--- Alexander Ward KULUNGOWSKI <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hurd experts, > > This is a long shot, but nothing ventured... > > I'm a graduate student at UCSD and for my systems class I've been charged > with the formidable task of coming up with an OS-related research topic > for a paper due in mid-March. The topic I came up with is GNU's Mach/Hurd > system. I've managed to get it installed on a variety of Intel machines, > but I'm not really sure where to go from there. Rather than provide a > general overview, the professor wants us to focus on and test a specific > aspect of the system, which explains my earlier use of the word > "formidable": while I'm very interested in systems programming, I've had a > negligible amount of experience with it. Is there anything in Mach/Hurd > amenable to a complete newbie?
Wolfgang has written some nice documentation for a new Hurd programmer. You could start with the HHG[1] or the auth server[2]. > The Hurd's translators seem like an > interesting topic, but I'm at a loss as to how to make a research paper > out of them. The Hurd is just a bunch of translators, so there isn't really any research there. > Is there anything that I can do with the interface between > Mach and Hurd? What about the efforts to port Hurd to L4? I've got a > network of machines I can use to run experiments and about a month's worth > of time left to produce something. I'm willing to put in a great deal of > effort and money to make this project a success, but I'm seriously > lacking direction. What you could do is try _fixing_ an application so that it uses a hurdish feature and then compare whether the _fixed_ application is faster/more secure/more maintainable than just using standard posix interfaces. Another cool idea would be to start on a test suite. This one is probably harder to write a paper about, but would show off the Hurd quite well in that the system could actually be tested without rebooting. Now that I mention this I want to do it myself, except I don't have the time right now. > Thanks, > > Alex [1] http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hacking-guide/hhg.html [2] http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/auth.html ===== James Morrison University of Waterloo Computer Science - Digital Hardware 2B co-op http://hurd.dyndns.org Anyone referring to this as 'Open Source' shall be eaten by a GNU __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day http://shopping.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ Help-hurd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-hurd
