Hi, I'm the one who wrote umount...


Posted:   |   More posts about gsoc debian hurd   |  

Everyone enjoys ASCII screenshots as much as I do, right? So here is the Hurd booting with my mtab-prototype bound to /run/mtab:

INIT: version 2.88 booting
Using makefile-style concurrent boot in runlevel S.
Activating swap...done.
Checking root file system...fsck from util-linux 2.20.1
hd2 : tray open or drive not ready
hd2 : tray open or drive not ready
hd2 : tray open or drive not ready
hd2 : tray open or drive not ready
end_request: I/O error, dev 02:00, sector 0
/dev/hd0s1: clean, 44292/181056 files, 287759/723200 blocks
done.
Activating lvm and md swap...(default pager): Already paging to partition hd0s5!
done.
Checking file systems...fsck from util-linux 2.20.1
hd2 : tray open or drive not ready
hd2 : tray open or drive not ready
end_request: I/O error, dev 02:00, sector 0
done.
Cleaning up temporary files... /tmp.
Mounting local filesystems...done.
Activating swapfile swap...(default pager): Already paging to partition hd0s5!
done.
Cleaning up temporary files....
Configuring network interfaces...inetutils-ifconfig: invalid arguments
ifup: failed to open pid file /run/network/ifup-/dev/eth0.pid: No such file or directory
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client 4.2.2
Copyright 2004-2011 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit https://www.isc.org/software/dhcp/

can't create /var/lib/dhcp/dhclient./dev/eth0.leases: No such file or directory
Listening on Socket//dev/eth0
Sending on   Socket//dev/eth0
DHCPDISCOVER on /dev/eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 4
DHCPREQUEST on /dev/eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPOFFER from 10.0.2.2
DHCPACK from 10.0.2.2
can't create /var/lib/dhcp/dhclient./dev/eth0.leases: No such file or directory
bound to 10.0.2.15 -- renewal in 42550 seconds.
done.
Cleaning up temporary files....
Setting up X socket directories... /tmp/.X11-unix /tmp/.ICE-unix.
INIT: Entering runlevel: 2
Using makefile-style concurrent boot in runlevel 2.
Starting enhanced syslogd: rsyslogd.
Starting deferred execution scheduler: atd.
Starting periodic command scheduler: cron.
Starting system message bus: dbusFailed to set socket option"/var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket": Protocol not available.
Starting OpenBSD Secure Shell server: sshd.


GNU 0.3 (debian) (console)

login:

As you can see, the boot process looks quite clean. In particular, there are no issues left with Debians initscripts. The remaining noise comes from:

  • The GNU mach kernel, but that's okay. The FreeBSD kernel writes lot's of stuff by default too, and so does Linux if one increases the kernel log level. Also, some of the stuff might be due to me using qemu.
  • Network related issues.
  • The default pager. This is the translator paging out memory to swap space.

This is accomplished by my mtab translator prototype. It's work in progress, but I have reworked and broken up my initial prototype. My initial prototype only patched libdiskfs, one of three libraries translator authors can use to write filesystem-like translators. I have made the necessary changes to the other two libraries and patched up any loose ends.

This is the translator in action:

% fsysopts /run/mtab
/hurd/mtab /
% cat /run/mtab
/dev/hd0s1 / ext2fs writable,no-inherit-dir-group,store-type=typed 0 0
none /dev/ttyp0 /hurd/term name,/dev/ptyp0,type,pty-master 0 0
none /run /hurd/tmpfs writable,no-suid,no-exec,no-inherit-dir-group,no-sync,size=80484K 0 0
none /run/lock /hurd/tmpfs writable,no-suid,no-exec,no-inherit-dir-group,no-sync,size=5M 0 0
none /run/shm /hurd/tmpfs writable,no-suid,no-exec,no-inherit-dir-group,no-sync,size=259480K 0 0

I also patched the sysvinit package. My version includes and switches to runsystem.sysv that uses /sbin/init to start the system. It also carries all the necessary workarounds for the remaining sysvinit related issues.

The resulting Debian/Hurd system is very nice, it is getting more and more similar to what a Debian user would expect:

  • For the first time, df without arguments works:

    % df
    Filesystem     1K-blocks    Used Available Use% Mounted on
    /dev/hd0s1      10005504 4671612   4833620  50% /
    none               80484      44     80440   1% /run
    none                5120       4      5116   1% /run/lock
    none              259480       4    259476   1% /run/shm
    
  • The mount utility is accompanied by umount.

  • /etc/fstab is honored and auto works as an fstype.

  • /run and friends are in fact ram-disks.

  • /sbin/shutdown works.

  • All init scripts are properly started and stopped.

    • Among other nice things this enables one to manage the network configuration using the Debian way via interfaces(5).
  • /etc/inittab is honored.

I have rebuild the hurd and sysvinit package and uploaded them into an apt repository:

deb http://teythoon.cryptobitch.de/gsoc/heap/debian unstable main

Please use unstable for now. Also make sure that you have a recovery plan for your Debian/Hurd installation if anything goes wrong. For your convenience there's a seed tarball containing packages with the appropriate sources.list.d snippets and the repository key:

https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de/gsoc/heap/debian/seed.tar

Currently /hurd/console is not started (I'll add a init script for that later), but for now you have to start a getty on the console. Make sure that your /etc/inittab contains a line like this:

7:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 console

The patched initscripts package contains the runsystem.sysv file and uses the Debian alternatives system to replace the runsystem.gnu variant. It also switches to the appropriate halt and reboot utilities. If you install the package, you must use halt-hurd or reboot-hurd to halt or reboot the system. Running halt or reboot is not harmful though, it just doesn't work.

So here I am. I've been coding for the Hurd for four weeks now, and suddenly I'm the guy who wrote umount. My point is, if you ever wanted to work on an operating system, you might want to consider working on the Hurd. It the Debian/Hurd port is very decent and (according to #debian-hurds "Debian GNU/Hurd Doomsday-o-meter") 78.44% of all Debian packages are available, so you've got a familiar environment. Also, if your solution is right and your code is reasonably clean, it is not that hard to get your changes accepted. The list of open issues is long and might contain something that interests you. You could be the one implementing a read-ahead solution to massively improve Hurds overall performance.

Also since Hurd is just a Hird of Unix replacing daemons running on-top the GNU Mach microkernel, most of the functionality lies within userspace processes. This makes the whole system very extensible and quite easy to work with. For an overview over the Hurd, see this page.

Next week I'll focus on improving my mtab prototype, improving the sysvinit patches and upstreaming the ones that are ready. As always, in case I run out of stuff to do, I'll pick something from my list of issues, most likely the network related issues.

In completely unrelated news, my Debian/Linux workstation died with a kernel panic while I was writing this blog entry. It's a good thing Emacs honors "save early, save often". M-x insert-monolithic-kernel-rant-here.

This is it for this week, thanks for your attention :)

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