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... the GNU Hurd!
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Hurd NG
Introductory Material
What Is the GNU Hurd?
Advantages of the Hurd
The Hurd FAQ
Hurd Presentations
The Hurd and Linux
, a comment by Richard Stallman.
Towards a New Strategy of OS Design
, an architectural
overview by Thomas Bushnell, BSG, notably:
The design
Introduction to Translators
and
Existing Translators
Subhurds
The auth translator
The proc translator
The exec translator
The ftpfs translator
The Hurd
, a presentation by Marcus Brinkmann, notably:
How to get a port?
Pathname resolution example
Mapping the POSIX Interface
Active vs Passive
Authentication
Password Server
Process Server
The Translator Primer
A Document About Translators
by Marcus Brinkmann.
A Critique of the GNU Hurd Multi-server Operating System
, an
analysis of the GNU Hurd on GNU Mach system, written by Neal Walfield and
Marcus Brinkmann.
External
Examining the Legendary HURD
Kernel
an article by David Chisnall.
Also covers a bit of GNU's and the Hurd's history, fundamental techniques
applied, comparisions to other systems.
Developer References
Coding Style
Rules
Trackers
Building
Toolchain
glibc
Device Drivers
rump
NetBSD drivers
rumpdisk
rumpnet
rumpusbdisk
DDE
Outdated Linux Drivers (unmaintained)
RPC
Interface
Libraries
libpager
libports
libstore
libchannel
libtrivfs
libmachdev
libnetfs
-- short introductory material
libdiskfs
libihash
libirqhelp
libpthread
libfshelp
libps
In-development Libraries
libfuse
IO Path
Porting
Debugging
Networking
Console
System bootstrap
Additional references
RPC
: our usage of
Remote Procedure Call
s.
The
System Bootstrap
explains how the early
boot of the Hurd works. There is an alternative
RFC bootstrap
proposal
You should read the Hurd's
IO path
to learn how
glibc's
read ()
works on the Hurd.
The GNU Hurd Reference Manual
The Hurd Hacking Guide
, an introduction to GNU Hurd and Mach
programming by Wolfgang Jährling.
Manually Bootstrapping a
Translator
a text by Neal Walfield about how to
manually connect the translator to
the filesystem
The Authentication Server
, the transcript of a talk about the
details of the authentication mechanisms in the Hurd by Wolfgang Jährling.
The Mach Paging Interface as Used by the
Hurd
, a
text by Neal Walfield.
In the
Position paper
Improving Usability via Access Decomposition and Policy
Neal Walfield and Marcus Brinkmann give an overview about how a future,
subsequent system may be architected.
Generalizing mobility for the Hurd
a thesis written by Carl Fredrik Hammar,
investigates the mobility aspect of stores
and how it can be generalized and used for other applications.
The background chapter may be of interest to new developers.
Ada4Hurd
: some tools to write translators with Ada
Links:
community/weblogs/ArneBab/technical-advantages-of-the-hurd
contributing
contributing/web pages/news/qoth next
contributing/web pages/news/skeleton
documentation
hurd
index
news/2011-q3
news/2011-q4
news/2012-q1-q2
...
news/2012-q3-q4
news/2013-05-debian gnu hurd 2013
news/2013-09-27
news/2015-04-10-releases
news/2015-04-29-debian gnu hurd 2015
news/2015-10-31-releases
news/2016-05-18-releases
news/2016-12-18-releases
news/2017-06-18-debian gnu hurd 2017
news/2018-q4
news/2019-07-07-debian gnu hurd 2019
news/2021-08-14-debian gnu hurd 2021
news/2023-06-11-debian gnu hurd 2023
news/2023-q3
news/2023-q4
news/2024-q1
news/2024-q2
news/2025-08-10-debian gnu hurd 2025
news/2025-q4
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what is the gnu hurd
Copyright © 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008,
2009, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2019, Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License:
GFDL 1.2+
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant
Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license
is included in the section entitled
GNU Free Documentation License
Last edited
2026-03-04 00:22:51 UTC