Re: Hurd queries
On Mon, Apr 02, 2001 at 08:03:15PM +0100, Bob Ham wrote:
> Hi all
>
> I've a few quesitons about the Hurd that I was hoping could have some
> light shed on them: firstly, has any thought been put into how sound
> will be handled? If not, does anybody know if it would be possible to
> port OSS/Lite or ALSA to the Hurd?
AFAIK There isn't any code for sound yet. If you have desire you can write
a sound layer and send patches for GNUMach and/or Hurd to bug-hurd@gnu.org.
> Is there going to be a Hurd TCP/IP stack developed? I know pfinet was
> carved out of Linux, and there's a 'newpfinet' directory in the hurd CVS
> repository (even though it's empty.)
pfinet is TCP/IP stack, isn't it? But it is tightly integrated with
ethernet layer, e.g. there is no PPP support yet. I don't know what the
plans for newpfinet are.
> Has anyone looked at GGI's KGI kernel drivers (ie, what fb came from)? I
> would imagine that the Mach environment would be ideal to host graphics
> drivers (as opposed to a monolithic kernel.) Or, are people happy with
> X?
GGI was mentioned in mailing lists a time ago with the same in mind: as an
alternative of X. Again, if you like to implement it in GNUMach/Hurd you
are welcome. BTW X is so popular! But I agree that it's so heavy too. And
why GNUMach as microkernel to be ideal for hosting graphics drivers? The
opposite is true - graphics drivers have to be in userspace, e.g. as
translators. Disk and network drivers found in GNUMach are just prove that
it is not "pure" microkernel. But definately GNUMach must provide as fast
access to hardware as it can be. I think MIT's exo-kernel do something like
that.
> Lastly, not so much to do with the Hurd and more GNU/Hurd, there's an
> nfsd executable in /sbin that dpkg doesn't know about and for which
> there seems to be no documentation. There's an 'nfsd' subsection in the
> Distributed File Systems chapter of the Hurd Reference Manual that is
> sadly empty. Running it (with --help), it moans about
> /var/state/misc/nfsd.index not existing. Is there any documentation on
> how to get this nfsd to do its stuff, or does anybody know?
I don't know about nfsd in /sbin. There is a NFS client which is a
translator. Try /hurd/nfs --help. Its usage is something like that:
settrans /mount/point /hurd/nfs nfs.server.com:/nfs/directory
But see --help output for more info.
Regards
--
Ognyan Kulev <ogi@fmi.uni-sofia.bg>, "\"Programmer\""
Reply to: