Nabble - Gnu - System Discuss

Re: Anything to do?

2009-10-23T06:12:04Z

Now, by "copying" I meant to do something like this:

# cp /packages/emacs-21 /stow

that is, to _copy_ the package into /stow (that is, having a real directory
into /stow instead of making a symlink). This was only the main way I used to
test the stowfs support (is more interesting on a debugging POV since files
are more slowly added into the union and I could test better the support for
dynamic insertion of directories). _BUT_ symlink are supported too, that is we
_can_ install emacs into the system just by doing:

# ln -s /packages/emacs-21 /stow/

Ok, now I understand. This is the right thing.

AJISH B has sent you a private message

2009-03-11T04:31:49Z

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2009-03-11T04:31:48Z

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CPU Cycles Consumed by C program on PXA255

2008-06-14T05:26:17Z

Hi,
I have run my C program on a board which have Intel PXA255 ARM processor. Now I want to know how much CPU cycles it consumed during its execution. So I think I can do this by capturing the CPU clocks at start of my program and capture again at the end of my program. The difference in the cpu clocks is the total CPU cycles consumed by my program. But how can I do this using some C or inline (ARM)assembly code?

I seen some of members are discussing this on this forum that they count the CPU cycles consumed by C programs. But I want you to help me writing this code. I do not have much idea about ARM Assembly but can understand easily as I worked in Assembly for x86.

By the way, I am using arm-linux-gcc 3.3.2 toolchain to build executables that I run on my board.

Thanks
Junaid

Re: UPM

2008-03-30T21:16:20Z

Hi,

On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 08:05:09PM +0530, AJISH B wrote:

> My topic is based on Universal Package Manager(UPM). I wanted to know
> or learn more about my topic.So, could anyone please tell me which
> mentor to contact or from where I could gather more information about
> my topic.

Just ask whatever you need to know, either here or in the #hurd channel
on IRC.

Reading the archives of this mailing list could prove helpful to get a
better understanding what we are aiming at regarding package management.

Ben Asselstine will mentor the "Hurdish package manager for GNU" task,
so maybe he is the best person to talk to...

-antrik-

Re: Participation in Google SoC

2008-03-30T16:03:31Z

Hi,

On Sun, Mar 30, 2008 at 03:31:09AM +0100, Daniel Martin wrote:

> Sorry to butt in, but isn't this Google's problem? Should _we_ be
> worried about this? If Google's willing to give them money for working
> on GNU then good for them. Unless of course Google allocates money on
> a per project basis, and you expect others to come forward?

Every organisation gets a certain number of "slots" from google, which
is considerably less then the number of student applications -- we have
to choose which of the students who applied for Hurd we want to take. Of
course we are interested in choosing in such a way as to ensure the
greatest benefit for the Hurd project.

If some students have to do the work anyways for their studies, then
giving slots to those students wouldn't benefit the Hurd; we can better
allocate those slots to other students who wouldn't do the work without
GSoC...

-antrik-

Re: Participation in Google SoC

2008-03-29T19:31:09Z

Sorry to butt in, but isn't this Google's problem? Should _we_ be
worried about this? If Google's willing to give them money for working
on GNU then good for them. Unless of course Google allocates money on a
per project basis, and you expect others to come forward?

I'd have thought that _our_ problem is to find a `mentor' (or whatever
the term Google uses) for them, who has the free time and expertise
required.

dacm.

On Sat, 2008-03-29 at 15:37 +0100, olafBuddenhagen@... wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Fri, Mar 28, 2008 at 09:27:45AM +0530, CK Raju, Thrissur wrote:
>
> > http://code.google.com/opensource/gsoc/2008/faqs.html#0.1_goals
>
> I'm not sure what you are trying to say here...
>
> The way I see it, submitting a university project for GSoC does *not*
> further the goals listed there -- the university project would already
> meet all of them without the google stipend just as well...
>
> GSoC only makes sense where it allows students to work on a project they
> otherwise couldn't do.
>
> -antrik-
>
>

Re: Participation in Google SoC

2008-03-29T07:37:45Z

Hi,

On Fri, Mar 28, 2008 at 09:27:45AM +0530, CK Raju, Thrissur wrote:

> http://code.google.com/opensource/gsoc/2008/faqs.html#0.1_goals

I'm not sure what you are trying to say here...

The way I see it, submitting a university project for GSoC does *not*
further the goals listed there -- the university project would already
meet all of them without the google stipend just as well...

GSoC only makes sense where it allows students to work on a project they
otherwise couldn't do.

-antrik-

Re: Participation in Google SoC

2008-03-27T20:57:45Z

http://code.google.com/opensource/gsoc/2008/faqs.html#0.1_goals

CK Raju

On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 7:20 AM, <olafBuddenhagen@...> wrote:

> Hi,
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 02:46:21PM +0530, CK Raju wrote:
> > On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 1:26 PM, Vikram Vincent
> > <vincentvikram@...> wrote:
>
>
> > > Do you mean that you are *also* submitting it as your college
> > > project or that UPM is in the course syllabus?
>
>
> > Yes, And I think Google SoC cites it as a *fit* case.
>
> Can you cite any reference on that? I have a hard time believing this...
> It just seems wrong that you would get paid by GSoC for something that
> you have to do anyways as part of your studies.
>
> Of course, we will mentor you with this project as good as we can; but I
> think it will have to happen independant of GSoC...
>
> -antrik-
>
>
>
>
> --
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-hurd-REQUEST@...
> with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@...
>
>

Re: Participation in Google SoC

2008-03-27T19:22:43Z

2008/3/27, Michael Banck <mbanck@...>:

> On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 06:35:33PM +0530, AJISH B wrote:
> > Please find more details in the link below
> >
> > http://www.bddebian.com/~wiki/hurd/running/gnu/universal_package_manager/
>
>
> In the above link, you describe how to mix .deb, .rpm, built-from-source
> and other packages into something stow-like. How do you address the
> problem that some packages have different names in deb/rpm land and thus
> something an rpm depends on might be unknown to Stow, e.g., because it
> is has a slightly different name? (Library packages come to mind here).

Can we go down to file based dependency instead on just package name,
when the dependency is not satisfied?

For eaxample package A depends on package B and we can't find package
B. Can we check the system for contents of package B and pass the
dependency as success if all the contents are present? And may be
cache this info as a virtual package B for future use.

--
പ്രവീണ്‍ അരിമ്പ്രത്തൊടിയില്‍
<GPLv2> I know my rights; I want my phone call!
<DRM> What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak?
(as seen on /.)
Join The DRM Elimination Crew Now!
http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Anti-DRM-Campaign

Re: Participation in Google SoC

2008-03-27T18:43:51Z

2008/3/28, Hubert Chathi <uhoreg@...>:

> On Thu, 27 Mar 2008 02:50:38 +0100, <olafBuddenhagen@...> said:
> > Can you cite any reference on that? I have a hard time believing
> > this... It just seems wrong that you would get paid by GSoC for
> > something that you have to do anyways as part of your studies.
>
>
> It's in the GSoC FAQ:
> http://code.google.com/opensource/gsoc/2008/faqs.html#0.1_course_credit
>
> Of course, whether or not Google thinks is OK is very different from
> whether the University thinks it's OK. I suspect that the latter would
> be more important to check.

This look clear now. University side is also OK.

Now the thing to look for is evaluating technical side of the proposal
to see if we can accept it as a soc project.

Regards
Praveen
--
പ്രവീണ്‍ അരിമ്പ്രത്തൊടിയില്‍
<GPLv2> I know my rights; I want my phone call!
<DRM> What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak?
(as seen on /.)
Join The DRM Elimination Crew Now!
http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Anti-DRM-Campaign

Re: Participation in Google SoC

2008-03-27T15:22:33Z

On Thu, 27 Mar 2008 02:50:38 +0100, <olafBuddenhagen@...> said:

> Hi,
> On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 02:46:21PM +0530, CK Raju wrote:
>> On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 1:26 PM, Vikram Vincent
>> <vincentvikram@...> wrote:

> > Do you mean that you are *also* submitting it as your college
>> > project or that UPM is in the course syllabus?

>> Yes, And I think Google SoC cites it as a *fit* case.

> Can you cite any reference on that? I have a hard time believing
> this... It just seems wrong that you would get paid by GSoC for
> something that you have to do anyways as part of your studies.

It's in the GSoC FAQ:
http://code.google.com/opensource/gsoc/2008/faqs.html#0.1_course_credit

Of course, whether or not Google thinks is OK is very different from
whether the University thinks it's OK. I suspect that the latter would
be more important to check.

--
Hubert Chathi <uhoreg@...> -- Jabber: hubert@...
PGP/GnuPG key: 1024D/124B61FA http://www.uhoreg.ca/
Fingerprint: 96C5 012F 5F74 A5F7 1FF7 5291 AF29 C719 124B 61FA

Re: GSoC 2008 - some questions

2008-03-27T11:34:32Z

Hi,

On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 03:18:45PM +0100, krzysztof blicharski wrote:

> Hello I'm Krzysiek Blicharski I'm a student considering applying to
> one of hurdish TCP/IP stack or improved NFS implementation projects.

> I have some experience in programming especially in C (~7 years),
> using Linux and know some basics about the Linux kernel (especially
> network stack). Together with my friends I conduct a project - we
> write the operating system for which I wrote network stack (a few
> protocols) based on linux kernel. I also have basic knowledge about
> file systems. What I don't have is extensive experience with Hurd.
>
> What I want to ask the community here is on which project should I
> concentrate and ask for more information about those projects.

That really depends on your own preferences and skills... :-)

We can help you if you have some specific questions regarding these
projects, of course.

> The hurdish TCP/IP stack is a enormous project, so I think that the
> man who will take this project will work only on some parts of it,
> what are you expecting from such man to do?

Well, the idea was to come up with the basic structure, and implement at
least some components for the most important protocols and features. I
hoped that would be doable in the available time, but if you say it
isn't... You are the one having more experience in this field. What
would you suggest?

-antrik-

Re: Participation in Google SoC

2008-03-27T09:18:19Z

On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 06:35:33PM +0530, AJISH B wrote:
> Please find more details in the link below
>
> http://www.bddebian.com/~wiki/hurd/running/gnu/universal_package_manager/

In the above link, you describe how to mix .deb, .rpm, built-from-source
and other packages into something stow-like. How do you address the
problem that some packages have different names in deb/rpm land and thus
something an rpm depends on might be unknown to Stow, e.g., because it
is has a slightly different name? (Library packages come to mind here).

Michael

UPM

2008-03-27T07:35:09Z

Hi all,

I have already submitted my application to GSoC -2008. My topic is based on Universal Package Manager(UPM).
I wanted to know or learn more about my topic.So, could anyone please tell me which mentor to contact or from where I could gather more information about my topic.

regards,
Ajish.B
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Participation in Google SoC

2008-03-26T18:50:38Z

Hi,

On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 02:46:21PM +0530, CK Raju wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 1:26 PM, Vikram Vincent
> <vincentvikram@...> wrote:

> > Do you mean that you are *also* submitting it as your college
> > project or that UPM is in the course syllabus?

> Yes, And I think Google SoC cites it as a *fit* case.

Can you cite any reference on that? I have a hard time believing this...
It just seems wrong that you would get paid by GSoC for something that
you have to do anyways as part of your studies.

Of course, we will mentor you with this project as good as we can; but I
think it will have to happen independant of GSoC...

-antrik-

GSoC 2008 - some questions

2008-03-26T07:18:45Z

Hello I'm Krzysiek Blicharski I'm a student considering
applying to one of hurdish TCP/IP stack or improved NFS implementation projects.
I have some experience in programming especially in C (~7 years), using Linux and
know some basics about the Linux kernel (especially network stack).
Together with my friends I conduct a project - we write the operating
system for which I wrote network stack (a few protocols) based on linux kernel.
I also have basic knowledge about file systems.
What I don't have is extensive experience with Hurd.

What I want to ask the community here is on which project should I
concentrate and ask for more information about those projects.
The hurdish TCP/IP stack is a enormous project, so I think that the man who
will take this project will work only on some parts of it, what are you
expecting from such man to do? The project connected with NFS is also
very interesting for me.

So I'm confused on which one
should I try investigating...

Re: Participation in Google SoC

2008-03-24T06:05:33Z

On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 2:19 AM, Olaf Buddenhagen <olafbuddenhagen@...> wrote:

Hi,

> We would like to participate in Google Summer code.

[...]

> This particular profile matches with the project (Universal Package
> Manager) we are doing here as part of our curriculum.

If it's part of your curriculum, you can't do it as SoC project I think.

Independent of SoC however, we would like to learn more about this UPM project, and how it is related to the GNU system or the Hurd...

Please find the idea of the project below
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In UNIX systems, traditionally most software is installed in a common directory hierachy, where files from various packages live beside each other, grouped by function: User-invokable executables in /bin, configuration files in /etc, architecture specific static files in /lib, variable data in /var and so on. To allow clean installation, deinstallation, and upgrade of software packages, GNU/Linux distributions usually come with a package manager, which keeps track of all files upon installation/removal in some kind of central database.

An alternative approach is the one implemented by GNU Stow: Each package is actually installed in a private directory tree. The actual standard directory structure is then created by collecting the individual files from all the packages, and presenting them in the common /bin, /lib etc. locations.

While the normal Stow package (for traditional UNIX systems) uses symlinks to the actual files, updated on installation/deinstallation events, the Hurd translator mechanism allows a much more elegant solution: Stowfs (which is actually a special mode of unionfs) creates virtual directories on the fly, composed of all the files from the individual package directories.

The problem with this approach is that unionfs presently can be launched only once the system is booted up, meaning the virtual directories are not available at boot time. But the boot process itself already needs access to files from various packages. So to make this design actually usable, it is necessary to come up with a way to launch unionfs very early at boot time, along with the root filesystem.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We got this idea from Praveen <pravi.a@...> and whatever we described above is the same that is listed as a project idea under the mentoring organisation GNU Hurd.

Please find more details in the link below

http://www.bddebian.com/~wiki/hurd/running/gnu/universal_package_manager/

-antrik-
--
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Re: Participation in Google SoC

2008-03-24T05:38:21Z

On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 1:26 PM, Vikram Vincent <vincentvikram@...> wrote:

Ajish,

> This particular profile matches with the project (Universal Package
> Manager) we are doing here as part of our curriculum.

Do you mean that you are *also* submitting it as your college project or that UPM is in the course syllabus?

UPM is not there in our syllabus, but we have selected it as a college project and we wish to complete this as part of GSoC.

--
Vikram Vincent
+919448810822
http://www.swatantra.org/
http://translate.swatantra.org/

Re: Participation in Google SoC

2008-03-24T02:16:21Z

Yes,
And I think Google SoC cites it as a *fit* case.
CK Raju

On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 1:26 PM, Vikram Vincent
<vincentvikram@...> wrote:

>
>
> Ajish,
>
> > > This particular profile matches with the project (Universal Package
> > > Manager) we are doing here as part of our curriculum.
> >
> >
> Do you mean that you are *also* submitting it as your college project or
> that UPM is in the course syllabus?
> --
> Vikram Vincent
> +919448810822
> http://www.swatantra.org/
> http://translate.swatantra.org/

Re: Participation in Google SoC

2008-03-24T00:56:23Z

Ajish,

> This particular profile matches with the project (Universal Package
> Manager) we are doing here as part of our curriculum.

Do you mean that you are *also* submitting it as your college project or that UPM is in the course syllabus?
--
Vikram Vincent
+919448810822
http://www.swatantra.org/
http://translate.swatantra.org/

Re: Participation in Google SoC

2008-03-23T13:49:49Z

Hi,

> We would like to participate in Google Summer code.
[...]
> This particular profile matches with the project (Universal Package
> Manager) we are doing here as part of our curriculum.

If it's part of your curriculum, you can't do it as SoC project I think.

Independent of SoC however, we would like to learn more about this UPM project, and how it is related to the GNU system or the Hurd...

-antrik-
--
Psssst! Schon vom neuen GMX MultiMessenger gehört?
Der kann`s mit allen: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/multimessenger

Re: Participation in Google SoC

2008-03-23T13:49:49Z

Re: Participation in Google SoC

2008-03-20T11:50:28Z

Hi olafBuddenhagen,

We would like to participate in Google Summer code. We found that GNU
Hurd is a mentoring organisation and have given lot of ideas which can
be done as projects as part of Google SoC 2008.

In the list of ideas there is one profile "allow using unionfs early
at boot". Please refer to the link

http://www.bddebian.com/~wiki/community/gsoc/project_ideas/

This particular profile matches with the project (Universal Package
Manager) we are doing here as part of our curriculum.

We believe that we can complete the project successfully as part of GSoc 2008.

Regards,
Ajish

On 3/20/08, olafBuddenhagen@... <olafBuddenhagen@...> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 06:11:45PM +0530, AJISH B wrote:
>
> > I am a student of Information Technology,MES College of Engineering,
> > INDIA. I have gone through the Google Summer of Code -2008. Under the
> > mentor organisation "GNU Hurd" I found the profile named "allow using
> > unionfs early at boot".
> >
> >
> > We are currently undertaken our main project work on Universal
> > Package Manager(UPM) here at MES College Of Engineering ,Kuttipuram
> > in India. As described in the profile ,UPM is also based on the
> > concept of stowfs, which we think will match with your profile.
> [...]
>
> To be honest, I don't quite understand what you are trying to tell us.
> How is what you described related to GSoC? Do you understand how the
> GSoC program works?... (Have you read
> http://code.google.com/opensource/gsoc/2008/faqs.html ?)
>
> -antrik-
>
>
> --
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-hurd-REQUEST@...
> with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact
> listmaster@...
>
>

Re: Participation in Google SoC

2008-03-19T14:55:19Z

Hi,

On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 06:11:45PM +0530, AJISH B wrote:

> I am a student of Information Technology,MES College of Engineering,
> INDIA. I have gone through the Google Summer of Code -2008. Under the
> mentor organisation "GNU Hurd" I found the profile named "allow using
> unionfs early at boot".
>
>
> We are currently undertaken our main project work on Universal
> Package Manager(UPM) here at MES College Of Engineering ,Kuttipuram
> in India. As described in the profile ,UPM is also based on the
> concept of stowfs, which we think will match with your profile.

[...]

To be honest, I don't quite understand what you are trying to tell us.
How is what you described related to GSoC? Do you understand how the
GSoC program works?... (Have you read
http://code.google.com/opensource/gsoc/2008/faqs.html ?)

-antrik-

Re: Request to ignore a particiption application.

2008-03-19T06:48:43Z

=============================================

Sir,

I am ASHER.B.I am a student doing my undergraduate engineering course in
Information Technology at MES College of Engineering, Kuttipuram in Kerala,
India.

I have written to you a mail on wed/ mar 19/08 at 6:23 pm IST requesting an me and my groupmates to join the google summer of codes through GNU HURD.As my friends have already drafted this request to you please ignore my application.

Sorry sir for the inconvenience made by me.Please don't consider this as a black mark.

Yours truly,
ASHER.B
==============================================

Request to participate in google summer of codes through GNU HURD

2008-03-19T05:53:36Z

=============================================

Sir,

I am ASHER.B.I am a student doing my undergraduate engineering course in
Information Technology at MES College of Engineering, Kuttipuram in Kerala,
India.

I have just come across the GNU Hurd project being listed as a mentor
organisation in Google SoC 2008.

I have a proposal to work on the "installer part" of the GNU Hurd. A
few of my seniors did work on this project (GNU Hurd LX Installer)
last year co-ordinating with Philip Charles of New Zealand. Our work
has been listed at http://gnu.ethz.ch/hurd

The LX installer project was also listed by Sourceforge at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/hurdlx

Since GNU Hurd doesn't have a native installer, the LX project made
use of a stable surrogate installer for the purpose of installation
and went ahead right upto the features of getting X console after
installation – which was unique.

This time around, our plan is to extend these features further :
(a) incorporate latest stable surrogate installer
(b) get a gui installer part working
(c) work with the latest release of Hurd – equivalent to K16 or later

Since the guides of this project is here (C K Raju, Raghesh A and
Badharudeen P), it would be possible to carry the work forward.

The proposed team members (all classmates) are

(1) Subin M
(2) Manoj K M
(3) Binu J Raj

We are awaiting to hear from you,

Yours truly,
ASHER.B
==============================================

UNIVERSAL PACKAGEMANAGER

2008-03-18T06:08:21Z

Hi,

I am a student of Information Technology,MES College of Engineering, INDIA. I have gone through the Google Summer of Code -2008. Under the mentor organisation "GNU Hurd" I found the profile named "allow using unionfs early at boot".

We are currently undertaken our main project work on Universal Package Manager(UPM) here at MES College Of Engineering ,Kuttipuram in India. As described in the profile ,UPM is also based on the concept of stowfs, which we think will match with your profile.

Praveen A of HP Labs is our external guide. We are also members of the mailing list gnu-system-discuss for this purpose.

Our project guides are:

Prof C K Raju

Mr. Bhadarudeen.P

Mr. Raghesh

It is our firm belief and conviction that the project work can be completed within the stipulated time.

Our Group Members:

Ajish.B

Nidhin Raghavan

Ambili.B

Awaiting your reply

Yours truly

Participation in Google SoC

2008-03-18T05:41:45Z

Hi All,

I am a student of Information Technology,MES College of Engineering, INDIA. I have gone through the Google Summer of Code -2008. Under the mentor organisation "GNU Hurd" I found the profile named "allow using unionfs early at boot".

We are currently undertaken our main project work on Universal Package Manager(UPM) here at MES College Of Engineering ,Kuttipuram in India. As described in the profile ,UPM is also based on the concept of stowfs, which we think will match with your profile.

Praveen A of HP Labs is our external guide. We are also members of the mailing list gnu-system-discuss for this purpose.

Our project guides are:

Prof C K Raju

Mr. Bhadarudeen.P

Mr. Raghesh

It is our firm belief and conviction that the project work can be completed within the stipulated time.

Our Group Members:

Ajish.B

Nidhin Raghavan

Ambili.B

Awaiting your reply

Yours truly

(no subject)

2008-01-19T01:45:23Z

We are not alone...

2007-12-05T00:14:32Z

Hi,

An issue that repeatedly came up in the past, is Hurd (and related)
patches often not getting applied. (Most recently on gnu-system-dicsuss,
though it's arguably somewhat off-topic for this list...)

It was quite interesting to find a remarkably similar discussion on the
Xorg mailing list recently:

http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2007-November/030442.html

So this in not really a Hurd-specific issue -- it happens even in such a
major project. Maybe there is something to learn from this thread. The
subthread starting at

http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2007-November/030465.html

is very enlightening in particular. The problems described there seem
almost identical to what we see here -- which is not surprising,
considering the very similar situation: They too have a large code base,
most of which predates the current active developers, so nobody feels in
charge...

-antrik-

Re: Hurdish Sub-Environments vs. Virtualization

2007-12-04T22:48:56Z

Hi,

On Mon, Nov 26, 2007 at 11:41:45PM +0100, Thomas Schwinge wrote:

> On Wed, Nov 21, 2007 at 02:06:58PM +0100, olafBuddenhagen@...
> wrote:

> > http://tri-ceps.blogspot.com/2007/10/advanced-lightweight-virtualization.html
>
> Well written! I put up a link to it on
> <http://www.bddebian.com/~wiki/hurd/virtualization/>.

Thanks :-)

> What about integrating the text completely into that page?

I have no objection.

Not sure the style is appropriate for verbatim inclusion, though...

> Also, as your blog is dealing with Hurd or related issues, I think
> I'll set up such a blog aggregator within the wiki system and have it
> include your blog's content. Would that be OK?

Yeah, that would be nice.

> What other blogs would we want to have aggregated? Neal's? Marcus'?
> Michael's? HurdFR peoples'? Some of the indian guys'? Who is
> blogging about (at least marginally) Hurd-related stuff?

I only know of Michael's. Soeren also started one once, but stopped
right after the first two posts...

Maybe having Hurd-related blogs aggregated there would also motivate
more people to join in.

-antrik-

Re: Hurdish Sub-Environments vs. Virtualization

2007-11-26T14:41:45Z

Hello!

On Wed, Nov 21, 2007 at 02:06:58PM +0100, olafBuddenhagen@... wrote:
> http://tri-ceps.blogspot.com/2007/10/advanced-lightweight-virtualization.html

Well written! I put up a link to it on
<http://www.bddebian.com/~wiki/hurd/virtualization/>. What about
integrating the text completely into that page?

Also, as your blog is dealing with Hurd or related issues, I think I'll
set up such a blog aggregator within the wiki system and have it include
your blog's content. Would that be OK? What other blogs would we want
to have aggregated? Neal's? Marcus'? Michael's? HurdFR peoples'?
Some of the indian guys'? Who is blogging about (at least marginally)
Hurd-related stuff?

Regards,
Thomas

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Hurdish Sub-Environments vs. Virtualization

2007-11-21T05:06:58Z

Hi,

(Sorry for the crosspost. It is mostly for bug-hurd, but it is also
related to things discussed on the other lists in the past.)

The main idea behind the Hurd architecture, setting it apart from the
monolithical mainstream systems, is the ability for users to modify
and/or extend for themselfs as much of the system behaviour as possible,
without affecting the rest of the system.

Now this sounds rather abstract -- which is probably why people
generally have a hard time seeing how this feature is really relevant in
practice. And I believe that this failure to get the main idea across,
is actually the main reason -- or at least one of the main reasons --
for the Hurd's poor success. Consequently, this is something I have been
thinking about quite a bit.

I am now trying to approach it from an new direction, which allows
expressing the idea in terms I believe people can much better relate to:

http://tri-ceps.blogspot.com/2007/10/advanced-lightweight-virtualization.html

For your convenience, I'm including the full text below. So, what do you
think?

-antrik-

Everyone is talking about virtualization now. Well, maybe not your mum;
but almost everybody. OK, probably not your aunt either... Well, you get
the point :-)

Now I tend to be just this tiny little bit sceptical about things
everyone talks about, and thus generally quite late in the game when it
comes to crying "me too!". But I think the time has come when I can join
in without risking my great reputation as an antediluvian freak.

So, coolness factor etc. aside: *Why* is everyone talking about
virtualization? I think the reason is that it offers a very simple,
straighforward solution to a bunch of problems related to various kinds
of isolation.

One very prominent kind is related to security: Mainstream operating
systems (both UNIX derivates and Windows) by default allow any process
in the system to communicate with almost anything else in the system.
The concepts of users and file access permissions provide some limits,
but these are unsuitable to enforce any serious security policy: They
only work under the assumption that software is bug-free, and that users
only run software they absolutely trust.

Bolted-on solutions like SELinux allow to restrict the communications
channels in theory; but these are extremely complex to manage, making
them error prone, and unfeasible to use anything else than simple
default policies provided by the OS vendor.

Hardware virtualization on the other hand provides security in a trivial
manner: Basically, it just cuts *any* communication channels -- (almost)
total security through total isolation. They err on the other side:
Usually you *do* want to have *some* communication, and with VMs you
have to jump through hoops to set it up, e.g. using virtual network
interfaces.

A somewhat related use case is isolation in administrative matters: With
a VM, the guest system is completely independent of from the host
system. It can be configured differently; it can be upgraded without
affecting the host system, as well as the other way round. You can have
different user accounts. And so on.

Again, the cost of total isolation is... Well, total isolation :-) It
means that you *have* to manage each VM individually -- sometimes a
desirable property, sometimes a burden. (And most of the time, a bit of
both...)

Last but not least, VMs allow total isolation of interfaces: The guest
system only talks to the (virtual) hardware, and is thus totally
independent of the functionality and interfaces of the host OS -- you
can run a totally different system inside the VM.

Here, the downside of independence is a lot of overhead, and very poor
resource utilization. Paravirtualization cuts this down a bit, but
doesn't fundamentally change the situation.

(This is a blessing for hardware vendors of course -- especially as
standard application vendors lately have been slacking a bit with
bloating their software tomake up for recent increases in processing
power and memory sizes...)

All in all, while hardware virtualization provides total isolation in
all regards, it is often total overkill too -- more isolation than
necessary or desired.

Various kinds of container mechanisms (vserver and OpenVZ in Linux for
example) are an interesting alternative in many situations. Here, you
have a single instance of the system, but several isolated user
environments -- so you get isolation of communication channels, and
usually also some administrative independence (at varying degrees), but
without the overhead of hardware virtualization. (The term "lightweight
virtualization" is sometimes used for that; however, it doesn't seem to
be widely adopted: Google gets some relevant hits, but not really that
many...)

What these container solutions can't do (apart from being less robust
against security exploits, due to the common system instance), is
running a different system in the subenvironment.

There are also some specific middleground-solutions like User Mode Linux
or lguest, which allow running another instance of the system, but with
less overhead than true hardware virtualization.

Now let's take a look at the Hurd. It's main feature, compared to
traditional (monolithic) UNIX-like systems, is the fact that almost all
system funtionality isprovided by optional layers (servers and
libraries), which can easily be replaced: Any user or program can run
it's own services instead of using the system-provided ones -- thus
creating a different environment, with little or no overhead, and
without affecting the rest of the system. (This is a tribute to the GNU
philosophy, that a user should always have full control over the
software he runs.)

By default, all processes run in a single standard environment; but upon
demand, any process can be put into some different, more or less
independent subenvironment. There are endless variations: You could run
select processes with distinct instances of some default servers, to
increase robustness and scalability; you could set up containers
isolated from the rest of the system; you could use a different variant
of some server, e.g. a different network stack optimized for some
specific use case; you could run another instance of the whole system
(this is called subhurd or neighbour-Hurd); you could run a special
enivronment, with well defined versions of certain components, to be
sure that a certain feature is present independent of the host system,
or to avoid possibleincompatibilities through changes in the host
system; you could even run a totally different system, having little in
common with the main one. All of this can be done on any running Hurd
installation, without any modification to the host system.

We haven't been expressing these Hurd features in terms of
virtualization up till now. But I think it makes perfect sense to do so:
It seems common practice to describe various facilities of this kind by
the term "virtualization"; and saying that the Hurd is designed from
ground up to support fine-grained virtualization, is certainly more
perspicuous to most people than talking about user extensibility.

So, let's be more buzzword compliant :-) Let's call it advanced
lightweight virtualization.

Re: Wiki

2007-10-12T05:58:38Z

Arne Babenhauserheide wrote:

> Yes, and it's quite alive already:
>
> http://www.bddebian.com/~wiki/
>
> And it has the importen (imo) strength, that it is being hosted on a hurd
> machine. There's not much better for getting people to realize that Hurd is
> good than using it for the Websites.
>
> Besides: Which distro runs on bddebian?
>
> Best wishes,
> Arne
>

Debian, what else is there for Hurd? ;-)

Barry deFreese (aka bddebian)