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GNU Hurd 0.7 and GNU Mach 1.6 Released
jones_supa writes: Halloween brought us GNU Hurd 0.7, GNU Mach 1.6, and GNU MIG 1.6. The new Hurd comes with filesystem driver improvements, provides a new rpcscan utility, and the Hurd code has been ported to work with newer versions of GCC and GNU C Library. The Mach microkernel has updates for compiler compatibility, improvements to the lock debugging infrastructure, the kernel now lets non-privileged users write to a small amount of memory, timestamps are now kept relative to boot time, and there are various bugfixes. MIG 1.6 is a small update which improves compatibility with newer dialects of C programming language. Specific details on all of the updates can be found in the full release announcement.
jrepin adds some more details: The GNU Hurd 0.7 improves the node cache for the EXT2 file-system code (ext2fs), improves the native fakeroot tool, provides a new rpcscan utility, and fixes a long-standing synchronization issue with the file-system translators and other components. The GNU Mach 1.6 microkernel also has updates for compiler compatibility, improvements to the lock debugging infrastructure, the kernel now lets non-privileged users write to a small amount of memory, timestamps are now kept relative to boot time, and there are various bug-fixes.
Lennart Poettering, is that you?
I don't think so. His post wasn't condescending.
It provides an alternative to the traditional monolithic UNIX kernel architecture by replacing it with a multiserver microkernel. Hurd is actually pretty interesting and useful project in my opinion. They just need much more developers if they want to actually go to the moon.
"This might come as a shock, but the World does not revolve around you!"
Straw man, no one said it did. You could have simply said "the Hurd guys probably do it for fun." and be done with it. That admission would OTOH arouse the question why this is news for nerds and why it matters.
Probably for much the same reasons that things like Haiku, OpenIndiana, DragonflyBSD, and etc., exist
Haiku exists because people liked BeOS but BeOS was proprietary and largely abandoned. OpenIndiana exists because the phrase 'Oracle Solaris' just makes people sad. DragonflyBSD exists because Dillon wanted a playground where no one would disagree with him on project direction. But HURD? It had two reasons for existing: to build a microkernel-based OS and to provide a UNIX-like kernel with a license that made it a good fit for the rest of the GNU system. The former objective has been done better by things like Minix 3. The latter by Linux (at least, until GNU moved everything to GPLv3). HURD isn't that interesting as a research OS - the interesting project like L4 HURD died. It's not that interesting as a production OS. The only thing that it really has going for it at this point is the 'GNU' stamp on the top, and that doesn't matter unless you really want to build a complete GNU system (but are happy with X.org not being a GNU project and being more code than the kernel).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
And here's the link for that: https://www.gnu.org/software/h...
According to the release:
This is not a typo. Wiring memory means pinning it in memory so it cannot be paged out. This is potentially important both for security and real-time applications. On the security front, memory containing keys and passwords should be wired to prevent it going to disk. On the real-time front, if you can fit your working set in wired memory, you can be guaranteed you won't suffer a paging fault while you stay within that working set.
In Linux / POSIX systems, this is what mlock accomplishes.
Being able to write to memory, in contrast, isn't particularly noteworthy. You've been able to do that since pretty much the beginning...
Program Intellivision!