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A month of the Hurd: *new translators* / *bug fixing*.
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Yes, we're a bit late this month.  Arne Babenhauserheide, the guy who has
started and has been drafting the *Month of the Hurd* ever since June 2009
(yes, that one and a half years already!), moves on to other duties -- his wife
has given birth to our first Hurd developer offspring (as far as I know):

> Last friday my son Leandro entered our cold and too bright but friendly
> world, [...]

We wish them good luck for their new parental duty!

The other guy, Thomas Schwinge, who has been editing and publishing the *Month
of the Hurd* will take over -- at least temporarily (mind you, Arne).

But, we got some Hurd news, too.

Olaf Buddenhagen posted a patch that allows to [obtain number of ports in proc
and libps](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2010-09/msg00036.html) by
means of adding a new [[RPC]] -- and subsequently held a discussion with Samuel
Thibault who proposed that instead of adding such functionality on an [ad hoc
basis](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2010-09/msg00044.html), a
more generic solution could be found, too.  In the end, they agreed that this
functionality was useful enough, and the patch was
[committed](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/commit-hurd/2010-09/msg00031.html).

It is important to spend time on designing proper interfaces (RPCs in this
case), but on the other hand what we're doing now need not be set in stone
forever, as Olaf
[explains](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2010-09/msg00045.html):

> Well, we already have a mechanism for making communication protocols in
> the Hurd extensible: it's called the RPC mechanism... :-) Let's not try
> to invent another generic mechanism on top of RPCs.
> 
> *If* ten year down the road we indeed end up with half a dozen
> miscallaneous info queries, we can *still* replace them by a new RPC
> covering all of it...

Thomas Schwinge [moved some
packages](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2010-09/msg00031.html)
([[hurd/translator/gopherfs]], [[hurd/translator/netio]],
[[hurd/translator/tarfs]]) from hurdextras to the Hurd's
[[source_repositories/incubator]] repository; these are now available as
[[Debian GNU/Hurd packages|hurd/running/debian]].  Manuel Menal also spent time
on actually making tarfs and good ol' gopherfs usable.

Similar treatment [has been
applied](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2010-09/msg00055.html) to
Jérémie Koenig's new [[procfs|hurd/translator/procfs/jkoenig]] implementation;
this one is now [used in Debian
GNU/Hurd](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/commit-hurd/2010-09/msg00063.html).

Jérémie found some [problems with signal
delivery](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2010-09/msg00006.html) --
signals apparently are not delivered as expected.  Roland McGrath, this *hairy
code*'s original author, [provided some
insight](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2010-09/msg00008.html):

> It's not that it's a bug, it's that the Hurd has never had POSIX-1996
> multithreaded signal semantics.  The Hurd implementation predates those
> specifications.

He [continued to
explain](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2010-09/msg00010.html):

> The Hurd signal semantics are well-defined
> today.  They are not the POSIX-1996 semantics in the presence of multiple
> threads per process.

This explains for differences comparing to other recent Unixy systems, for
example Linux.  Neal Walfield, our [[libpthread]]'s main author,
[states](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2010-09/msg00017.html) that
he sees *no convincing reason to not adopt POSIX/Linux signal semantics and
abandon Hurd signal semantics*.  Jérémie went on to [send a first
patch](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2010-09/msg00011.html).
While already working in that area, Samuel Thibault applied some further fixes
to our two threading libraries, and among others, he also sent a related glibc
patch to [fix signal-catching
functions](http://sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2010-09/msg00015.html).  And
then, there is still the project about [[converting the Hurd's libraries and
servers to using libpthread instead of Mach's cthreads
(libthreads)|community/gsoc/project_ideas/pthreads]]; likely such signalling
system moderizations could be done [alongside of
that](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2010-09/msg00021.html).

Manuel Menal [fixed a
bug](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2010-09/msg00061.html) that
occurred when sending file descriptors with `SCM_RIGHTS` over `PF_LOCAL`
sockets.  He also identified this bug as the reason why the SSH daemon's
privilege separation was not working on GNU/Hurd -- now [this is
fixed](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/commit-hurd/2010-09/msg00036.html) and
you can use the default of `UsePrivilegeSeparation yes`.

Michael Banck has, based on user feedback, applied some changes to the
[[!debpkg crosshurd]] package, and [uploaded a new
version](http://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2010/09/msg00037.html).

In other news, the [[hurd/running/Arch_Hurd]] guys rightfully concluded that
now that they're having a package available for almighty GNU Emacs, [no further
user-land packages need to be
ported](http://blogs.archhurd.org/hayashi/2010/09/04/emacs-emacs/).  If only
everyone was using Emacs...

Last, and least, [there are
rumors](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2010-09/msg00026.html) about
our colleagues over at the Duke Nukem Forever department getting serious again.
We shall see.  :-)

"""]]