installation report

[robertle]

hi folks,

i tried to install the hurd and finally succeeded to some point (now i
don't know what to do with it!), but you might be interested in my
experience, so here it goes:

- i did all of this under a virtualbox and i first installed a very
  minimal current linux (testing), from there i ran crosshurd
- i changed /etc/crosshurd/preferences and pinned util-linux from
  unstable over * from unreleased over * from unstable. perhaps this
  only means util-linux in unreleased is outdated and should be removed?
  perhaps we need some script that monitors versions in unreleased an
  unstable and notifies someone under certain conditions?
- i also changed /etc/crosshurd/packages/common and added initscripts
  and insserv, because util-linux now depends on initscripts which in
  turn complain if insserv isn't installed. since insserv isn't
  required, i also added a line to the native-isntall script rigth after
  the unpacking of the reuqired packages to do the same for insserv. i
  haven't looked too closely at the dependencies around this (beacuse
  it's nauseating), but i am not sure if there isn't a serious bug there
  somewhere: initscripts calls insserv in its setup script, so it should
  pre-depend on it, and if it does depend on it, doesn't that make
  insserv required as well? is that really the way to go?
- after native-install i get told some stuff about how to run the
  console, which doesn't seem to work, perhaps that is outdated?
- otherwise it does install with these mods

cu  robert

--
Robert Lemmen                               http://www.semistable.com 

[Michael Banck]

Hi,

On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 04:19:04PM +0100, Robert Lemmen wrote:

> i tried to install the hurd and finally succeeded to some point (now i
> don't know what to do with it!), but you might be interested in my
> experience, so here it goes:
>
> - i did all of this under a virtualbox and i first installed a very
>   minimal current linux (testing), from there i ran crosshurd
> - i changed /etc/crosshurd/preferences and pinned util-linux from
>   unstable over * from unreleased over * from unstable. perhaps this
>   only means util-linux in unreleased is outdated and should be removed?
>   perhaps we need some script that monitors versions in unreleased an
>   unstable and notifies someone under certain conditions?

The outdated packages now got removed.  I am keeping unreleased pinned
over unstable right now, because the last important package from
debian-ports for a debootstrap is dhcp-client, which is an empty
transitional package to dhcp3-client in sid and we really need the
package from debian-ports for now until dhcp3 gets ported.

> - i also changed /etc/crosshurd/packages/common and added initscripts
>   and insserv, because util-linux now depends on initscripts which in
>   turn complain if insserv isn't installed. since insserv isn't
>   required, i also added a line to the native-isntall script rigth after
>   the unpacking of the reuqired packages to do the same for insserv.

Thanks, I have changed crosshurd accordingly.
 
>   haven't looked too closely at the dependencies around this (beacuse
>   it's nauseating), but i am not sure if there isn't a serious bug there
>   somewhere: initscripts calls insserv in its setup script, so it should
>   pre-depend on it, and if it does depend on it, doesn't that make
>   insserv required as well? is that really the way to go?

Not really sure either.

> - after native-install i get told some stuff about how to run the
>   console, which doesn't seem to work, perhaps that is outdated?

Could be, can you say a bit more about what does not work, do you get an
error message?

The minimum command-line for the Hurd console is "console -d vga -d
pc_kbd /dev/vcs" I think

> - otherwise it does install with these mods

Cool!


Thanks for your report,

Michael


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[Samuel Thibault-8]

Michael Banck, le Sun 25 Oct 2009 11:20:20 +0100, a écrit :
> The outdated packages now got removed.  I am keeping unreleased pinned
> over unstable right now, because the last important package from
> debian-ports for a debootstrap is dhcp-client, which is an empty
> transitional package to dhcp3-client in sid and we really need the
> package from debian-ports for now until dhcp3 gets ported.

Couldn't only the dhcp package be pinned unreleased over unstable?

> > - i also changed /etc/crosshurd/packages/common and added initscripts
> >   and insserv, because util-linux now depends on initscripts which in
> >   turn complain if insserv isn't installed. since insserv isn't
> >   required, i also added a line to the native-isntall script rigth after
> >   the unpacking of the reuqired packages to do the same for insserv.
>
> Thanks, I have changed crosshurd accordingly.

Does it mean crosshurd doesn't look at the package dependencies?

> >   haven't looked too closely at the dependencies around this (beacuse
> >   it's nauseating), but i am not sure if there isn't a serious bug there
> >   somewhere: initscripts calls insserv in its setup script, so it should
> >   pre-depend on it, and if it does depend on it, doesn't that make
> >   insserv required as well? is that really the way to go?
>
> Not really sure either.

sysv-rc calls insserv in its postinst script, so a simple depend should
be enough.

Samuel


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[robertle]

hi folks,

did try my installation again, with the new crosshurd. here is how it
went:

- box standard virtualbox
- booted netinst cd and installed a minimal testing
  - hda1: ext3/linux
  - hda2: swap
  - hda3: empty for hurd
- booted into linux, upgraded to unstable and installed crosshurd and
  some other usefull stuff (vim etc). i did not upgrade to the new grub.
- mkfs.ext2 -o hurd /dev/hda3
- mount /dev/hda3 target
- crosshurd there, all defaults except target and "gnu" type
- added grub entries like in this mail:
  http://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2009/09/msg00007.html
  but my device is hd0s3 of course
- reboot into hurd single-user
- ./native-install
  - the questions about grub-pc are slightly worrying, but i just clicked
    through them
  - apparently it tries to create a /etc/fstab for me, which fails with a
    "Couldn't determine root partition, sorry".
  - if i try to run nano it gives me a "Error opening terminal: unknown"
  - /etc/fstab contains only comments
- reboot in multi-user hurd
- hurd comes up ok, but can't login because i don't know the password,
  so rebooted into linux and set something in /etc/shadow
- now i can log in, woohoo! that funny console cmd that i had problems with
  the last time did
  work as well, and nano works fine afterwards
- something wrong with my fstab however, if i enter a swap partition there and
  do a "swapon -a" it fails, looks like i have no /dev/hd0s2. in fact i only
  had a /dev/hd0... after the restart i could run MAKEDEV myself without
  problems, so that fixes this
  i think the original makedev problem was that it could not figure out what my
  root fs was, so that variable was not set...

so summing up: quite smooth except for the makedev thing and the fact
that there is no root password set, i'll look into the makedev problem
next time!

cu  robert

--
Robert Lemmen                               http://www.semistable.com 

[Michael Banck]

On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 10:29:34PM +0000, Robert Lemmen wrote:
>   - apparently it tries to create a /etc/fstab for me, which fails with a
>     "Couldn't determine root partition, sorry".

Hrm, that seems to be a new bug.

>   - if i try to run nano it gives me a "Error opening terminal: unknown"

That is expected for the single-user mode, at least on the first bootup;
you can work around it by running "export TERM=mach" e.g.

> - hurd comes up ok, but can't login because i don't know the password,
>   so rebooted into linux and set something in /etc/shadow

That one has been reported by Philip Charles as well; we need to figure
out what is causing this.

> - something wrong with my fstab however, if i enter a swap partition there and
>   do a "swapon -a" it fails, looks like i have no /dev/hd0s2. in fact i only
>   had a /dev/hd0... after the restart i could run MAKEDEV myself without
>   problems, so that fixes this
>   i think the original makedev problem was that it could not figure out what my
>   root fs was, so that variable was not set...

Yeah, I guess so.

> so summing up: quite smooth except for the makedev thing and the fact
> that there is no root password set, i'll look into the makedev problem
> next time!


thanks again for the follow-up,

Michael


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[robertle]

On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 05:42:30PM +0100, Michael Banck wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 10:29:34PM +0000, Robert Lemmen wrote:
> >   - apparently it tries to create a /etc/fstab for me, which fails with a
> >     "Couldn't determine root partition, sorry".
>
> Hrm, that seems to be a new bug.

i'll look into it in more detail and report back. i already had it
working (i thought) with a small change to the regexp in native-install,
but then something else blew up, didn't really understand what or why...

> > - hurd comes up ok, but can't login because i don't know the password,
> >   so rebooted into linux and set something in /etc/shadow
>
> That one has been reported by Philip Charles as well; we need to figure
> out what is causing this.

i only briefly looked at it, but i don't see any attempt to set a
password, i think it just copies an empty password/shadow over from
somewhere. what whould it do? set an empty password for root? set a
default one? ask for one?

cu  robert

--
Robert Lemmen                               http://www.semistable.com 

[olafBuddenhagen]

Hi,

On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 04:19:04PM +0100, Robert Lemmen wrote:

> i tried to install the hurd and finally succeeded to some point (now i
> don't know what to do with it!),

Good question actually :-)

If you want to contribute to Hurd development, there is a guide on

   http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/contributing.html

If you just want to play around with the interesting features... Well,
there isn't really much in a way of documentation about that :-(

The existing live CD on superunderprivileged.org does have a little
tutorial with a few things. We recently discussed extending it a bit.
But perhaps we should start a wiki page for that first :-)

-antrik-


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Am Montag, 2. November 2009 02:57:11 schrieb olafBuddenhagen@...:
> Hi,
>
> On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 04:19:04PM +0100, Robert Lemmen wrote:
> > i tried to install the hurd and finally succeeded to some point (now i
> > don't know what to do with it!),
>
> Good question actually :-)

You could play with some of our brainstorm results on exactly that topic :)
-
http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/community/weblogs/ArneBab/niches_for_the_hurd.html
 
Currently the Hurd is mostly for tinkerers, so it's there for being played
with ;)

(In german we have the nice term "Kaputtspielen" -> push it to its limits till
it breaks. Requires backups to be fun ;) ).

Best wishes,
Arne

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