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Re: Questions on the interoperability between libc, gnumach and hurd ser


From: Richard Braun
Subject: Re: Questions on the interoperability between libc, gnumach and hurd servers
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2012 13:47:09 +0200
User-agent: Mutt/1.5.20 (2009-06-14)

On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 12:48:14PM +0200, Svante Signell wrote:
> > http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/09/msg00021.html
> 
> Not Hurd related, read the follow-up mails.
> 
> > http://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2011/04/msg00040.html
> 
> What's wrong with that posting? I am more patient by now, haven't you
> noticed?

Definitely not enough.

> > http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/04/msg00600.html
> 
> Not Hurd related.
> 
> > http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/07/msg00759.html
> 
> Not Hurd related.
> 
> I cannot se anywhere where I call you dumb or an idiot, can you?

I said lack of respect. Not towards the Hurd, or me, just lack of
respect.

> > And that's merely what's archived and quick to find. Oh and Samuel is
> > an exceptionnaly nice person, but he too is getting angry at you, or
> > I'm not understanding "Damn, grow up" correctly.
> 
> Yes he is nice, unfortunately I cannot say the same of you sometimes.

I'm not trying to make myself look nice. I'm nice to nice people, and
not to lazy morons wasting our time.

> > > > You've spent more than a year working on this system, and you
> > > > still don't get the big picture of it, 
> 
> Maybe because the _reference_ manuals don't give the big picture, and
> reading every detail of a function call, and all its variants makes you
> fall asleep. Such information is very valuable but not as a learning
> tool. Did you ever attend a class where the only course literature was a
> reference manual, and no teachers/assistants to ask questions? I doubt
> it.

The wiki isn't a reference manual.

> As I replied to Samuel, I'm not too fond of browsing web pages to find
> information scattered in many places, not as an introduction to Hurd.
> Where is the complete (tutorial) pdf to download and print out?

Idiot. Once again, you're expecting others to do the job perfectly for
you. And once again, I reply "make an effort". The wiki is very decent,
and information isn't that scattered. If you think it is, just don't
work on free software. Actually, don't work on software at all.

> However, these links are good to read, but there are too many of them
> e.g. before finding the IO-path stuff.
> 
> > Did you know teachers get angry when the same student repeatedly shows
> > his inability to make any effort towards some progress ? And we're not
> > paid to teach you. So don't expect me to answer nicely to such a lazy
> > and stupid person like you.
> 
> Now you have done it again, calling me names. Grow up! 
> I am a teacher and don't _ever_ call them stupid even if i think so in
> some cases. It's all about respect to other people. And I'm not lazy,
> forget that.

I expected you to be a teacher, and i'm sorry for your students. Calling
you names is a conscious way to express the degree of exasperation I'm
feeling about you, not a childish reaction.

> > There are several killer apps, the main one for me being extensibility.
> > Another could be that extensibility is accessible to unprivileged users.
> > The whole structure being layered on top of capabilities make it
> > possible to transfer the rights one needs instead of starting from a
> > privileged state and reduce it afterwards. It's a huge security feature.
> > Finally (but this would require all drivers in userspace), the increased
> > protection between applications and system services, which makes it very
> > unlikely that anything (including hardware) gets corrupted and rendered
> > unsuable.
> > 
> > I'm not going to list all the advantages of the microkernel based multi
> > server model, there are many descriptions out there. And about the Hurd
> > specific bits, read http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd-paper.html.
> 
> Another good reference again, thank you. Now we are talking.

Yes, and what I'm saying again is that you just don't make the effort
to look for it by yourself. People who are unwilling to do that have
nothing to do in free software projects.

> > > > or even is this really a client-server
> > > > implementation... 
> > > 
> > > I wanted to know more about the inner workings about the Hurd compared
> > > to e.g. Linux, an Samuel answered that partly. What did you do: ask more
> > > questions.
> > 
> > I asked only one question, which is basically how someone can work so much
> > time on something he doesn't understand *at all*. And this is actually a
> > rethorical question, because the true meaning of my message is really
> > "learn the thing or get out".
> 
> So far I've mainly been porting packages, not doing any work related to
> gnumach/hurd, admitted, no inner working knowledge was needed. Now is
> the time to learn about glibc-gnumach-hurd, therefore the questions come
> now.

No. First you learn by yourself, then you ask very specific questions
about unintuitive details, to at least show others that you made the
effort to learn by yourself first.

> > > > And you're blaming lack of documentation for that ?!
> 
> Yes, if the rpc.mdwn was written and pointed early to the web page
> things would be much more understandable. And this:
> 
> user_code <-> libc(client) <-> gnumach(mailman) <-> hurd(server)
> 
> gives me _much_ more than lengthy descriptions on details on the
> gnumach/hurd functions. And there does not seem to exist any description
> of the gnumach/Hurd parts of eglibc, right? I haven't found any.

Again, if you had read *anything* a bit serious about operating systems
such as the Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system),
you would have found a similar "graphical" diagram (like
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Operating_system_placement.svg). You
would have learnt that the C library is linked to (almost) every program
running on an operating system. And again, I'll use Wikipedia to
demonstrate how easy it is to have a global view of a microkernel based
system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microkernel.

Just do your homework first.

> > > The documentation has large need for improvements, admit it! E.g. in the
> > > Hurd manual large parts are empty, i.e. no documentation at all.
> > 
> > Improvements, sure, but as I said, it's decent. If people needed
> > complete documentation to work on anything, well there wouldn't be much
> > of anything out there. The only true documentation is the source code.
> > If you don't understand that, noone can really help you.
> 
> See above, and my replies to Samuel: Getting a top-down view of a system
> is almost always better for learning purposes, even if you only work
> with a subset of that system. At least this is my experience as a
> teacher, something I've been for many years now. And very much
> appreciated by the students.

And making the effort to learn by yourself before asking such obvious
questions is something many many people have done for a long long time
with excellent results.

> > My "thesis" wasn't meant to, it's about the details of something you're
> > not expected to fully understand to work correctly, as we repeated so
> > many times. And if you didn't get the idea from the other manuals,
> > that's because you're not trying to understand what you're reading.
> 
> See above, unfortunately too boring as teaching material, but good as a
> look-up reference. Like a dictionary, do you read them from start to
> end, I doubt it! 

They're not tutorials for people who know nothing about operating
systems, which is exactly what I mean when I say "you're not trying to
understand what you're reading".

> > > I'll do both. I'm learning this OS stuff slowly, and in the learning
> > > phase I'm asking questions, especially when things are overly
> > > complicated. What's wrong with asking questions, I even offered to write
> > > down things in a (for me and many other people) clearer way, but that
> > > does not seem to be of interest.
> > 
> > Nothing is wrong about asking questions, but this isn't the place to
> > waste time on the basics. Things are complicated but not "overly". You
> > just need a bit of training like anybody does. Read a book about
> > operating systems, or use a search engine to find sites such as
> > http://wiki.osdev.org/. 
> 
> See my reply to Samuel. I volunteer to write something down if there is
> interest.

You'll just do it the same way you write patches: you'll write crap,
asking others to review, many times, until it's actually right, and if
people are too annoyed to answer you, you'll blame them for not doing
anything to help, at which point you'll give up.

> > And please, please, LEARN C, because it's
> > almost not acceptable that someone writes patches for C programs,
> > replacing static with dynamic allocations, and doesn't understand what
> > malloc, realloc, and free really do, forcing people to go through
> > many review iterations just because of your lack of willingness to
> > correctly learn things instead of relying on others to do the job.
> 
> I'm rather fluent by now, most patches sent for review are granted by
> either Samuel or Guillem. You don't seem to be a very frequent reviewer,
> however.

They're faster to reply than I am. I wouldn't know the many mistakes you
cause if I didn't review them.

> I know that you are one of the few people doing _real_ development on
> gnumach and Hurd, that is really appreciated. Please don't make this
> discussion into a pie-throwing war. There are too few Hurd users and
> developers for that.

Again, I hoped to keep it all between ourselves instead of making it
public. That's your choice. Please don't answer this with additional
nonsense just to have the last word.

-- 
Richard Braun



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