FOSDEM 2005 Hurd Developers' Mini-Symposium
The following talks took place February 26 and 27, 2005 at the Free
and Open Source Developers' European Meeting (FOSDEM) 2005 (website) in the Hurd Developers'
room. You can find the presentations in source and formatted form as
well as audio recordings of the talks.
Please see individual files for copyright notices and licensing
terms.
Table of Contents
Supporting Larger ext2 File Systems in the
Hurd
Ognyan Kulev <ogi@fmi.uni-sofia.bg>
View presentation as html or mgp ; hear audio.
Abstract
The inability to work with filesystems larger than 2G was one of
the most annoying limitations of the Hurd. This talk will describe
the technical problems which limited filesystems to 2GB and present
the approach which has been used to over come it in ext2fs.
Hurd on L4: Towards Extensibility
Neal H. Walfield <neal@gnu.org>
View presentation as pdf or
latex
; hear audio.
Abstract
The most compelling features of the Hurd--increased flexibility and
security--have been realized in the Hurd running on Mach. Yet
performance is dismal. It is true that GNU Mach has been optimized
for early 1990s hardware, however, would tuning offer a sufficient
performance increase? Having moved all but the core of a monolithic
kernel to user-space, Mach's resource schedulers (VMM, CPU and I/O)
can only use pattern analysis to predict resource usage. Linux, for
instance, has shown how tenuous pattern analysis is even with some
application specific knowledge about resource usage from e.g. file
systems and network stacks. The resource manager requires application
specific knowledge if it is to manage resources well. Hence, we must
move file systems and other heavy resource users back into the kernel,
i.e. head back towards a monolithic kernel and forfeit the advantages
of the Hurd, or move the resource managers into user-space. We are
pursuing the latter approach in the Hurd on L4.
Interactions in a Multiserver Operating System:
The Importance of a good RPC Framework
Marcus Brinkmann <marcus@gnu.org>
View presentation as pdf or latex ; hear audio.
Abstract
Unlike in a monolithic kernel where all resource management and
abstraction are implemented in the kernel, in a multiserver operating
system, untrusted servers provide the mechanisms and the policy. These
separate components must interact in a secure fashion if the system is
to fully provide protection domains and avoid unintended sharing. As
such the remote procedure call, RPC, system must be well
designed. This talk will discuss the RPC system which has been
designed for the port to the Hurd on L4.
L4/Hurd driver model
Peter 'p2' De Schrijver <p2@mind.be>
View presentation as html or mgp ; hear audio.
Abstract
An introduction to the device driver framework for multiserver
operating systems running on the L4 microkernel.
Marco Gerards <metgerards@student.han.nl>
View presentation as html or mgp ; hear audio.
Abstract
GRUB 2 is a redesign and rewrite of the original GRUB, GRUB
Legacy. GRUB 2 will be important to GNU/Hurd in the future, just like
a portable multiboot standard. It is important to have the same
bootloader on all architectures. This talk is about the advantages of
the new GRUB. Things that will be discussed are modules, the
interfaces (disks, filesystems, etc), portability and what there will
be implemented in the future.
Michael Banck <mbanck@debian.org>
View presentation as html or mgp ; unfortunately,
no audio recording was made.
Abstract
The GNU Hurd, compared with the well-established Linux kernel, is
still in development and less stable, but has some interesting
features like file systems implemented in user space and a flexible
authentication system which aim at providing its user with more
freedom than traditional Unix-like systems. The Debian GNU/Hurd port
is targetted at providing an easy to install and use distribution
similar to the popular Debian GNU/Linux distribution.
The talk will introduce the GNU Hurd and cover the history of the
Debian GNU/Hurd port and its current state. The problems the port
currently faces will be discussed and a rough roadmap for future
development will be outlined. The severals ways how to install the
system will be presented. If time permits, a live demo or an
installation demo will be given.
Copyright © 2005 Neal H. Walfield
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