How to run Guix with Hurd

How to run Guix with Hurd

[fr33d0m]

I'm running a standalone GUIX system and have been updating it with GUIX 
pull and upgrading packages.

I'd like to try running the Hurd instead of Libre-Linux but I don't know 
how to do this.

Can someone help me on how to accomplish this if it's possible to do now?

I'm new to GUIX so don't assume I know much.

Thanks for all the great work you are doing on GUIX!

I plan to create a blog and podcast about what I'm learning to teach 
others about GUIX.

-fr33d0m

Re: How to run Guix with Hurd

[Jan Wielkiewicz]

Hello,

Dnia 2020-07-11, o godz. 14:14:16
fr33d0m <fr33d0m@agnuwayofthinking.com> napisał(a):

> I'm running a standalone GUIX system and have been updating it with
> GUIX pull and upgrading packages.
> 
> I'd like to try running the Hurd instead of Libre-Linux but I don't
> know how to do this.

I guess you read the first April joke post about Linux-libre being
replaced with the Hurd. The Hurd isn't ready to replace Linux-libre
yet, but you can learn and contribute or tell the others to make it
true.

Here, the Hurd's website. It is outdated a bit:
https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/
And the more updated one (it is down in the time of writing this post):
darnassus.sceen.net/cgit/hurd-web.git/log/index.mdwn
The most up to date discussions:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/

Hurd lacks SMP (Simultaneous MultiProcessing), is 32-bit only and it
doesn't support modern hardware yet.

You can try Guix GNU/Hurd on a virtual machine (qemu).
If you're interested in it, I can give you instructions to set up a VM
with the Hurd.


Jan Wielkiewicz

Re: How to run Guix with Hurd

[fr33d0m]

Thanks, yes I did see the post about it.

I kind of thought it might not be real :-) got me!

Thanks for the info.

On 7/11/20 4:05 PM, Jan Wielkiewicz wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Dnia 2020-07-11, o godz. 14:14:16
> fr33d0m <fr33d0m@agnuwayofthinking.com> napisał(a):
>
>> I'm running a standalone GUIX system and have been updating it with
>> GUIX pull and upgrading packages.
>>
>> I'd like to try running the Hurd instead of Libre-Linux but I don't
>> know how to do this.
> I guess you read the first April joke post about Linux-libre being
> replaced with the Hurd. The Hurd isn't ready to replace Linux-libre
> yet, but you can learn and contribute or tell the others to make it
> true.
>
> Here, the Hurd's website. It is outdated a bit:
> https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/
> And the more updated one (it is down in the time of writing this post):
> darnassus.sceen.net/cgit/hurd-web.git/log/index.mdwn
> The most up to date discussions:
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/
>
> Hurd lacks SMP (Simultaneous MultiProcessing), is 32-bit only and it
> doesn't support modern hardware yet.
>
> You can try Guix GNU/Hurd on a virtual machine (qemu).
> If you're interested in it, I can give you instructions to set up a VM
> with the Hurd.
>
>
> Jan Wielkiewicz

Re: How to run Guix with Hurd

[pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)]

On Sun, Jul 12, 2020 at 01:05:28AM +0200, Jan Wielkiewicz wrote:
> Hurd lacks SMP (Simultaneous MultiProcessing), is 32-bit only and it
> doesn't support modern hardware yet.

I too wanted to try Hurd on real hardware.  I see Jan Nieuwenhuizen
does much work on it.

After Jan Nieuwenhuizen’s patches from the beginning of July, I did
partition /dev/sda as dos, not gpt, and created a partition via
mkfs.ext2 on it (with inode size 128, but I think it does not matter).
I can do

e2label /dev/sda1 my-root
sudo guix system init /mnt/etc/config.scm /mnt --skip-checks --target=i586-pc-gnu

Then as root in `guix repl`:

((@ (gnu build hurd-boot) make-hurd-device-nodes) "/mnt")

But Hurd does not support SATA disks (I think), so booting gets stuck
when it starts an ext2fs translator.

It can run from QEMU on Linux from an external USB:

guix environment --ad-hoc qemu-minimal
sudo qemu-system-i386 -enable-kvm -m 3G -device rtl8139,netdev=net0 -netdev user,id=net0,hostfwd=tcp:127.0.0.1:10022-:2222 -hda /dev/sda -display vnc=192.168.178.86:0

192.168.178.86 is the local IP of the machine running QEMU.  Then one
can connect to the VNC via GNOME Boxes.  Back then it executed the rc
script from gnu/build/hurd-boot.scm and I can put echo shell commands
there and they run, however calls to exec got stuck …  Now in current
Guix there are many new patches and I see the rc script is no longer
in Guix’ code.

I should try again, but this definitely needs users to spend time with
making the system work.  The Childhurd service is probably better for
just watching in awe.

Regards,
Florian

Re: How to run Guix with Hurd

[Jan Nieuwenhuizen]

pelzflorian (Florian Pelz) writes:

Hello!

> On Sun, Jul 12, 2020 at 01:05:28AM +0200, Jan Wielkiewicz wrote:
>> Hurd lacks SMP (Simultaneous MultiProcessing), is 32-bit only and it
>> doesn't support modern hardware yet.
>
> I too wanted to try Hurd on real hardware.  I see Jan Nieuwenhuizen
> does much work on it.

And others, sometimes somewhat more behind the scenes.

> After Jan Nieuwenhuizen’s patches from the beginning of July, I did
> partition /dev/sda as dos, not gpt, and created a partition via
> mkfs.ext2 on it (with inode size 128, but I think it does not matter).

Ooh, sweet!

> But Hurd does not support SATA disks (I think), so booting gets stuck
> when it starts an ext2fs translator.

It may just yet.  Make sure your /dev/sda1 smaller than 128GiB.

Booting GNU/Linux on the X86 shows /dev/sda (in fact I have Guix on
/dev/sda2 and used guix system reconfigure together with rsync'ing the
store) but the Hurd just sees hd0s1.  It took me quite some time and
help to find this faq entry

    https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/faq/2_gib_partition_limit.html

(I didn't read it because I knew the 2GiB limit was no longer an issue).

I did something simalar on a Thinkpad X60 and managed to boot, but I'm
now stuck getting networking up.  We have netdde but I cannot get that
to work yet; it fails with

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
netdde: vm_allocate_contiguous : (ipc/mig) bad request message ID
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Sadly, after applying

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
https://salsa.debian.org/hurd-team/gnumach/-/blob/master/debian/patches/70_dde.patch
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

the Hurd does fails to build for me with a link error

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
i586-pc-gnu-gcc ... -o boot => boot/deviceServer.c:1227: undefined reference to `ds_device_intr_enable'
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Apparently, our glibc build is off

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
2020-07-07.log:[21:25:53] <youpi> janneke: you need to build glibc against the patched gnumach headers
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

...but all I looked, it seems we are already (always) doing that.  I
haven't found if how and where to mould this into a proper bug report
yet; probably it's a mistake on our side.

This probably works OOTB upon a new gnumach+hurd release, and it may
also be obvious/easy when we get more acquainted with the dependencies
here.

See also
    http://richtlijn.be/~larstiq/hurd/hurd-2020-07-07
    http://richtlijn.be/~larstiq/hurd/hurd-2020-07-11
    https://gitlab.com/janneke/guix/-/tree/wip-hurd-reconfigure

> I should try again, but this definitely needs users to spend time with
> making the system work.  The Childhurd service is probably better for
> just watching in awe.

Yes; while real hardware is fun, trying takes a lot of time and we can
have lots of productive and fun times with the childhurds for now.

Greetings,
Janneke

-- 
Jan Nieuwenhuizen <janneke@gnu.org> | GNU LilyPond http://lilypond.org
Freelance IT http://JoyofSource.com | Avatar® http://AvatarAcademy.com

Re: How to run Guix with Hurd

[Jan Nieuwenhuizen]

Jan Nieuwenhuizen writes:

> It may just yet.  Make sure your /dev/sda1 smaller than 128GiB.

Eh...the Hurd must not see any parts of a disk beyond 128GiB.  So if
hd0s1 starts at 0, it must is not bigger than 128GiB.  A GNU/Linux
partition can live beyond that.

I had a 20GiB hd0s2 partition start at 140GiB; that does not work.

Janneke

-- 
Jan Nieuwenhuizen <janneke@gnu.org> | GNU LilyPond http://lilypond.org
Freelance IT http://JoyofSource.com | Avatar® http://AvatarAcademy.com