MAN.9FRONT.ORG RTFM


     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 server: system calls oper-
          ating 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.  Two-, four-,
          and eight-byte fields hold unsigned integers represented in
          little-endian order (least significant byte first).  Data
          items of larger or variable lengths are represented by a
          two-byte field specifying a count, n, followed by n bytes of
          data.  Text strings are represented this way, with the text
          itself stored as a UTF-8 encoded sequence of Unicode charac-
          ters (see utf(6)). Text strings in 9P messages are not NUL-
          terminated: n counts the bytes of UTF-8 data, which include
          no final zero byte.  The NUL character is illegal in all
          text strings in 9P, and is therefore excluded from file
          names, user names, and so on.

     INTRO(5)                                                 INTRO(5)

          Each 9P message begins with a four-byte size field specify-
          ing the length in bytes of the complete message including
          the four bytes of the size field itself.  The next byte is
          the message type, one of the constants in the enumeration in
          the include file <fcall.h>.  The next two bytes are an iden-
          tifying tag, described below.  The remaining bytes are
          parameters of different sizes.  In the message descriptions,
          the number of bytes in a field is given in brackets after
          the field name.  The notation parameter[n] where n is not a
          constant represents a variable-length parameter: n[2] fol-
          lowed by n bytes of data forming the parameter. The notation
          string[s] (using a literal s character) is shorthand for
          s[2] followed by s bytes of UTF-8 text.  (Systems may choose
          to reduce the set of legal characters to reduce syntactic
          problems, for example to remove slashes from name compo-
          nents, but the protocol has no such restriction.  Plan 9
          names may contain any printable character (that is, any
          character outside hexadecimal 00-1F and 80-9F) except
          slash.)  Messages are transported in byte form to allow for
          machine independence; fcall(2) describes routines that con-
          vert to and from this form into a machine-dependent C struc-
          ture.

     MESSAGES
               size[4] Tversion tag[2] msize[4] version[s]
               size[4] Rversion tag[2] msize[4] version[s]

               size[4] Tauth tag[2] afid[4] uname[s] aname[s]
               size[4] Rauth tag[2] aqid[13]

               size[4] Rerror tag[2] ename[s]

               size[4] Tflush tag[2] oldtag[2]
               size[4] Rflush tag[2]

               size[4] Tattach tag[2] fid[4] afid[4] uname[s] aname[s]
               size[4] Rattach tag[2] qid[13]

               size[4] Twalk tag[2] fid[4] newfid[4] nwname[2]
               nwname*(wname[s])
               size[4] Rwalk tag[2] nwqid[2] nwqid*(wqid[13])

               size[4] Topen tag[2] fid[4] mode[1]
               size[4] Ropen tag[2] qid[13] iounit[4]

               size[4] Tcreate tag[2] fid[4] name[s] perm[4] mode[1]
               size[4] Rcreate tag[2] qid[13] iounit[4]

               size[4] Tread tag[2] fid[4] offset[8] count[4]
               size[4] Rread tag[2] count[4] data[count]

     INTRO(5)                                                 INTRO(5)

               size[4] Twrite tag[2] fid[4] offset[8] count[4]
               data[count]
               size[4] Rwrite tag[2] count[4]

               size[4] Tclunk tag[2] fid[4]
               size[4] Rclunk tag[2]

               size[4] Tremove tag[2] fid[4]
               size[4] Rremove tag[2]

               size[4] Tstat tag[2] fid[4]
               size[4] Rstat tag[2] stat[n]

               size[4] Twstat tag[2] fid[4] stat[n]
               size[4] Rwstat tag[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 NOTAG, defined as (ushort)~0
          in <fcall.h>: the client can use it, when establishing a
          connection, to override tag matching in version 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 version message identifies the version of the protocol
          and indicates the maximum message size the system is pre-
          pared to handle.  It also initializes the connection and
          aborts all outstanding I/O on the connection.  The set of
          messages between version requests is called a session.

          Most T-messages contain a fid, a 32-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 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).

     INTRO(5)                                                 INTRO(5)

          Permission to attach to the service is proven by providing a
          special fid, called afid, in the attach message.  This afid
          is established by exchanging auth messages and subsequently
          manipulated using read and write messages to exchange
          authentication information not defined explicitly by 9P.
          Once the authentication protocol is complete, the afid is
          presented in the attach to permit the user to access the
          service.

          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, or one of its subdirectories.  Walk
          returns a new fid that refers to the resulting file.  Usu-
          ally, a client maintains a fid for the root, and navigates
          by walks from the root fid.

          A client can send multiple T-messages without waiting for
          the corresponding R-messages, but all outstanding T-messages
          must specify different tags.  The server may delay the
          response to a request and respond to later ones; this is
          sometimes necessary, for example when the client reads from
          a file that the server synthesizes from external events such
          as keyboard characters.

          Replies (R-messages) to auth, 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 thirteen-byte
          qid fields hold a one-byte type, specifying whether the file
          is a directory, append-only file, etc., and two unsigned
          integers: first the four-byte qid version, then the eight-
          byte qid path. 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 directory, the old and new path
          components of the qids should be different.  The version is
          a version 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 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

     INTRO(5)                                                 INTRO(5)

          public), access and modification times, and owner and group
          identifications (see stat(2)). The owner and group identifi-
          cations are textual names.  The wstat transaction allows
          some of a file's properties to be changed.

          A request can be aborted with a flush 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 must wait
          until it gets the Rflush (even if the reply to the original
          message arrives in the interim), at which point oldtag may
          be reused.

          Because the message size is negotiable and some elements of
          the protocol are variable length, it is possible (although
          unlikely) to have a situation where a valid message is too
          large to fit within the negotiated size.  For example, a
          very long file name may cause a Rstat of the file or Rread
          of its directory entry to be too large to send.  In most
          such cases, the server should generate an error rather than
          modify the data to fit, such as by truncating the file name.
          The exception is that a long error string in an Rerror mes-
          sage should be truncated if necessary, since the string is
          only advisory and in some sense arbitrary.

          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
          Directories are created by create with DMDIR 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

     INTRO(5)                                                 INTRO(5)

          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 (DMDIR) is set, the file is a
          directory; if bit 30 (DMAPPEND) is set, the file is append-
          only (offset is ignored in writes); if bit 29 (DMEXCL) is
          set, the file is exclusive-use (only one client may have it
          open at a time); if bit 27 (DMAUTH) is set, the file is an
          authentication file established by auth messages; if bit 26
          (DMTMP) is set, the contents of the file (or directory) are
          not included in nightly archives.  (Bit 28 is skipped for
          historical reasons.)  These bits are reproduced, from the
          top bit down, in the type byte of the Qid: QTDIR, QTAPPEND,
          QTEXCL, (skipping one bit) QTAUTH, and QTTMP.  The name
          QTFILE, defined to be zero, identifies the value of the type
          for a plain file.