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 +pkill pfinet +pkill devnode +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.
+