ventivac

this is the result of the "ventivac" google summer of code project for the "plan 9 from bell labs/inferno" software project, as described at:

http://code.google.com/soc/2007/p9/appinfo.html?csaid=D99356B8E1636AC0

vacfs, vacget and vacput (and the vac library of course), are now in the inferno-os subversion distribution. this hg repository contains the latest versions of the code for testing.

ventisrv and vcache are not in inferno-os svn, only in this repository. this repository now also includes a copy of the venti library and manual page from inferno-os.

now how to install this code:

1. you need a mkconfig in this directory. a bind/symlink to the inferno install mkconfig will do.

2. you must create a /dis/venti to hold a few venti programs.

3. now just running "mk install" will copy module/vac.m into your /module, and compile all limbo files and install them as well.

the programs that are installed by the mkfiles all have manual pages. except for appl/lib/venti.b and man/2/venti (which are originally from inferno-os svn but have been modified slightly), the files in this repository are under the standard MIT-licence as recommended for all plan 9 google summer of code projects.

progress reports have been made during the project, and will be kept up to date with the latest changes at:

http://gsoc.cat-v.org/people/mjl/blog/

the mercurial repository will be used for future changes, it can be found at:

http://gsoc.cat-v.org/hg/ventivac/

additionally, i will keep a page about ventivac updated on my own website at:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~mechiel/inferno/ventivac/

if these were both to fail, you should be able to reach me at either mechiel@xs4all.nl, or mechiel@ueber.net.

special thanks go to charles forsyth from vitanuova for mentoring this project!

special thanks also go to uriel mangado for overseeing the entire plan 9 from bell labs/inferno google summer of code presence.

other notes:

• appl/cmd/testrabin.b reads a file and splits it using appl/lib/rabin.b. the parameters for the rabin algorithm can be set from the command-line, making it usable for testing.
• appl/cmd/rabinparams.b walks a directory and splits all files with rabin fingerprinting. when done, it prints a histogram of each occuring block size, how many blocks were found and what the mean block size was. it can also print all boundaries to stderr.
• doc/ventisrv-fileformat.[pm]s, troff source and rendered postscript of document describing the file format used by ventisrv for its data and index files.
• the main idea of ventisrv, storing the scores partially, comes from my master's thesis in which a similar program (but with less functionality) is designed.