Greetings All.
This will be a long post. And I hope I dont bore you. This is my first attempt at contributing in a meanfull and full-time way to Hurd and GNU in general. Have patience with me :D I understand that the Hurd uses the common dpkg (apt-get install whatever) for package management (although i suppose i could use any package manager if i worked at it) and I just had a few questions to which I couldn't find satisfactory answers to on google, debian or ubuntu forums. I didn't want to post to their mailing lists because my questions are more hurd related and I'm still in the "thinking" and learning phase of my plans on contributing to the Hurd. Some idea's I wanted to implement a few years back before I knew more of Hurd than its existence just wasn't possible in Linux but since comming to Hurd I've found that if I had been using Hurd back when I had the origonal taughts I could have made a start on it then, instead of now. Anyone, I wanted to share my taughts in the hope of solicting some responces from some of you. Let me just first say that I have been shadowing the mailing lists now for a while, I've read hundreds of pages on the GNU site, blogs, forums, and I read every post to the bug-hurd and some debian, ubuntu, kernel-hackers and Gentoo and if anything I ask seems stupid or answered somewhere else or my train of taught is completly off the mark and I've somehow passed over something relevent then forgive me. I'm not there yet but I'm getting there. Been a very lazy programmer and stuck in my ways the change from commericial programming to pure open-source in everything I do is teaching this old dog new tricks. I've managed to get Hurd built from source many times (and killed it as often) and I'm really enjoying migrating from linux to the ideas presented in Hurd. Kudos to your work. I find it hard to believe you dont have more developers because Hurd seems a natural progression (in my opinion) from the current style kernels and I find it hard to understand the resistance I get from my friends and co-workers whenever I bring up the Hurd. (especially when I mention hurd was around before linux.. jeez. even i knew that!) So, if you could endulge me a bit I'd be gratefull. This will be my first and hopefully not last post here. 1) Is the reason for using dpkg on hurd atm to manage packages because of the hurds current association with Debian, in that they use it in Debian and seen as they are supporting hurd it was a natural progression? Or just maybe because something was needed and apt was there waiting to be used. Or do you find yourself installing your own packages by hand and compiling what you need yourselves the majority of the time. 2) Is the GNU Package Management system thats under development realy on the right track in your opinion? Do you see it been the final package management system on hurd... given some of the ultimate goals and idea's that Hurd is attempting to achieve (from what i understand). I wont go into specifics but just interested in opinions in the most general sense. 3) I ask this because I'm becomming enthralled with filesystems, storage of code (git and subversioned), PGP crytography, also unionmount imparticular, additionally I love how everything in hurd is a service of one kind or another and exporting interfaces for communication and manipulation. The seperation between user (userspace) and kernel space is more clearly defined (at least in my head) and infintly more configurable in subtle ways that isn't immediatly obvious to someone like myself comming from linux. Such as the level to which you can change the entire user environment seperatly from system level to how you can communicate with other programs and libraries or services. 3) The Hurd is UNIX (POSIX) compatible - have you found anything in the current draft POSIX.2 (i believe) standards that don't seem to provide enough room, or perhaps, restrict development on Hurd in anyway, like implenentation of future ideas? Or is Hurd only concerned with the current POSIX standard in that it suits hurd at the moment to stick to it. One aspect of hurd that I want to get involved in is File Systems. I love that everything is decentralized. It makes no difference to me if the objects are remote or localy hosted. To this end I've been following unionmount related bugs/posts on this mailing list and looking at the source with to be honest, is taking me longer than expected to get to grips to due to assumptions and misunderstandings on my part. 4) What kind of filesystem to you envision Hurd finally using as its default, I dont see it been ext2 or ext3. There great but something (i dont know what yet) is niggeling away at me and I'm not satisifed with it. Especially when it matters not a wit to the user what filesystem he is using. Another beast I've changed over to using almost exclusivly is GIT. Its beautiful in its uglyness :D. Apt, Portage (gentoo package management) and the GNU Package Manager are all topics I'm looking into. Mikel Olasagisti (excuse if i spelt it wrong) was working on Gentoo-Hurd and I too have an interest in using portage (or something new based on portage/apt mix) but I believe that development has stalled or stopped but I'll be going back over it soon and hopefully get his and others taughts. Gentoo is not my distro of choice but I like its philosphy of installing from source. Here is my train of taught and whats bugging me Given the way Hurd uses translators and objects and exports interfaces and everything is a service and it doesn't really matter a wit if its remote or local I was thinking there has to be a better way to manage all of this. Forgive me for not making my taughts more clear but I'm thinking High Level at the minute and not gotten down to technical details yet till I've worked out exactly whats bugging me and what I want to achieve. With regard to Package Management and GIT - I think it should be much easier and transparent for a developer to commit work to and from GIT, idealy not even knowning or caring if its GIT, CVS or whatever subversion system is in use and been able to use it much more naturally with whatever development environment they choose - also - from a package retrieval point of view it should be much more natural for a user to be able to retrieve latest builds, stable versions, backports, documentation, source code and so on. I've also noted that maybe we should be using the GNU Package system where possible (i'm not sure to what degree its development is along yet as I started investigating it 2 days ago) I like apt on my debian and ubuntu systems. But I also like portage and would like a mix between the two but used in sush a way as it could possibly manage GIT, CVS etc through the likes of translators similiar to how unionmount manages different filesystems under a commonly understood theme. I was also wondering in general about the future of operating systems in general. For example, ten years from now I'm predicting that the dividing line of which operating system you use will be irrelevent when it comes down to making a choice between applications for databases, games, desktop publishing, multimedia, whatever. Mono, Java, Google, IBM are all on to big things but again, something just doesn't seem right to me about it all. I think the role of the operating system will come down to just managing the local computer, providing means to communicate with devices (weither remote or local) and the actual software the majority of people use will either be service based (ie: running remotly somewhere with some interface to connect to) or universal like Java, Mono (notice i didn't say .net, microsoft I believe will become a big player in open source (if reluctently). With that in mind I want to keep reminding myself whatever I'm trying to figure out will have to be easily extended. I was thinking about how Hurd treats everything as objects, interfaces, services, translators - what union mount was designed to do, how package managers work and the goals each wants to achieve, advantages, disadvantes of each and suitability for given tasks. Also, the day to day tasks of users and developers – whats common amoung them – whats the differences – how can easy do their thing but exploit the other kind of user to further development and encourage better bug reporting or contributions. I was thinking of the amount of code that will have to change or become redundent or stale or might not even have a place in an Object/Service environment, at least from a higher point of view. OpenSSH, PGP and Authentication should play a larger more transparent part in everyday data transmission and user authentication. Unsecured communication needs to be a thing of the past. Telnet has its uses but SSH is by far better. Ping is essential networking tool – but for example, in a hurd system with clustered machines, remote cpu interfaces, remote network devices etc ping should be able to ping <this machine> from <these machines> and <report the results to this interface (email, telnet, ssh, tty session, file, whatever) for example as easily as you would ping <ip address>. Hurds ideas have far reaching effects for even the most taken for granted tool should it ever reach stable production level. Emails, Mailing list, Instant Messengers, VoIP, Web Browsing - they all form a means of communication - but what if someone never uses Mailing lists or forums, what if your friend isn't using an instant messenger, what if this or that - surly there is a better way to some how merge all these mediums so that that its irrilevent what the medium is. Communications will continue to evolve, whats the best way to have it all and leave room to keep expending. Sendmail is included with every unix system, but should it not be possible somehow to exploit other services on other systems without having the software installed on your system or even caring if you do or not. It should not cost you a taught, you shouldn't have to wonder if you need this or that to do whatever, it should just be there. For example. In terminal. ~/lynx http://www.gnu.com The program 'lynx' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing: sudo apt-get install lynx This is grand. And you can type apt-get install lynx and off you go. I'm not saying it should be installed by default but I am saying that where a known command was not found it should instead do something like this ~/lynx http://www.gnu.com The 'lynx' interface is not up or the lynx software is not installed on your system. Would you like to bring it up/install it now? [u=up/i=install/c=cancel] - u (choose to bring it up) When the service is brought up the interface locally would using hurd mechinics connect to some remote location to provide the lynx program. Ok, lynx might have been a bad example but the point I'm trying to make is I envision hurd been far simplier than current simple (once you've learned them) methods. My first task that I've already been working on is a way to achieve a workable booting Hurd system (not debian style, hurdports) for everyone. Creating a Live CD, or forking a new distribution to installing on a single or hundreds of machines should be as easy as 1,2,3 - download, prepare, install. So far I've a few hundred (ugly) looking scripts and some c code to manage dependancies, compiling, downloading, checking, configuration etc but obviously this will need to evolve beyond scripting to something more real and dependable. I'm very keen on using whats already available - modify what doesn't quite suite - merge different projects that may not have had relation before - to achieve this, hopefully without having to fork anything - i think this is achievable through translaters and interfaces and would suit a hurd environment very well (but should be executable from any POSIX system). Right now the installation depends on apt and git and runs on debian linux but I'd like the whole installation system itself to be hurd based. What I hope to get from the first stage is a basic system that can be booted from Live CD or USB or maybe booted over the network. The Live CD will be universal. In a sense it is not a distro in itself but a universal tool. It will ideally be run on Hurd. Hurd will allow the user to choose what Linux/BSD Distribution he wants to install or configure including the latest Hurd from source. If he chooses a distribution that does not exist cached somewhere locally (on the cd, on the network, on local storage) then it will download it from either A) Repository (install from source), B) Direct download from HTTP or whatnot. It should not be biased toward any distribution though offically in my mind, though it is Hurd I want it for. What do I need this for when I can download and install from the usual sources.... mostly because that is exactly what I dont do. Mostly, I download the source, create a basic environment, compile everything in along the lines of portage, get the package mananger up – setup the repository locations and execute scripts to download, compile and install what I need. It only goes to the likes of binaries when I'm using stable releases or not interested in the source. I normally use my own locally mirrored sources (currently this is in the range of 5tb at work) and includes the full debian, ubuntu, linux mint, gentoo and sabyon repositories. Obviously, this is beyond the average user or indeed most users who have no need or use for this method – so for them it would be a minimal hurd system booted from grub that will use Unionmount and virtualization to mount a location and environment for the other distro and begin its normal install procedure (or clone to/from disk, partition). Requires about an extra 50 megs on disk (after the basic hurd install) and boot time is slowed down by about 15 seconds on most machines during the inital CD boot. Would it be possible in Hurd... from a users environment (installuser account) to setup the envirnment in such a way as a system mounted and booted into it (such as ubuntu) could not see the underlying Hurd and continue as normal? - ie: advanced chroot in the broadest loosest sense/ Advantages... failed install wont bring down the system and I can immediatly go into debugging or recovery mode without having to reboot, reburn another cd for example. The Other Distro wouldn't have to worry about device drivers as the Hurd system would provide compatibility layers through interfaces enough for the other system to work using its stock drivers for the likes of disk, network etc. - but of course, provide some method for the other distro to loads its only specific drivers if need be. This could possibly decrease the size of potentional distributions live cd's as it wouldn't need so much to get up and running, the grub/Hurd combo would take care of it (and provide a real world, working example of a hurd system to begin with – a proof of concept that hurd is real, useable and not just a hackers toy). Another problem is enouraging lesser skilled or non-skilled people to contibute... but in a usefull way. We all know and accept by now I think that you can't teach some people. Majority of bug reports are useless, they make assumptions that are not true or use the wrong tool for the wrong job or ask the wrong question in the wrong place about something thats not relivent to their problem to begin with (or is this only my experience). For most the prospect of using GIT, Launchpad or making modifications to this or that is daunting when they dont know how - there should be a system in place with the likes of documention, bugs, suggestions, requests, should be automated by manageable. This as a first stage. After a base distribution is installed with all required services and systems in place then what? I think its time the Hurd took the spot light. I know its not stable. I know its not production ready. But I think in a limited context it can be. So, after all this (thanks for reading to the end by the way), I'd love your taughts on the future of hurd, how you see it working in the real world, in general non-too-technical-sense and terms. What I'm creating at the minute is the following: * A base hurd install booted from either LiveCD, Usb or Network source. (of course i have to make some allowances for size and purpose) * A terminal and basic tools * A method to install (and update) a Hurd system (xwindows too) that everyone use. This wont be like Debian Hurd or Gentoo Hurd. I would prefer if this was just GNU/Hurd. Using only GNU tools or 100% compatible GPL's GNU software. But I dont have the skills, time or patience to manage such a thing and you are all working to that end anyway in one way or another. What I want is just a Hurd system thats not tied or relying upon another Project but would have good relations with other Hurds. * The LiveCD once booted should be able to install either Hurd or another distro – think of it like you would Grub, grub is the Grand Unified Boot Loader – My Hurd I guess would be the Grand Unified System Installer (gusi?!?!? uck. no. Need a better name). I'm hoping that, with enough people using it for that purpose I can help get it stable and production ready in the sense that it does this job well, everytime and it must be able to inherit new changes easily. Once that is done I hope that I can build upon it to such a degree that everyone can get a standard very basic hurd system up and running, we dont need GNOME or KDE or fancy effects for production systems. Other things, beyond this goal and out of scope I'm looking into along the lines of file systems is DragonFly BSD's Hammer file system. I'm interested in porting this to Hurd and expect to begin real work on it later this year once I get the LiveCD Working. I have definat ambitions with regard to hurd and I've been taking it very seriously over the course of this year since I began thinking of Hurd as a possible platform. So, to finish, and summerize - These are all in the works in one degree or another. LiveCD Hurd (grand unified system installer) – Gusi. Base Hurd System (no name yet, was toying with Ostrix) Hurd based Bootable recovery Partition for all our clients machines (recovery, backups, cloning, emergency recovery) Porting Hammer to Hurd. Package Manager Specification for Hurd (like portage, gnu, or apt) Anyway, taughts, critisims, direction, advice, comments are more than welcome. Thank you for reading... I hope it wasn't too painfull (and if you used pg/dn shame on you) Regards, Ivan
