Hello! On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 08:18:55PM +0100, Mathew Roberts wrote: > I asked on #hurd at freenode about september month of the hurd and got some > suggestions to put in it: [...]
Here we go; Arne, this one's for you! <http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/news/2010-09.html> | A month of the Hurd: *new translators* / *bug fixing*. | [[!if test="included()" then="""[[!toggle id=full_news | text="Details."]][[!toggleable id=full_news text="[[!paste id=full_news]]"]]""" | else=" | [[!paste id=full_news]]"]] | | [[!cut id="full_news" text=""" | | Yes, we're a bit late this month. Arne Babenhauserheide, the guy who has | started and has been drafting the *Month of the Hurd* ever since June 2010 | (yes, that one and a half years already!), moves on to other duties -- his wife | has given birth to our first Hurd developer offspring (as far as I know): | | > Last friday my son Leandro entered our cold and too bright but friendly | > world, [...] | | We wish them good luck for their new parental duty! | | The other guy, Thomas Schwinge, who has been editing and publishing the *Month | of the Hurd* will take over -- at least temporarily (mind you, Arne). | | But, we got some Hurd news, too. | | Olaf Buddenhagen posted a patch that allows to [obtain number of ports in proc | and libps](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2010-09/msg00036.html) by | means of adding a new [[RPC]] -- and subsequently held a discussion with Samuel | Thibault who proposed that instead of adding such functionality on an [ad hoc | basis](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2010-09/msg00044.html), a | more generic solution could be found, too. In the end, they agreed that this | functionality was useful enough, and the patch was | [committed](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/commit-hurd/2010-09/msg00031.html). | | It is important to spend time on designing proper interfaces (RPCs in this | case), but on the other hand what we're doing now need not be set in stone | forever, as Olaf | [explains](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2010-09/msg00045.html): | | > Well, we already have a mechanism for making communication protocols in | > the Hurd extensible: it's called the RPC mechanism... :-) Let's not try | > to invent another generic mechanism on top of RPCs. | > | > *If* ten year down the road we indeed end up with half a dozen | > miscallaneous info queries, we can *still* replace them by a new RPC | > covering all of it... | | Thomas Schwinge [moved some | packages](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2010-09/msg00031.html) | ([[hurd/translator/gopherfs]], [[hurd/translator/netio]], | [[hurd/translator/tarfs]]) from hurdextras to the Hurd's | [[source_repositories/incubator]] repository; these are now available as | [[Debian GNU/Hurd packages|hurd/running/debian]]. Manuel Menal also spent time | on actually making tarfs and good ol' gopherfs usable. | | Similar treatment [has been | applied](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2010-09/msg00055.html) to | Jérémie Koenig's new [[procfs|hurd/translator/procfs/jkoenig]] implementation; | this one is now [used in Debian | GNU/Hurd](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/commit-hurd/2010-09/msg00063.html). | | Jérémie found some [problems with signal | delivery](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2010-09/msg00006.html) -- | signals apparently are not delivered as expected. Roland McGrath, this *hairy | code*'s original author, [provided some | insight](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2010-09/msg00008.html): | | > It's not that it's a bug, it's that the Hurd has never had POSIX-1996 | > multithreaded signal semantics. The Hurd implementation predates those | > specifications. | | He [continued to | explain](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2010-09/msg00010.html): | | > The Hurd signal semantics are well-defined | > today. They are not the POSIX-1996 semantics in the presence of multiple | > threads per process. | | This explains for differences comparing to other recent Unixy systems, for | example Linux. Neal Walfield, our [[libpthread]]'s main author, | [states](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2010-09/msg00017.html) that | he sees *no convincing reason to not adopt POSIX/Linux signal semantics and | abandon Hurd signal semantics*. Jérémie went on to [send a first | patch](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2010-09/msg00011.html). | While already working in that area, Samuel Thibault applied some further fixes | to our two threading libraries, and among others, he also sent a related glibc | patch to [fix signal-catching | functions](http://sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2010-09/msg00015.html). And | then, there is still the project about [[converting the Hurd's libraries and | servers to using libpthread instead of Mach's cthreads | (libthreads)|community/gsoc/project_ideas/pthreads]]; likely such signalling | system moderizations could be done [alongside of | that](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2010-09/msg00021.html). | | Manuel Menal [fixed a | bug](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2010-09/msg00061.html) that | occurred when sending file descriptors with `SCM_RIGHTS` over `PF_LOCAL` | sockets. He also determined this bug to be the reason that the SSH daemon's | privilege separation was not working on GNU/Hurd -- now [this is | fixed](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/commit-hurd/2010-09/msg00036.html) and | you can use the default of `UsePrivilegeSeparation yes`. | | Michael Banck has, based on user feedback, applied some changes to the | [[!debpkg crosshurd]] package, and [uploaded a new | version](http://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2010/09/msg00037.html). | | In other news, the [[hurd/running/Arch_Hurd]] guys rightfully concluded that | now that they're having a package available for almighty GNU Emacs, [no further | user-land packages need to be | ported](http://blogs.archhurd.org/hayashi/2010/09/04/emacs-emacs/). If only | everyone was using Emacs... | | Last, and least, [there are | rumors](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2010-09/msg00026.html) about | our colleagues over at the Duke Nukem Forever department getting serious again. | We shall see. :-) | | """]] Regards, Thomas
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