Advanced Namespace Tools for Plan 9

Plan 9 ANTS is a collection of software for making Plan 9 systems more flexible and capable by leveraging the power of namespaces.

The main component is a modified kernel which needs no root fs at boot. It creates an always available ram/paq rooted namespace accessible by cpu(1) from which the user may launch conventional namespaces. The kernel patches also allow rewriting of process namespace via the ns file in /proc and multiple independent /srv spaces. Additional tools allow the user to reroot quickly to different namespaces and create hubs of persistent rc shells shared between all machines on a grid.

ANTS is compatible with existing x86 Plan 9 installations. The ANTS kernel and tools modify startup and create new capabilities, but do not change the standard user environment. You can install the ANTS kernel and tools directly to a fresh install from the 9front .iso, by adding the 9ants kernel and optional tools.tgz to your 9fat partition and editing plan9.ini as needed.

ANTS is a modular toolkit. Many of the namespace modifying scripts, the hubfs shell multiplexer, and the rio variant "grio", do not depend on the kernel modifications. The kernel modifications for bootup and for writable /proc/*/ns are independent from each other.

Documentation

The full Attack of the Giant ANTS paper in pdf form

Browse the full ANTS directory.

ANTS include code from Plan 9 from Bell Labs and 9front. Original portions are copyright Mycroftiv and are under the MIT license.

9gridchan.org recommends the 9front Mothra browser for viewing this website.

The ANTS software has been evaluated as "mostly harmless" by the interstellar cat -v patrol force.