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[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2008, 2009, 2011 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
existing 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.
---
Note that this was not the end of the story: [[jkoenig's
`procfs`|hurd/translator/procfs/jkoenig]] is yet another re-written and
improved version.
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