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| author | Gabriel Schneider <[email protected]> | 2026-09-19 23:28:22 -0300 |
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| committer | Gabriel Schneider <[email protected]> | 2026-09-19 23:28:22 -0300 |
| commit | ba996acfcad1698adbf4a1834fe50e73b1c6cab9 (patch) | |
| tree | 282ba00ce5b10d7416aecb9f2f0f0a439340a57d /9player/README.md | |
| parent | b05abcba3ea09ea106ad28364c6e40a3ec31b890 (diff) | |
| download | cloud9-ba996acfcad1698adbf4a1834fe50e73b1c6cab9.tar.gz cloud9-ba996acfcad1698adbf4a1834fe50e73b1c6cab9.zip | |
Rename programs: 9player -> 9ns, introspect -> 9proc, app -> web (9web)
Directories, binaries, build options (-D9ns, -D9proc), step names, module
name (9proc), thread and fs names, env var NINEPLAYER_MOUNT -> NINE_MOUNT,
docs and test scripts. Browser assets move to web/static.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <[email protected]>
Diffstat (limited to '9player/README.md')
| -rw-r--r-- | 9player/README.md | 156 |
1 files changed, 0 insertions, 156 deletions
diff --git a/9player/README.md b/9player/README.md deleted file mode 100644 index 77081d6..0000000 --- a/9player/README.md +++ /dev/null @@ -1,156 +0,0 @@ -# 9player - -Mount a 9P2000 file tree into a fresh mount namespace and run a program in it, -as a plain user, without touching the host's mount table. - -```sh -9player --unix /run/user/1000/acme -- fish # a shell that sees the tree at /mnt/9p -9player --tcp 127.0.0.1:564 -- claude # an agent that sees it too -9player --spawn 'introspect --stdio' -- bash # start the server yourself, talk over a socketpair -``` - -Inside, the tree is ordinary files: `ls`, `cat`, `echo x > ctl`, editors, -`find`, `rsync`, whatever. `$NINEPLAYER_MOUNT` tells programs where it is -(default `/mnt/9p`). When the program exits, 9player exits with its status -and the namespace, mount and connection disappear. - -## How it works - -The kernel's own `9p` filesystem cannot be mounted inside an unprivileged user -namespace, so 9player is a small FUSE server that speaks 9P2000 to the real -server. There is no libfuse and no libc: `src/fuse.zig` implements the subset -of the kernel FUSE protocol needed, straight from `linux/fuse.h`. - -``` - program (fish/bash/claude) 9player (parent) 9P server - in a new user+mount namespace │ - /mnt/9p ── FUSE ──▶ kernel ────▶│ fuse.zig ─▶ bridge.zig ─▶ nine.zig ──▶ unix / tcp / socketpair - │ (framing) (translation) (cloud9 Client) -``` - -1. The parent connects to the 9P server (version + attach) so failures are - reported before anything is forked. -2. The child does `unshare(CLONE_NEWUSER|CLONE_NEWNS)`, maps its own uid/gid, - makes every mount private, opens `/dev/fuse` (it must be opened inside the - new user namespace), mounts it on the mountpoint and passes the descriptor - back to the parent over `SCM_RIGHTS`, then execs the program. -3. The parent serves FUSE requests by translating them into 9P transactions - (`Twalk`, `Topen`, `Tread`, `Twrite`, `Tcreate`, `Tremove`, `Tstat`, - `Twstat`) until the child exits or the namespace disappears. - -Files are opened with `FOPEN_DIRECT_IO`, so synthetic files that report length -0 (the 9P convention for control files) still read correctly, and `O_TRUNC` -travels inside the 9P open mode (`OTRUNC`) rather than as a separate -truncate. Repeated lookups of the same qid map to the same inode. - -If `/mnt/9p` does not exist and cannot be created (the normal case), 9player -mounts a tmpfs over `/mnt` *inside the namespace only* and bind-mounts every -existing entry of `/mnt` back into it, so nothing is hidden. Pass `--mount DIR` -to use any other directory. - -## Building and testing - -9player lives in the [cloud9](../) repository as `cloud9/9player/`, beside -the 9P2000 protocol library it is built on, and is wired into cloud9's -`build.zig` through the fragment `9player/build.zig`. Everything is run from -the cloud9 root with Zig 0.16: - -```sh -zig build # zig-out/bin/{9player,introspect,cloud9-http,cloud9-probe} -zig build 9player # build and install only zig-out/bin/9player -zig build 9player-test # unit tests (protocol structs, session, bridge, namespace helpers) -zig build 9player-itest # integration tests: real namespaces, real FUSE, - # introspect over unix/tcp/socketpair, and plan9port's - # ramfs when /usr/lib/plan9/bin/ramfs is installed -zig build 9player-adv # adversarial suites: hostile 9P servers, FUSE semantics, - # namespace/signal edge cases, stress (several minutes) -zig build -Doptimize=ReleaseSafe -zig build -D9player=false # leave 9player out (the default on non-Linux targets) -``` - -The integration suites mount the `introspect` demo server (`../introspect`), -so they need `-Dintrospect=true` (the default on Linux), unprivileged user -namespaces (`kernel.unprivileged_userns_clone=1` on distributions that have -the knob), `/dev/fuse` and Python 3; they skip themselves otherwise. -`zig build programs-test` and `programs-itest` run the unit and integration -steps of every program in the repository. - -## Usage - -``` -9player [options] -- PROGRAM [ARGS...] - -Transport (exactly one): - --unix PATH Unix stream socket - --tcp IP:PORT TCP (IPv4/IPv6 literal) - --fd N an already-connected inherited descriptor - --spawn CMD run CMD via /bin/sh -c with a socketpair on its stdin/stdout - -Options: - --mount PATH mountpoint inside the new namespace (default /mnt/9p) - --uname NAME 9P user name (default $USER) - --aname NAME 9P tree to attach (default "") - --msize BYTES maximum 9P message size to request (default 131072, max 16 MiB) - --cache SECONDS attr/entry cache validity, fractional allowed (default 1) - --no-direct-io let the kernel cache file pages (trusts stat length) - --debug trace FUSE and 9P operations on stderr - --help, --version -``` - -PROGRAM defaults to `$SHELL`. Exit status is the program's (`128+signal` if it -was killed); 125 means 9player itself failed (usage, connect, namespace, -mount); 126/127 are exec failures as usual. - -## introspect: a demo 9P server - -`introspect` is a single-binary 9P2000 server whose file tree is the binary -itself: build-time facts, `comptime` reflection and live runtime state. It is -the demo of the [introspect library](../introspect) (`../introspect/demo/main.zig`), -built and installed by `zig build introspect`. - -``` -/README -/build/{zig_version,target,optimize,time,change} captured by build.zig (jj change id, UTC time) -/comptime/types/<T>/{name,size,align,fields} @sizeOf/@alignOf/@typeInfo, generated at comptime -/comptime/decls pub declarations of the server module -/runtime/{pid,ppid,uptime,argv,cwd,env,clients} -/runtime/fn/<name> reading calls a Zig function (hostname, now, random, uname, fib30); - the directory is generated from @typeInfo of the Fns struct -/runtime/ctl write "fib N" | "add A B" | "echo TEXT" | "sleep-ms N", read the result -/scratch/ in-memory read/write tree -``` - -`/runtime/env` exposes the server's whole environment, so serve introspect on -a Unix socket or loopback only. - -```sh -zig-out/bin/introspect --unix /tmp/intro.sock & -zig-out/bin/9player --unix /tmp/intro.sock -- sh -c ' - cat $NINEPLAYER_MOUNT/build/zig_version; echo - cat $NINEPLAYER_MOUNT/comptime/types/Qid/fields - echo "fib 20" > $NINEPLAYER_MOUNT/runtime/ctl; cat $NINEPLAYER_MOUNT/runtime/ctl' -``` - -The same command with `claude -p "explore /mnt/9p ..."` as the program gives an -agent a live, file-shaped view into a running process; that is the intended -use. - -## Limitations - -* One 9P request is in flight at a time; a server read that blocks (event - files) stalls the mount until it returns. -* Base 9P2000 only: no symlinks, ownership, xattrs or locks. Every file is - reported as owned by the invoking user. Cross-directory rename is `EXDEV`. -* No PID namespace and no `/proc` remount. `--tcp` takes IP literals only - (no libc, no resolver). -* Linux only. - -## Relation to cloud9 - -9player consumes cloud9 as the module `cloud9` and keeps all mounting, -namespace and process policy on its side, which is what cloud9's design asks -of applications. It ships from the cloud9 repository as the sibling directory -`9player/` (sources in `src/`, suites in `test/`, this README and -`docs/DESIGN.md`) with a build fragment that the root `build.zig` enables with -`-D9player` on Linux targets; nothing in the code depends on that layout. -`docs/DESIGN.md` has the full module contracts. |
