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diff --git a/news/2009-11-30.mdwn b/news/2009-11-30.mdwn new file mode 100644 index 00000000..86a575bc --- /dev/null +++ b/news/2009-11-30.mdwn @@ -0,0 +1,51 @@ +[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 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 date="2009-12-03 11:00 UTC"]] + +A month of the Hurd: initial work on *network device drivers in user space*, +*GRUB 2*. +[[!if test="included()" then="""[[!toggle id=full_news +text="Details."]][[!toggleable id=full_news text="[[!paste id=full_news]]"]]""" +else="[[!paste id=full_news]]"]] + +[[!cut id="full_news" text=""" +> This month [[Zheng Da|zhengda]], our [[former Google Summer of Code student +> working on network virtualization and some related +> topics|community/gsoc/2008]], published the code for the pcnet32 device +> driver that he had modified to run as a user-space process instead of inside +> the kernel, and posted some preliminary [performance benchmark +> results](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2009-11/msg00144.html). +> The test results are mostly on par with the in-kernel driver, so they show +> that moving the lower-layer parts of the networking stack, the device drivers +> themselves, into user space can be done without losing (much) performance. +> Given this encouraging start, work is going on to explore whether the [Device +> Driver Environment](http://wiki.tudos.org/DDE/DDEKit) that has been created +> for L4-based systems can be used for [providing GNU/Hurd systems with device +> drivers](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2009-11/msg00241.html) +> that (a) are more recent than our current ones, (b) support classes of +> devices that [[we don't support so +> far|microkernel/mach/gnumach/hardware_compatibility_list]], and (c) are +> running as (possibly separate, fault-isolated) user-space processes. + +> Thanks to Samuel Thibault, the latest Debian GRUB 2 package (1.97+20091130-1) +> [supports native +> installation](http://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2009/11/msg00095.html) from +> GNU/Hurd itself -- booting GNU/Hurd systems with GRUB has always been +> working, but until now it wasn't possible to *install* GRUB from a GNU/Hurd +> system. GNU GRUB has originally been written [for booting GNU/Hurd +> systems](http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html#History), so this +> step completes its original purpose. + +> Samuel also continued to work on preparing the [[Xen branch of GNU +> Mach|microkernel/mach/gnumach/ports/xen]] for being merged with the mainline +> code, and he fixed a kernel panic in the kernel's floating point +> support code. +"""]] |