the Pies and shortly after it landed in the box of things I may need in the future. It's just too slow to do anything useful. Watching stuff compile or even boot was like watching paint dry. It is much better to get a bunch of used NUC if you are space conscious or just get VMWare Workstation or similar tool to simulate number of mach…

While no speed daemon, the RPi 4 B with 8 GB of RAM has good enough performance to use for aarch64 development. I can compile qemu in a reasonable time and run small VMs with it. You have to do a bit of work to upgrade the firmware and boot from UAS SSDs (https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2020/09/24/raspberry-pi-4-running...)

Re: A Pi-Powered Plan 9 Cluster

#19

Post by katzeilla » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 10:00 AM UTC

flobosg wrote: post #9

Devine Lu Linvega has been running Plan 9 on a Raspberry Pi for a while: https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/plan9.html

Interesting! Those screenshots are pretty.

Re: A Pi-Powered Plan 9 Cluster

#20

Post by ordu » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 10:27 AM UTC

> The project provided an excuse to make use of a Vortex Core 47-key keyboard, which together with a mini white HDMI monitor, provided a particularly compact and suitably futuristic feeling setup.

As for me this keyboard doesn't seem futuristic at all. It reminds me of the first computer I experienced in my life.[1]

I mean, it is lovely keyboard, I really like it. Just "futuristic" is a strange way to describe it. It would be even more nice, if some keys of bright colors were added. Like in MK-61[2]. Though photo in wikipedia doesn't capture it (or maybe my memory is wrong), but those blue key was of a so beautiful shade, I really loved it in my childhood and was eager to learn how to use MK-61 just for a joy of using this very key. Yellow and red keys were also likeable but not so much, moreover the function of red key was trivial and I lost interest to it very quickly. But the blue key was beautiful and mysterious... My first love. Maybe I became a programmer due to color of this key.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronika_BK

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elektronika_MK-61