What is the GNU Hurd?
The GNU Hurd is the GNU project's replacement for the Unix kernel. It is a collection of servers that run on the Mach microkernel to implement file systems, network protocols, file access control, and other features that are implemented by the Unix kernel or similar kernels (such as Linux). More detailed.
What is the mission of the GNU Hurd project?
Our mission is to create a general-purpose kernel suitable for the GNU operating system, which is viable for everyday use, and gives users and programs as much control over their computing environment as possible. Our mission explained.
Download latest stable release here or browse the Git repository.
News
Debian GNU/Hurd 2023 released! Details.
It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2023.
This is a snapshot of Debian "sid" at the time of the stable Debian "bookworm" release (June 2023), so it is mostly based on the same sources. It is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release.
Read the announcement email.
The GNU Hurd is the GNU project's replacement for the Unix kernel. It is a collection of servers that run on the Mach microkernel to implement file systems, network protocols, file access control, and other features that are implemented by the Unix kernel or similar kernels (such as Linux). More detailed.
GNU Mach is the microkernel upon which a GNU Hurd system is based. It provides an Inter Process Communication (IPC) mechanism that the Hurd uses to define interfaces for implementing in a distributed multi-server fashion the services a traditional operating system kernel provides. More detailed.
Debian GNU/Hurd 2021 released! Details.
It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2021.
This is a snapshot of Debian "sid" at the time of the stable Debian "bullseye" release (August 2021), so it is mostly based on the same sources. It is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release.
Read the announcement email.
The GNU Hurd is the GNU project's replacement for the Unix kernel. It is a collection of servers that run on the Mach microkernel to implement file systems, network protocols, file access control, and other features that are implemented by the Unix kernel or similar kernels (such as Linux). More detailed.
GNU Mach is the microkernel upon which a GNU Hurd system is based. It provides an Inter Process Communication (IPC) mechanism that the Hurd uses to define interfaces for implementing in a distributed multi-server fashion the services a traditional operating system kernel provides. More detailed.
Debian GNU/Hurd 2019 released! Details.
It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2019.
This is a snapshot of Debian "sid" at the time of the stable Debian "buster" release (July 2019), so it is mostly based on the same sources. It is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release.
Read the announcement email.
The GNU Hurd is the GNU project's replacement for the Unix kernel. It is a collection of servers that run on the Mach microkernel to implement file systems, network protocols, file access control, and other features that are implemented by the Unix kernel or similar kernels (such as Linux). More detailed.
GNU Mach is the microkernel upon which a GNU Hurd system is based. It provides an Inter Process Communication (IPC) mechanism that the Hurd uses to define interfaces for implementing in a distributed multi-server fashion the services a traditional operating system kernel provides. More detailed.
Hello! Welcome to a new qoth. This qoth covers new and interesting GNU/Hurd developments in Q4 of 2018! Details.
Joan Lledó completed a PCI Arbiter for the GNU/Hurd, and Damien Zammit helped polish it. This is a significant development and accomplishment! PCI stands for Peripheral Component Interconnect, and it is a standard that allows many computer peripherals to communicate together with the rest of the system smoothly. Of course, the GNU/Hurd intends to take this further by allowing ordinary users to safely access PCI cards! You can learn more about it in Samuel fosdem talk. http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2018-10/msg00029.html
Joan Lledo` updated the GNU/Hurd lwip translator to work with the latest lwip. As a reminder lwip is a lightweight TCP/IP networking stack. The GNU/Hurd lwip translator provides a complete replacement to GNU/Hurd's pfinit. http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2018-11/msg00062.html
Damien Zammit created an ACPI translator. This translator provides a translator for mounting x86 ACPI tables under a path as read-only files. It is needed so that other things that depend on ACPI to find the base address such as Intel's IOMMU (DMAR table), memory mapped PCI space (MCFG table) etc, can be discovered in userspace. Otherwise, this functionality would need to be built into gnumach which would be a burden to maintain. http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2018-11/msg00049.html
Damien Zammit worked on allowing libstore to open non-mach devices, which is in preparation for rump kernel disk access. http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2018-12/msg00050.html
Samuel Thibault allowed non-privileged users to mount their own tmpfs. It turned out to be a permission issue and a trivial fix. http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2018-11/msg00012.html
Samuel fixed a bfs issue with /proc not properly mounting. https://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2018/10/msg00007.html
Samuel Thibault enabled LLVM to support the Hurd. This can hopefully pave the way to use LLVM sanitizers on the existing GNU/Hurd codebase. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=GNU-Hurd-LLVM-Clang
Work toward porting Rust and Go to the GNU/Hurd is ongoing: https://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2018/11/msg00020.html
Svante Signell worked on adding POSIX file record locking support. http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2018-11/msg00058.html http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2016-12/msg00047.html
So if you want to test if your favorite packages work on the Hurd and contribute towards making the full GNU system usable for a wider range of people, please get in contact -- and maybe already grab the source code.
The GNU Hurd is the GNU project's replacement for the Unix kernel. It is a collection of servers that run on the Mach microkernel to implement file systems, network protocols, file access control, and other features that are implemented by the Unix kernel or similar kernels (such as Linux). More detailed.
GNU Mach is the microkernel upon which a GNU Hurd system is based. It provides an Inter Process Communication (IPC) mechanism that the Hurd uses to define interfaces for implementing in a distributed multi-server fashion the services a traditional operating system kernel provides. More detailed.
Debian GNU/Hurd 2017 released! Details.
It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2017.
This is a snapshot of Debian "sid" at the time of the stable Debian "stretch" release (May 2017), so it is mostly based on the same sources. It is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release.
Read the announcement email.
The GNU Hurd is the GNU project's replacement for the Unix kernel. It is a collection of servers that run on the Mach microkernel to implement file systems, network protocols, file access control, and other features that are implemented by the Unix kernel or similar kernels (such as Linux). More detailed.
GNU Mach is the microkernel upon which a GNU Hurd system is based. It provides an Inter Process Communication (IPC) mechanism that the Hurd uses to define interfaces for implementing in a distributed multi-server fashion the services a traditional operating system kernel provides. More detailed.
Older news entries can be found in the news archive. For Hurd developers' musings have a look at the shared weblog. The ?@ recent changes page lists the latest changes of this website.
Contributing
So, you are interested in contributing to the GNU Hurd project? Welcome! Every single contribution is very much encouraged. Please read our detailed recommendations about how to contribute.
See our source repositories for the source code.
Access to a GNU/Hurd System
We provide accounts on our public Hurd boxen, and there are also several GNU/Hurd Distributions that allow for QEMU emulation.
Getting Help
There are a couple of different FAQ lists. There are a number of IRC channels and several different mailing lists with searchable archives.
Before asking a question on a mailing list or on IRC, first, please try to answer your own question using a search engine and reading the introductory information. If you have done this and you cannot find the answer to your question, feel free to ask on a mailing list or on IRC.
Running the Hurd
The most functional distribution of the Hurd is the one provided by Debian. Find more information about it at the Debian GNU/Hurd website.
Along with it there are various ways to run a GNU/Hurd system. Three of them are
- Installing a GNU/Hurd distribution,
- Running it in Xen and
- Starting a Hurd QEMU image or LiveCD.
And these web pages are a living proof of the usability of the Hurd, as they are rendered on a Debian GNU/Hurd system.
Current Status
The latest GNU releases are Hurd 0.9, Mach 1.8, and MIG 1.8 (Release Notes), 2016-12-18.
The Hurd is developed by a few volunteers in their spare time. The project welcomes any assistance you can provide. Porting and development expertise is still badly needed in many key areas.
Functional systems are installable in a dual-boot configuration. Development systems are currently mostly based on the Debian GNU/Hurd port sponsored by the Debian project.
Aside from this Wiki, community resources for related projects focus around gnu.org, the mailing lists, and the IRC channels.
If you want to see the current discussions in the Hurd project, please have a look at the bug-hurd mailinglist archives. If you want to have a look at the current coding work, you can just head over to our source repositories.
For more details, please read our writeup on the current state of the GNU Hurd.
Advantages and Challenges
The GNU Hurd operating system design provides advantages, but uncovers new challenges, too.
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Further information about this site and how it was created can be found in the colophon.