A quarter of the Hurd, Q3/Q4 of 2012: *pthreads*, *hardware* and *porting*.

[Arne Babenhauserheide]

Hi,

I finally managed to write the qoth for the 3rd and 4th quarter of 2012, and it 
would be great if you could review it:

http://darnassus.sceen.net/~hurd-web/contributing/web_pages/news/qoth_next/

---to simplify reading it, I pasted the text here, too---

A quarter of the Hurd, Q3/Q4 of 2012: *pthreads*, *hardware* and *porting*.

At the end of the last 2 quarters, Samuel Thibault pushed the [pthread 
patches](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-11/msg00088.html) from 
Vincente, Barry, Thomas, Richard and Samuel and others to the different 
upstream packages, finally enabling modern pthreads for the Hurd, which makes 
it possible to implement full Hurd bindings for languages which require 
pthreads, so for example [PyHurd](http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/pyhurd/) 
can profit from the Hurd libraries instead of having to rely on low-level Mach 
bindings to implement Hurd features like translators. 

As followups, Thomas Schwinge [debugged and 
fixed](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-12/msg00044.html) a 
deadlock with child threads resulting from a regression due to earlier fixes, 
and Cyril Roelandt shared a [patch 
series](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-12/msg00018.html) to 
fix double mutex unlocking with pthreads. We will likely see more fixes like 
these, given that the whole threading interface changed, which will expose 
previously invisible bugs.

Also Samuel Thibault 
[provided](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-12/msg00052.html) 
new [installation 
CDs](http://people.debian.org/~sthibault/hurd-i386/installer/cdimage/current) 
and a new [qemu image](http://people.debian.org/~sthibault/hurd-i386/). 
Additionally to using pthreads, these now offer keyboard layout configuration.

Pino Toscano [implemented 
syncfs](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-11/msg00046.html) which 
ensures that all data in the filesystem gets written to disk, as well as 
[statfs](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-12/msg00005.html), 
which adds additional statistics to procfs.

Thomas Schwinge and Samuel Thibault improved the hardware compatibility of the 
Hurd by fixing [some 
errors](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-11/msg00077.html) which 
caused a miscalculation of the size of medium sized disks reporting 15 heads 
instead of 16 and adding [network-card 
detection](http://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2012/07/msg00011.html) 
network-card detection on busses other than 0 and 2. And Svante Signell 

And several people ported and fixed packages, further increasing the number of 
debian packages which work on the Hurd: *Svante Signell* ported 
[mlocate-0.25](http://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2012/07/msg00015.html), 
[gnat-gps](http://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2012/07/msg00011.html), 
[libpst](http://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2012/08/msg00039.html), 
[libetpan](http://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2012/08/msg00046.html), 
[spl](http://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2012/09/msg00004.html), 
[dovecot](http://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2012/09/msg00007.html), 
[xplc](http://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2012/08/msg00054.html) and 
[parrot](http://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2012/08/msg00056.html), 
[x86info](http://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2012/09/msg00008.html), 
[atlas](http://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2012/09/msg00009.html), 
[rrdtool](http://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2012/09/msg00011.html) and 
[gdb](http://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2012/09/msg00018.html). Also he fixed 
[yodl](http://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2012/08/msg00030.html), fixed 
[ntpdate](http://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2012/12/msg00002.html) to work 
again and 
[improved](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-11/msg00062.html) 
the error handling in pflocal. *Pino Toscano* added patches for 
[procfs](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-09/msg00004.html),  
[ptrace](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-10/msg00035.html), 
[fsync on 
stdout](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-10/msg00046.html), 
[muntrace](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-11/msg00033.html), 
[ulimit](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-11/msg00034.html), 
[glibc](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-11/msg00029.html) which 
among others improve POSIX conformance, making it easier to write programs 
which work on the Hurd and GNU/Linux. And he made the test pass for [FIFO 
sockets](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-09/msg00053.html) with 
mknod and 
[added](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-09/msg00005.html) a 
size parameter to tmpfs for easier usage in scripts and a [version suffix 
option](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-10/msg00009.html) for 
gnumach configure. *Cyril Roelandt* fixed a 
[ps](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-12/msg00012.html) bug, a 
documentation typo [in 
ps](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-10/msg00032.html) and a 
missing linker flag [in 
procfs](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-10/msg00025.html). 
*Matthew Leach* 
[fixed](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2012-11/msg00037.html) a 
compilation error with older GCC versions due to duplicate type definition. 
*Ole Streicher* fixed a bug in the Makefile of ftools-fv which was 
[exposed](http://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2012/10/msg00059.html) by testing 
on Hurd. And *Samuel Thibault* 
[removed](http://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2012/12/msg00005.html) the 
out-of-date floppy-warnings in the debian installer.

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|contact_us]] -- and maybe already
grab the [[source code|source_repositories]].

---

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|hurd/documentation]].

**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|microkernel/mach/gnumach]].


Best wishes,
Arne