Re: some questions on Hurd
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On Tue, Nov 21, 2000 at 04:20:42AM +0100, Henning Riedel wrote:
> As far as I got looking on Hurd-pages I realize, that documentation isn't really going any further.
> Though, because I have to talk about this OS in school, I'd like to find something about the basics.
> When I got it right, there is now the Mach4- microkernel sitting on top of the hardware, right?
No GNU/Mach or oskit-mach. The latter is derived from the former which
is turn is derived from Utah's Mach 4.
> And if I got it right, the device drivers are still in kernel space.
> Also there are servers in user space, which do the basic parts, like IO (network, fs, etc.).
Yes and yes.
> Could somebody tell me the difference between translators and servers, please. There seems to be a difference, as I read through the http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd-doc-server.html .
You of course mean this url:
http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-doc-server
And no, there is no difference.
> Next thing, in the article "Toward a New Strategy of OS Design" [1] Trent Fisher (?) said, on the auth.-server anybody can use its own trusted auth-server. So, how does he know that this specific auth-server is safe or where does he get his own trusted auth-server??
Thomas Bushnell. Everyone, i.e. processes, knows where the trusted auth
server is.
> And, there is something I really don't know how to find out (except walking through the whole gnumach-code for months!): What are the main changes to the CMU Mach kernel you made, 'cause somebody said it's a modified CMU Mach-microkernel. Are these differences what's talked about in the article [1] at Part1 or what did you guys do?
>From what I understand essentially device drivers.
> I might present in my presentation some datastructures and library functions which mach offers to programmers.
> Are you still using the libthreads-library or are you already using POSIX pthreads? Are you using the "Microkernel Object Library" libmom already?
Still using cthreads. libmom has not been developed for a while.
> In libports: there are buckets (port sets) and classes (???) what is the difference, how should I interprete classes?
A port class defines how a ``type'' of port is destroyed etc. A port
bucket is a collection of ports (of any class).
> When I looked through the Mch-documentation, there was something about running UNIX in a single-server on top of Mach. How do you do this? Is this the combination of proc- and exec-server and the GNU-C-library? Is this also a single-server or is it a multi-server?
The hurd is a multi server operating system, not a single server. Think
of a monolithic kernel and separate it into two: a microkernel and
everything else. When ``everything else'' lives in a single user space
task, you have a single server operating system. When ``everything
else'' is divided into servers, e.g. auth, proc, exec, ext2fs, nfs,
tcpip, etc, you have a multi server operating system.
> Oh, almost forgot to ask. I tried to install a Hurd-system, which was on a CD in the freeX-magazin 4/00.
> I got GRUB looking on my harddisk an he found the gnumach.gz and the server.gz. After the mach tells me that on the DC390T there is no EPROM to rread from (actually it's a DawiControl DC2974 with AM53C974) he stops
> and the system is frozen. Somebody told me that it might be my NE2000-PCI networkcard. Can I somehow tell the kernel not to load somekind of device-driver or do I have to build a new kernel myself?
Sounds like irq sharing or some such. First, try the latest gnumach.
-Neal
--
Neal H Walfield
University of Massachusetts at Lowell
neal@walfield.org or neal@cs.uml.edu
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