INTRO(5) INTRO(5)
NAME
intro - introduction to the Plan 9 File Protocol, 9P
SYNOPSIS
#include <fcall.h>
DESCRIPTION
A Plan 9 server is an agent that provides one or more hier-
archical file systems - file trees - that may be accessed by
Plan 9 processes. A server responds to requests by clients
to navigate the hierarchy, and to create, remove, read, and
write files. The prototypical server is a separate machine
that stores large numbers of user files on permanent media;
such a machine is called, somewhat confusingly, a file
server. Another possibility for a server is to synthesize
files on demand, perhaps based on information on data struc-
tures inside the kernel; the proc(3) kernel device is a part
of the Plan 9 kernel that does this. User programs can also
act as servers.
A connection to a server is a bidirectional communication
path from the client to the server. There may be a single
client or multiple clients sharing the same connection. A
server's file tree is attached to a process group's name
space by bind(2) and mount calls; see intro(2). Processes in
the group are then clients of the servers: system calls
operating on files are translated into requests and
responses transmitted on the connection to the appropriate
service.
The Plan 9 File Protocol, 9P, is used for messages between
clients and servers. A client transmits requests (T-
messages) to a server, which subsequently returns replies
(R-messages) to the client. The combined acts of transmit-
ting (receiving) a request of a particular type, and receiv-
ing (transmitting) its reply is called a transaction of that
type.
Each message consists of a sequence of bytes. The first
byte is the message type, one of the constants in the enu-
meration in the include file <fcall.h>. The remaining bytes
are parameters. Each parameter consists of a fixed number
of bytes (except the data fields of write requests or read
replies); in the message descriptions below, the number of
bytes in a field is given in brackets after the field name.
The two-, four-, and eight-byte fields may hold unsigned
integers represented in little-endian order (least signifi-
cant byte first). Fields that contain names are 28-byte
strings (including a terminal NUL (zero) byte). Other than
the NUL terminator, all characters are legal in file names.
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INTRO(5) INTRO(5)
(Systems may choose to reduce the set of legal characters to
reduce syntactic problems, for example to remove slashes
from name components, but the protocol has no such restric-
tion. Plan 9 names may contain any printable character
(that is, any character outside hexadecimal 00-1F and 80-9F)
except slash and blank.) Messages are transported in byte
form to allow for machine independence; fcall(2) describes
routines that convert to and from this form into a machine-
dependent C structure.
MESSAGES
Tnop tag[2]
Rnop tag[2]
Tsession tag[2] chal[8]
Rsession tag[2] chal[8] authid[28] authdom[48]
Rerror tag[2] ename[64]
Tflush tag[2] oldtag[2]
Rflush tag[2]
Tattach tag[2] fid[2] uid[28] aname[28] ticket[72]
auth[13]
Rattach tag[2] fid[2] qid[8] rauth[13]
Tclone tag[2] fid[2] newfid[2]
Rclone tag[2] fid[2]
Tclwalk tag[2] fid[2] newfid[2] name[28]
Rclwalk tag[2] fid[2] qid[8]
Twalk tag[2] fid[2] name[28]
Rwalk tag[2] fid[2] qid[8]
Topen tag[2] fid[2] mode[1]
Ropen tag[2] fid[2] qid[8]
Tcreate tag[2] fid[2] name[28] perm[4] mode[1]
Rcreate tag[2] fid[2] qid[8]
Tread tag[2] fid[2] offset[8] count[2]
Rread tag[2] fid[2] count[2] pad[1] data[count]
Twrite tag[2] fid[2] offset[8] count[2] pad[1]
data[count]
Rwrite tag[2] fid[2] count[2]
Tclunk tag[2] fid[2]
Rclunk tag[2] fid[2]
Tremove tag[2] fid[2]
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INTRO(5) INTRO(5)
Rremove tag[2] fid[2]
Tstat tag[2] fid[2]
Rstat tag[2] fid[2] stat[116]
Twstat tag[2] fid[2] stat[116]
Rwstat tag[2] fid[2]
Each T-message has a tag field, chosen and used by the
client to identify the message. The reply to the message
will have the same tag. Clients must arrange that no two
outstanding messages on the same connection have the same
tag. An exception is the tag 0xFFFF, meaning `no tag': the
client can use it, when establishing a connection, to over-
ride tag matching in nop and session messages.
The type of an R-message will either be one greater than the
type of the corresponding T-message or Rerror, indicating
that the request failed. In the latter case, the ename
field contains a string describing the reason for failure.
The nop message request has no obvious effect. Its main
purpose is in debugging the connection between a client and
a server. It is never necessary. A session request ini-
tializes a connection and aborts all outstanding I/O on the
connection. The set of messages between session requests is
called a session.
Most T-messages contain a fid, a 16-bit unsigned integer
that the client uses to identify a ``current file'' on the
server. Fids are somewhat like file descriptors in a user
process, but they are not restricted to files open for I/O:
directories being examined, files being accessed by stat(2)
calls, and so on - all files being manipulated by the oper-
ating system - are identified by fids. Fids are chosen by
the client. All requests on a connection share the same fid
space; when several clients share a connection, the agent
managing the sharing must arrange that no two clients choose
the same fid.
The first fid supplied (in an attach message) will be taken
by the server to refer to the root of the served file tree.
The attach identifies the user to the server and may specify
a particular file tree served by the server (for those that
supply more than one). A walk message causes the server to
change the current file associated with a fid to be a file
in the directory that is the old current file. Usually, a
client maintains a fid for the root, and navigates by walks
on a fid cloned from the root fid.
A client can send multiple T-messages without waiting for
the corresponding R-messages, but all outstanding T-messages
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INTRO(5) INTRO(5)
must specify different tags. The server may delay the
response to a request on one fid and respond to later
requests on other fids; this is sometimes necessary, for
example when the client reads from a file that the server
synthesizes from external events such as keyboard charac-
ters.
Replies (R-messages) to attach, walk, open, and create
requests convey a qid field back to the client. The qid
represents the server's unique identification for the file
being accessed: two files on the same server hierarchy are
the same if and only if their qids are the same. (The
client may have multiple fids pointing to a single file on a
server and hence having a single qid.) The eight-byte qid
fields represent two four-byte unsigned integers: first the
qid path, then the qid version. The path is an integer
unique among all files in the hierarchy. If a file is
deleted and recreated with the same name in the same direc-
tory, the old and new path components of the qids should be
different. Directories always have the CHDIR bit
(0x80000000) set in their qid path. The version is a ver-
sion number for a file; typically, it is incremented every
time the file is modified.
An existing file can be opened, or a new file may be created
in the current (directory) file. I/O of a given number of
bytes (limited to 8192) at a given offset on an open file is
done by read and write.
A client should clunk any fid that is no longer needed. The
remove transaction deletes files.
The stat transaction retrieves information about the file.
The stat field in the reply includes the file's name, access
permissions (read, write and execute for owner, group and
public), access and modification times, and owner and group
identifications (see stat(2)). The owner and group identifi-
cations are 28-byte names. The wstat transaction allows
some of a file's properties to be changed.
A request can be aborted with a Tflush request. When a
server receives a Tflush, it should not reply to the message
with tag oldtag (unless it has already replied), and it
should immediately send an Rflush. The client should ignore
replies with tag oldtag until it gets the Rflush, at which
point oldtag may be reused.
Most programs do not see the 9P protocol directly; instead
calls to library routines that access files are translated
by the mount driver, mnt(3), into 9P messages.
DIRECTORIES
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Directories are created by create with CHDIR set in the per-
missions argument (see stat(5)). The members of a directory
can be found with read(5). All directories must support
walks to the directory .. (dot-dot) meaning parent direc-
tory, although by convention directories contain no explicit
entry for .. or . (dot). The parent of the root directory
of a server's tree is itself.
ACCESS PERMISSIONS
Each file server maintains a set of user and group names.
Each user can be a member of any number of groups. Each
group has a group leader who has special privileges (see
stat(5) and users(6)). Every file request has an implicit
user id (copied from the original attach) and an implicit
set of groups (every group of which the user is a member).
Each file has an associated owner and group id and three
sets of permissions: those of the owner, those of the group,
and those of ``other'' users. When the owner attempts to do
something to a file, the owner, group, and other permissions
are consulted, and if any of them grant the requested per-
mission, the operation is allowed. For someone who is not
the owner, but is a member of the file's group, the group
and other permissions are consulted. For everyone else, the
other permissions are used. Each set of permissions says
whether reading is allowed, whether writing is allowed, and
whether executing is allowed. A walk in a directory is
regarded as executing the directory, not reading it. Per-
missions are kept in the low-order bits of the file mode:
owner read/write/execute permission represented as 1 in bits
8, 7, and 6 respectively (using 0 to number the low order).
The group permissions are in bits 5, 4, and 3, and the other
permissions are in bits 2, 1, and 0.
The file mode contains some additional attributes besides
the permissions. If bit 31 is set, the file is a directory;
if bit 30 is set, the file is append-only (offset is ignored
in writes); if bit 29 is set, the file is exclusive-use
(only one client may have it open at a time).
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