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Debian GNU/Hurd status update

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[Slide 1]

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Let's talk about GNU/Hurd

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[Slide 2]

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For us it's a bit all about freedom 0,
that is, the ability to use software,

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basically, for any purpose.

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And for us, the important thing is that
you shouldn't have to ask
the system administrator for things.

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You should be allowed to do
whatever you want.

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So for instance, why is fdisk, mke2fs,
etc. hidden in /sbin?

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I want to be able to build disk images,
play with them, mount them, etc.

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So just be able to work with the kind of
disk and network access I have,

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and do whatever I want with this.

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It's about freedom to innovate as well, if
I want to use an experimental filesystem,

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just play with, without being afraid of
crashing the machine.

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You should be able to just
run the file system

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and let the system administrator be happy
with this because it's safe to do this.

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And also, it's a way to provide freedom
from misbehaving programs

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like a driver which doesn't work so well,
some things like this.

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[Slide 15]

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Just to give an idea, in GNU/Hurd,

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you have the kernel which does basically
almost nothing,

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just managing tasks, the memory and
inter-process communications,

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and then you have a lot of daemons
doing the actual stuff,

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so the pfinet is the TCP/IP stack,
and ext2fs does the filesystem thing.

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And then, you have the user,
just running programs.

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And these tools just, actually just talk
to the daemons through the microkernel,

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the microkernel doesn't do much, it just
passes requests along.

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[Slide 17]

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For instance, if a server crashes,
then that's fine.

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For instance a driver crashes,
or just hangs,

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you just can kill and then pfinet
will re-open a new instance of the driver

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and it will just work, thanks to TCP just
continuing to ping the other computer.

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So it's just an error, it's not something
of the death.

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At some point of my desktop, I could
switch off the light,

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and then that would crash my laptop.

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Because switching off the light would
reboot my hard disk, USB hard disk,

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and then the kernel of the laptop
wouldn't like this.

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This is not something which is
supposed to happen.

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So, with a server approach, this is
completely fixed.

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It's also easier to debug, it's really
nice to be able to gdb a TCP/IP stack,

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when there is something happening in there,
just run gdb, you can gprof it, etc.

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You can also dare more crazy things.

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For instance, the Linux console doesn't
support much, because we don't want to put

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too much complex code in there.

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On GNU/Hurd the console actually supports
things like Chinese,

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double-width support, etc.

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which is not supported
by the Linux console,

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and that's right because you don't want
to put too crazy stuff.

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Here since it's just a userland program,
then you're fine,

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and so we do have Chinese support in,
actually, textmode in the Debian Installer.

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[Slide 18]

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Just to show an example, so here I have
ftpfs which uses the TCP/IP stack

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to actually mount a remote directory,

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and then I can use isofs to mount an ISO
image which is inside that FTP server.

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And then I can just let cp copy a file
from the ISO image which is on the server.

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[Slide 19]

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So this translates that way, so I've done
this command a long time ago,

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just to say that "ftp:" in my home
directory is whatever FTP,

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and then I can take a "~/ftp:/etc." URL
and give that to isofs

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and then mount that on my "mnt",

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and then I can just browse inside the ISO
image, without having to download

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the whole ISO image, without having to ask
root for this kind of things, etc.

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And I can also permanently store this
in ext2fs.

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So just to give an example, I have a
translator on my signature files,

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which just calls fortune, so when I
"cat .signature" [demo],

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I get one signature or another, because
each time I open the file,

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it's a new instance of fortune which is
started.

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You can see that, indeed, this is stored
in my signature file.

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So this is fun!

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[Slide 20]

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Another example: as a user, I can start
my own TCP/IP stack,

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tell it to use a virtual network
interface,

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and then put the TCP/IP service on some
node in my home,

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and then I can run openvpn to actually
push and pull packets

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from that virtual interface, and build a
VPN with somewhere else.

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And then I can remap the system, what is
supposed to be the system TCP/IP stack

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into my own socket,

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and then I get a new shell for which the
system TCP/IP stack is actually

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my own TCP/IP stack.

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So I can decide which program actually
uses this TCP/IP stack,

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and just do my own VPN without having to
ask anything to the administrator.

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[Slide 21]

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But also, for instance it happens quite
often that you have a binary,

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maybe not sh, but like, python or perl
or whatever,

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you have a program which wants /bin/sh
to be actually bash or whatever,

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so I want to change this, so I can remap
this, so for instance [demo]

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if I look at sh, so as usual,
oh it's green,

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but you can see here that it's dash,

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and if I remap /bin/sh into /bin/bash, for
instance, I get a new shell where actually,

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sh is not the same, so it's remapped into
/bin/bash,

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and so it's actually bash which actually
shows up here.

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So I do really choose how I work, what my
environment looks like.

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And for instance, I can remap the whole
/bin directory into my own directory,

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where I expose /bin, but also
other things,

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so that programs which have /bin/something
hardcoded into them,

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I can use them without having to ask the
administrator to install stuff inside /bin.

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So it's kind of interesting, a bit like
stow, Nix, Guix, but done in a nice way.

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[Slide 22]

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How does it work? Well it's actually
relatively simple in the principle,

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it's simply that libc doesn't talk with
the kernel or whatever,

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it always uses RPCs, so to ask nicely
about opening files etc.,

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and so it's really natural in GNU/Hurd
that you can redirect things.

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So for instance, the remap translator here
is like, maybe,

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200-300 lines
[Note of transcriptor: 150 actually],

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because it's just a matter of

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"you open a file, OK, I look at the file
path, is it something I want to translate?

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Yes, I translate that, and then I open
the real file,

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and give the new handle to the program",

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and that's all, so it's extremely simple.

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[Slide 23]

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So *everything* in GNU/Hurd is an RPC and
so it is interposable,

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and then translators get exposed in the
filesystem, we have seen the TCP/IP stack,

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it's just a path inside the filesystem.

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And then the user can decide whatever it
wants to do to interpose whatever.

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So, for instance fakeroot, in Linux,
is quite big,

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because it has to interpose libc symbols,

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and every time libc invents something new,
then it breaks in fakeroot

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because fakeroot has to know about this
new symbol, etc. and interpose them,

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either through ptrace or ld or whatever.

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In GNU/Hurd, fakeroot is, like,
a thousand lines long,

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because it just implements a few basic
things,

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and then everything just works, which just
interpose basic authentication hooks,

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and libc uses them all the time.

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So it's fully virtualizable, and with
a really fine grain interface,

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because you can precisely decide
which RPCs are interposed,

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or which files in the filesystem
are interposed.

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And then you can just use your home
directory, the TCP/IP stack,

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and pile stuff over it, the way you want.

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[Slide 24]

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Just to give a crazy example, we have
a lot of stuff,

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I actually have ISO image inside a
partitioned disk image on FTP over a VPN.

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And this is not *so* crazy.

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Maybe the ISO image inside the partitioned
disk, the ISO image is a bit too much,

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but one file inside the partitioned disk
image on FTP over VPN is not so crazy,

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because maybe you are on a hostile
network, so you have to use a VPN,

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and then you want to access a file
you know is inside a disk image,

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I don't know, a known disk image which is
provided on a public FTP server,

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and you don't want to download the whole
image just to get, I don't know,

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the README file or something like this.

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So it's not so crazy, and it just
works nicely.

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[Slide 80]

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So a bit more Debian stuff.

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Porting packages to Hurd is quite easy
in principle,

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because it's just a POSIX system, there is
a lot more than just POSIX,

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but it provides a POSIX interface.

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So portable programs should be
really fine.

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Just for fun, some dumb issues, so for
instance some programs think that

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if it's Linux or BSD, then they can
include windows.h...

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Why not...

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If the system has mach.h, that must be
MacOS,

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because MacOS is the only system in the
world that uses Mach, I don't know why...

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Some people try to grep cpuinfo, which
doesn't exist on GNU/Hurd yet,

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and so they basically just run "make -j"
which just explodes the system,

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I mean even on a Linux system it's just
the same, unless it's a small program,

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but with a lot of C++ files it's horrible.

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Some people include limits.h from linux/
instead of just the standard one, well...

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A problematic thing is people who
hardcoded errno values;

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the values of errno are not standardized,
so you shouldn't hardcode them, like,

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in testsuite results or things like this.

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And quite often in configure it's
hardcoded that

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only Linux knows -lpthread or -ldl, etc.

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so quite often programs are not
generic enough,

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and that's just easy to fix, but we have
more and more of these.

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So we have a porter page developing
a bit more about these.

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I wanted to talk a bit more about
PATH_MAX, it is not defined on GNU/Hurd,

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for very good reasons, and it is allowed
by POSIX not to define it,

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just to say that there is no limitation on
the PATH_MAX value,

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we don't have a limit on the size of
the paths.

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[Slide 81]

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And indeed it has a fragile semantic, it
has never meant

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"a reasonable size for a array of
characters to store a path".

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On Linux it's 4000, that's a whole page,

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that's a whole TLB entry for
just one file name.

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It's extremely costly, most people don't
have so long paths,

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and so it's really a pity to use so much
memory, because it's always a whole page

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because it will always be aligned
on 4k etc.

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So, well, that's a waste for one.

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And paths can actually be longer,
there is no strict limitation,

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you can mkdir something, cd into that
mkdir again, cd, etc.,

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you can do that as much as you want,
there is no limitation on this,

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it's just that when you call

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"get current working directory",
you won't get it completely.

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And actually, some programs misbehave
in that case,

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because they won't see these files,
they will be quite actually hidden,

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or protected, or I don't know,

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you can not remove them just giving
the path, you have to cd, cd, cd, cd,

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and then you can access the file.

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And for no reason, actually, because Linux
inside doesn't have

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such limitation, actually.

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And also, it's stupid, but POSIX didn't
really said precisely whether

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the final \0 actually is included in
PATH_MAX or not,

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so people would allocate PATH_MAX+1,
or maybe not.

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So we have a lot of code which doesn't,
maybe, actually work,

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but nobody tests it, actually, because
they would never have so long paths.

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So I'm a bit afraid of all these using
PATH_MAX.

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You should be afraid as well.

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[Slide 82]

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Just to give an overview of the state.

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We have a i386 support, we have a 64bit
support which has started,

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we have the kernel booting,

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and now it's mostly translating between
32 and 64 in our RPCs.

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We have drivers for network boards as a
userland translator, using the DDE layer.

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We have disk, we have a Xen port.

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We have a preliminary sound which was
announced today, using Rump,

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the Rump kernel.

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We don't have USB yet.

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[Slide 83]

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It is quite stable, I haven't reinstalled
my boxes for, like, a decade,

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I don't remember when I installed them,
actually.

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And then the buildd machines just keep
building packages for weeks

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without a problem.

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We have 81% of the archive.

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We have the native Debian Installer which
is really working great.

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[Slide 84]

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Recent work is, like, interesting thing is,
a distributed mtab translator

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to provide /proc/mounts in a hurdish way.

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We have quite a few optimizations which
went in to improve the performance.

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[Slide 85]

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We had releases quite some time ago,

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I really recommend to have a look at this
one, it's fun.

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We've some Wheezy and Jessie snapshots,

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they are not official, but for us it's
really an official thing.

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[Slide 86]

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An important thing I wanted to discuss
this week is the removal from ftp-master.

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This is due since quite a few years now,
honestly,

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it's really not useful to mirror the hurd
packages over the whole world,

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because there are not even as many users
as the number of mirrors.

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So OK, that's fine for just the removal
from the main archive in terms of mirroring.

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But then we have a lot of consequences.

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For instance, buildd.debian.org is really
an important thing,

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because that is where the release team
schedules transitions,

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and loosing this, for us, would be really
tedious work,

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because I've been there, doing, actually,
the transition work,

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the same work as the release team, and
it's really painful to do this *again*.

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So we would really like to have a solution
for this.

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Maybe get that fed from debian-ports and,

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then that's fine, we can be on
debian-ports, as long as at least

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there is some synchronization between
something.

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And also, getting exposed on the buildd
package status page,

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so that people are aware that there is
some port which is failing,

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and maybe they are keen on spending some
time on it, maybe not,

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but at least get them know about it.

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And also, a corner thing, when we have
a version upgrade, like gcc or perl,

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the release team asks
"OK, we'll have to upgrade the buildds",

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and at the moment they don't even have
an account on them,

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so they can not check whether the version
is good or not.

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Maybe we should just provide an account,

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we'd thus need to know who we need to give
an account to.

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Basically, my idea would be
"OK, that's fine not being on ftp-master".

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The thing is we still want to have most of
the support of Debian,

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to make our life less a burden,
as much as possible,

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without any extra load on
the release team, etc.

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We do understand well that we don't want
to put work on people's hand.

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But we would to still get some benefit and
probably there are solutions for this.

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And conversely, all of this, I mean, not
putting more work on us Hurd porters,

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would actually be the same solutions that
existing ports on debian-ports

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would be really happy to have, to improve
their life, to have less work to do, [...]

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So maybe we want to think about a real
status for Second Class Citizens,

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like Hurd, but also the sparc, hppa, etc.

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Maybe want to have some BoF at some time,
so we can gather and discuss about this.

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[Slide 87]

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Future work, the most interesting thing is
probably using the Rump drivers,

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because at the moment we use DDE but
it's not really going forward.

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We thought it would be a way to get newer
drivers, Linux drivers,

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without extra efforts, but it doesn't
actually happen at the moment,

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while Rump does go forward, we see work
being done with Xen etc.

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So this is probably a long-term solution.

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Maybe we'll have another distribution
through Guix.

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This is progressing, we are quite far from
doing this,

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so for now Debian is really the only Hurd
distribution that we have, so we'll see.

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And of course, just come and have fun with
your own pet project, just join, thanks!

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[Michael Banck] Any quick question before
we run to lunch?

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[Steve Chamberlain] Hello, I just wondered

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if you're using Hurd on that laptop
for the presentation?

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[Samuel Thibault] Yeah, yeah,
this is running Hurd, yes.

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[SC] So it's quite, like, usable everyday?

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[ST] Well, not everyday because
without USB,

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you can not mount a USB stick for instance,
so that's quite inconvenient,

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but yeah, I could probably use it everyday.

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I don't, I mean, for work,
I can not afford this, but yeah.

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Also, we don't have wireless drivers
at the moment.

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We hope that with the Rump drivers
we would get this.

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So, yes.

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Some people do use it everyday.

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Not me.

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[SC] But those would be the major thing
missing for more people

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to be able to use it.

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[ST] OK, thanks.

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[MB] Any more questions? We're run out of
questions, then thanks again.] Thanks.