9P read streaming in action

This is the debug output for a standard Plan 9, modified as said in previous posts.
The output was collected while copying /bin/ls to /tmp. The sendreqs print
corresponds to read requests issued to satisfy a read, and implies a blocking
during read to wait for data.

The sendreqs2 prints correspond to requests issued by the kernel during "streaming"; they are just read-aheads.

In short, the output means that 9 had to wait only for the first read. The semantics of file access remain the same of a standard 9 system, we just exploit 9P2000.ix when available and read-aheads for files that   are cached in the mount cache. Plus, we note in the mount cache when did we detect the end of file to prevent unnecessary read requests. All this being careful to check out with the server during opens, as the standard mount cache would do.

sendreqs pid 157 /bin/ls n 8192 off 0 cend -1
sendreqs2 pid 157 /bin/ls na 16336 raoff 8192
rdone pid 157 /bin/ls off 0 tot 8192 left 0xf27b6b00
rdone pid 157 /bin/ls off 16384 tot 8144 left 0xf1e71790
rdone pid 157 /bin/ls off 8192 tot 8192 left 0x0
sendreqs2 pid 157 /bin/ls na 8192 raoff 24528
rdone pid 157 /bin/ls off 24528 tot 8192 left 0x0
sendreqs2 pid 157 /bin/ls na 8192 raoff 32720
rdone pid 157 /bin/ls off 32720 tot 8192 left 0x0
sendreqs2 pid 157 /bin/ls na 8192 raoff 40912
rdone pid 157 /bin/ls off 40912 tot 8192 left 0x0
sendreqs2 pid 157 /bin/ls na 8192 raoff 49104
rdone pid 157 /bin/ls off 49104 tot 8192 left 0x0
sendreqs2 pid 157 /bin/ls na 8192 raoff 57296
rdone pid 157 /bin/ls off 57296 tot 8192 left 0x0
sendreqs2 pid 157 /bin/ls na 8192 raoff 65488
rdone pid 157 /bin/ls off 65488 tot 8192 left 0x0
sendreqs2 pid 157 /bin/ls na 8192 raoff 73680
rdone pid 157 /bin/ls off 73680 tot 7894 left 0x0
ceof pid 157 /bin/ls eof at 81574

We still have to clean up the implementation, conduct more testing, and fix any bug found during the process. But, this system is close to fully avoid the latency problems due to 9P RPCs while still using 9P(.ix), which is nice. Stay tuned :)