Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd

Mon, 3 Feb 2014 13:40:00 +0100

A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get +their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit +boot system instead of their old one. This follow up on the +great +Google Summer of Code work done last summer by Justus Winter to +get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux. To get started, +I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from +http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz, +and started it using virt-manager.

+ +

The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any +password) was to get the network operational. I followed +the +instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page and ran these +commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the +kvm internal DHCP server:

+ +

+settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde 
+kill -9 $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
+kill -9 $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
+dhclient -v /dev/eth0
+

+ +

After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could +upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and +enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.

+ +

But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is +running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be +set. Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block +compression from working. Remember to turn that off on the client +side.

+ +

Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit +stuff:

+ +

+cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list <<EOF
+deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
+EOF
+apt-get update
+apt-get dist-upgrade
+apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
+    sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils 
+update-alternatives --config runsystem
+

+ +

To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use +reboot-hurd instead of just reboot, as there is not +yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal +'reboot' command. After switching to sysvinit as the boot system, +upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP +after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the +start is no longer needed. But for some strange reason, there are no +longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using +ssh instead. + +

Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot +fail some times. No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters +figure it out. At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on +irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem. A way to reduce +the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by +adding this repository to the machine:

+ +

+cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list <<EOF
+deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
+EOF
+

+ +

At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from +http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in +unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in +BTS. This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:

+ +

+# aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
+i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
+i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
+i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
+i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
+i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
+i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
+i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
+i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
+i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
+i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
+i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
+i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
+i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
+i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
+i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
+#
+

+ +

All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :) +X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow +the porters instructions to fix it. This time I was interested in the +command line stuff.

Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries from February 2014

Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd