Hi all,
Sorry all of you. I am extremely sorry for being so late in sending
this mail. I am a prosepective GSoC 2008 student. I am very much interested
in the idea of implementing procfs on HURD. This idea was proposed to me on
our LUG (BMSLUG) mailing list a year
back[1]<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bmslug/message/361>.
Back then I had very less knowledge of HURD and any UNIX system or their
variants in general as a programmer though I was using GNU/Linux just like
an end user from 3 years then. So I did not take up the task then. Now I am
much used to GNU/Linux and have learnt general API programming on UNIX
systems. Though I have not contributed any code to the Linux Kernel
directly, I have a little understanding of how the code is structured and
how it works.
So as soon as I saw the idea on the proposed projects list on 24th I was
very much inspired and motivated to take this project for this Summer. I
immediately thought of working on this. And I thought I could post to the
mailing list once I have a fair understanding of the proc filesystem. Hence
the delay in posting. I did go through few guides and tutorials on procfs on
GNU/Linux system. Main guides include
[2]<http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/%7Etjuerges/ALMA/Kernel/procfs-guide/index.html>and
[3] <http://www.nirendra.net/cms/procfs/user>. I am also going through the
procfs Documentation in the Linux 2.6 Kernel source located at
kernel-source/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt<http://users.sosdg.org/%7Eqiyong/lxr/source/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt>[4].
Please give me some time to go through it fully since it is a pretty huge
documentation and it takes some time to digest it. I hope you guys
understand how difficult it is to understand things for beginners like me in
the beginning.
I have a working Installation of the GNU system[Debian GNU/HURD K-16], I
checked out the CVS code of procfs in the hurdextras repo. I also read the
Documentation thats there in the CVS, the
README<http://users.sosdg.org/%7Eqiyong/lxr/source/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt>file[5].
I am also going through the code. I hope you people understand that
going through the entire code and understanding in less than 5 days is quite
difficult for beginners. Kindly co-operate. I will defintely go through the
code. Though I have understood what translators are I am not aquainted with
translator programming. I am also learning that part still. Since the
requirement says this project would require "learning translator
programming", I am learning it from HURD Hacking Guide.
Since Google has given us the whole of April and May to build a strong
relationship with the community, I will utilize this time to become well
versed in translator programming, general HURD programming and Hacking and
also with the current implementation of procfs in HURD. I will also utilize
this time to draw a neat plan of what needs to be done(though we would have
comeup with a rough plan while submitting the application itself, at this
stage I would like to refine things and make the plan rocksolid). So as soon
as SoC begins on May 28th I can start right away with coding.
So I request you all to guide me through this process and help me come up
with a proposal. I think its bit difficult to port all the features in
GNU/Linux procfs to HURD in 3 months by a single person, though its not
impossible(I also think its not necessary to port each and every feature
thats available in GNU/Linux). So by having a discussion here we can
finalize on what are the most important requirements that we need to focus
at the very moment and draw a schedule for this summer so that the goals can
be reached.
I think most important of all the features that are to be made available
are proc/<pid>/* features which are very important to implement process
related functionalities. So we need to focus on it at the moment.
Those features include
/proc/<pid>/cpu
/proc/<pid>/cwd
correcting the problems in /proc/<pid>/environ
/proc/<pid>/mem
completing /proc/<pid>/stat
/proc/cmdline
/proc/swaps
We can also think of /proc/<pid>/attr/* features if they are feasible and if
you people suggest to go ahead.
What are your suggestions? Please Help me.
(This is only a rough idea of what can be done. I will draw the plan after
discussion here is complete. I am open for all your inputs. I will be
available in #hurd at the time which is convinient to you all. Please inform
me so I can make myself available at that time. Please help me.)
[1]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bmslug/message/361<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bmslug/message/361>
Please see this if you have access to this post. The mailing list is not
moderated.
[2]
http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~tjuerges/ALMA/Kernel/procfs-guide/index.html<http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/%7Etjuerges/ALMA/Kernel/procfs-guide/index.html>
[3]
http://www.nirendra.net/cms/procfs/user<http://www.nirendra.net/cms/procfs/user>
[4]
http://users.sosdg.org/~qiyong/lxr/source/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt<http://users.sosdg.org/%7Eqiyong/lxr/source/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt>
[5]
http://users.sosdg.org/~qiyong/lxr/source/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt<http://users.sosdg.org/%7Eqiyong/lxr/source/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt>
--
Thanks and regards,
Madhusudan.C.S
"When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is
relinquished voluntarily by default it can never be recovered"
- Dorothy Thompson
