summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/community/gsoc/project_ideas/procfs.mdwn
blob: 55556b02a4cc442cfc5e4c181a299ef2f2ebd775 (plain)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
[[meta copyright="Copyright © 2008, 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc."]]

[[meta license="""[[toggle id="license" text="GFDL 1.2+"]][[toggleable
id="license" text="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|/fdl]]."]]"""]]

[[meta title="procfs"]]

Although there is no standard (POSIX or other) for the layout of the `/proc`
pseudo-filesystem, it turned out a very useful facility in GNU/Linux and other
systems, and many tools concerned with process management use it. (`ps`, `top`,
`htop`, `gtop`, `killall`, `pkill`, ...)

Instead of porting all these tools to use [[hurd/libps]] (Hurd's official method for
accessing process information), they could be made to run out of the box, by
implementing a Linux-compatible `/proc` filesystem for the Hurd.

The goal is to implement all `/proc` functionality needed for the various process
management tools to work.  (On Linux, the `/proc` filesystem is used also for
debugging purposes; but this is highly system-specific anyways, so there is
probably no point in trying to duplicate this functionality as well...)

The [[existing_partially_working_procfs_implementation|hurd/translator/procfs]]
can serve as a starting point, but needs to be largely rewritten.  (It should
use [[hurd/libnetfs]] rather than [[hurd/libtrivfs]]; the data format needs to
change to be more Linux-compatible; and it needs adaptation to newer system
interfaces.)

This project requires learning [[hurd/translator]] programming, and
understanding some of the internals of process management in the Hurd.  It
should not be too hard coding-wise; and the task is very nicely defined by the
exising Linux `/proc` interface -- no design considerations necessary.

**Note**: We already have several applications for this task.

Possible mentors: Olaf Buddenhagen (antrik)

Exercise: Add or fix one piece in the existing procfs translator.

*Status*: Madhusudan.C.S has implemented a new, fully functional [[procfs|madhusudancs]] for
GSoC 2008. He is still working on some outstanding issues.