Hey Hurd friends!
I figure I'll send out a draft Q3 Qoth to the mailing list. Please let me know if there are some cool things that I have missed. Sergey I didn't see any new code relating to AArch64, but I think you had said that you have the Hurd running on real hardware? What hardware? Would you like me to add a paragraph on how "stable" the Hurd is on AArch64? Want me to add a comment about hurd-alpine? (I hope my last comments on Q2 didn't hurt your feelings. Hurd-alpine is a significant achievement! Damien, should we add a paragraph about the general state of SMP? Did I miss some contribution/s that you did this quarter that you'd like me to mention? Anyone that uses the Hurd in real hardware...want to add a comment on how well it runs? I suppose that I use it on my T43, I could write something if people think that would be a good idea. The bottom of this Qoth has a section about running the Hurd on a T400. Since I own a T400, I will try to install the Hurd on it this week, that way, when we reccomend hardware...I can confidently say that it works. Draft Qoth Q3 2024: Samuel Thibault added rust support for hurd-amd64 (X86_64), and it was merged upstream! Samuel is ok with using rust code in the Hurd code base. If you have an idea for a Hurd translator that you want to write in rust, then get in touch! Samuel fixed an issue with a shell replacement issue , and he notes that "saving/restoring sse registers needs to be implemented." He also started a Debian hurd-amd64 build daemon. So an X86_64 bit Debian GNU/Hurd is officially building Debian packages around the clock (almost 8,000 packages are built already)! You can see its progress here. Several packages that build on hurd-i386 are failing to build on hurd-amd64, so those certainly need to be fixed. Currently swapping does not work well with rumpdisk, so swap has been disabled temporarily on the 64-bit port. Additionally, there are many deadlock issues on hurd-amd64, which mean someone needs to debug ext2fs/libdiskfs. Samuel also got the Debian installer CD working on a 64-bit Hurd. Samuel's summed up the 64-bit Hurd's stability with this comment: ••• > > ``` > > All in all, I have to reboot the buildd box several times a day > > (while the i386 buildds can compile packages for several weeks before > encountering hangs). > > ``` > Samuel also had a smattering of fixes here, here, and here. Flavio Cruz removed some lingering code that handled untyped mach messages. He addedpthread_getname_np and pthread_setname_np to glibc, and he added athread_get_name RPC to GNU Mach. He also fixed several 64-bit issues here, here, here, here, here, and here. He continued working on porting GDB to the 64-bit Hurd. Luca Dariz added a test to check that interrupts on an RPC work. He also had several patches that added xfloat thread state interface to GNU Mach (What does that mean?). He also worked on fixing an unprivileged double fault with GDB. Sergey Bugaev sped up access () / faccessat (), when checking for file existence. This is prompted by GLib switching to use faccessat (F_OK) to implement g_file_query_exists () for local files. Want to run Debian GNU/Hurd on real hardware? We might recommend the Thinkpad X200, T400, T500, or W500, which has internet connectivity via the ethernet port and supports 8GB of RAM. You could also add an SSD, which the Hurd can use, with a maximum partition size of 2TB! For now, while we stabilize the hurd-amd64 port, you should probably run a 32 bit Hurd on real hardware. You can always install the 64 bit port and let us know how it works! Interested in running the Hurd on newer hardware, adding usb or sound support? We have plans to support newer hardware with rump kernels. And we are already supporting SSDs with rumpdisk, and we have an experimental usb support with rumpusbdisk. Samuel showed off very basic and limited sound support in this video. That work needs to be extended. Join in the effort, and we can support newer hardware soon!
