Hi, I have recently installed hurd from Debian GNU/Linux using the described method, and (on special request ;-) ) want to share my experiences here.
First I compiled an xattr-hurd enabled kernel: wget http://people.debian.org/~mbanck/xattr-hurd/kernel-patch-xattr-hurd_20040302-4_all.deb (Note: The older -3 .deb is broken and the patch doesn't apply using the Debian method; please get the recently updated -4 package.) dpkg -i kernel-patch-xattr-hurd_20040302-4_all.deb apt-get install kernel-source-2.6.7 (The patch works only with this kernel version.) cd /usr/src tar -xjf kernel-source-2.6.7.tar.bz2 cd kernel-source-2.6.7 make-kpkg debian --added-patches=xattr-hurd Now make menuconfig as usual; don't forget to activate File Systems --> Second extended fs support --> ext2 extended attributes --> Ext2 GNU/Hurd special attribute support. Having this, build and install the kernel as usual: make-kpkg kernel_image dpkg -i ../kernel-image-2.6.7_10.00.Custom_i386.deb Now reboot with this shiny new kernel, and I was almost done ;-) wget http://people.debian.org/~mbanck/xattr-hurd/gnu-latest.tar.bz2 mke2fs -o hurd /dev/hda5 mkdir /gnu mount /dev/hda5 /gnu cd /gnu star -xattr -x -j -f ~/gnu-latest.tar.bz2 Now many many warnings are generated ("operation not supported"); ignore them -- it doesn't hurt. If you are smarter then I, you should follow the advice and adjust /gnu/etc/fstab and set up device nodes for your partitions now :-) But I forgot that, and rebooted right away. I already had grub working and the necessary menu.lst entry in place: title GNU/Hurd root (hd0,4) kernel /boot/gnumach.gz root=device:hd0s5 -H module /hurd/ext2fs.static --multiboot-command-line=${kernel-command-line} --host-priv-port=${host-port} --device-master-port=${device-port} --exec-server-task=${exec-task} -T typed ${root} $(task-create) $(task-resume) module /lib/ld.so.1 /hurd/exec $(exec-task=task-create) I immediately got an error during boot: "/libexec/rc: Permission denied". chmod +x /libexec/rc in the rescue shell fixed it; after ^D, the boot continues. As I forgot adjusting fstab and devices, I had to do this in the rescue shell again (after getting a message about failure in fsck on root partition): ed /etc/fstab => # <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass> /dev/hd0s5 / ext2 rw 1 1 /dev/hd0s1 none swap sw 0 0 (Yes, you *can* use nano, too :-) ) cd /dev MAKEDEV hd0s1 hd0s5 and also settrans -go hd0s6 to remove the bogus translator created by the wrong original fstab. (/dev/hda6 is an ext3 partition in my case, so the translator actually started... Only the following fsck failed as the partition is too big for Hurd.) On next reboot, everything went fine, and I had an (almost) working Hurd installation :-) Almost, because there was another problem in my case: Hurd was absurdly slow and unstable. After some fiddling, I realized that Mach was seeing only 15 MiB of RAM. (Watch the boot messages, or use vmstat after boot.) The problem was a wrong setting in the BIOS setup: "Memory Hole at 15M" -- Mach thought there were only 15 MiB alltogether... Deactivating this option fixed the problem, and now Hurd runs flawlessly :-) -antrik-
