The easy guide to installing Hurd
on a Linux box.
Debian GNU/Hurd is constantly under development, so this guide changes
often. The mirror on www.gnu.org is not regularly
updated due to problems in the new savannah setup, so you are
strongly advised to check the official site.
Legal Stuff
This document is Copyright © 1999 Matthew Vernon.
This document is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation; either version 2 of the license, or (at your
option) any later version.
This document is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of
merchantability or fitness for a particular
purpose. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
Should you be lacking a copy of this, look at www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html.
Introduction
The aim of this document is to enable anyone with a Linux
installation, a bit of time and some hard disk space to install Hurd
and get it working multi-user with the minimum of effort. I have
written this because I found the documentation confusing when I tried
to install Hurd, and it took some perseverance to get it
working. Hopefully this will make your life easier. If you are not
running Debian GNU/Linux, then you will need to get hold of a copy of
dpkg (the debian package manager), since cross-install relies on it,
or use the large tarball installation method.
Dpkg for non-Debian systems is available at any Debian mirror:
Hurd uses different partition names to Linux, and
this can be confusing. IDE hard disks are numbered in order, based on
their position on the controller, so the primary master will be
hd0, and the secondary master will be hd2
SCSI drives are numbered according to their SCSI ID.
Linux-style partitions are always called sn,
where n is the partition number, so the third partition on
the primary IDE slave drive will be hd1s3, and so on.
GRUB (the Hurd bootloader) uses a different partition naming system:
it calls partitions (hdN,n), but
this time the disk number and partition number are both zero indexed,
and the disks run in order, all the IDE disks first, and the SCSI ones
second. This time, the third partition on the second IDE drive will be
(hd1,2) ((hd1,2) could refer to the first
SCSI drive if you only have one IDE drive, or it could refer to the
second IDE drive).
Second - Make a partition
Use cfdisk or fdisk for this. Use a decent size partition (I would
recommend 500MB, as this will leave you lots of room), but don't make it
bigger than about 1GB, because there is a bug that doesn't allow bigger
ones. As a caveat, support for partitions made with mke2fs
1.15 has not been well tested, so be careful. Also set the
type to Linux native (83). This is important - setting it to
the Hurd type will mean it will not work. The Hurd can use any partition
for swap, but you can also use the Linux swap partition. Swap partitions are
added to /etc/fstab just as with Linux.
Make sure you have the latest stable e2fsprogs, then make a
Hurd-owned ext2 filesystem on the partition (note that you need the
sparse superblocks option set) e.g.:
mke2fs -O sparse_super -o hurd /dev/hdb1
Third - Get that Hurd!
This has all changed now. There are some nice new Debian packages
which make the hurd oh so much better. Please check the top of the
cross-install script to see which packages you need (providing a
list here is not useful because it changes quite often). Basically, it is
everything but a few exceptions from the base section, plus the
Perl interpreter interpreters/perl. Cross-install can now
download the .debs automatically for you - you need
a network connection and a copy of wget to use this feature.
Here are the likely places you'll get those .debs:
-
ftp.debian.org/pub/debian/dists/sid/main/binary-hurd-i386
- This
is where the officially released .debs will be. As time goes by, more
and more .deb files will be found here, and you'll need alpha.gnu.org
for fewer things.
-
alpha.gnu.org/pub/gnu/hurd
- This is where the rest of the .debs
will be found - look in the Debian and contrib subdirectories.
Note that you are probably better off using your local mirror of the
above servers, which may well be on your nearest Sunsite, under
/pub/Mirrors.
You also need some scripts, which are available on www.debian.org and mirrors:
There is an alternative, which is to grab a large .tar.gz of the basic
packages from alpha.gnu.org/pub/gnu/hurd/contrib/marcus/gnu-latest.tar.gz.
Whichever you use is largely a matter of preference: I prefer using
the individual files, but YMMV. Indeed, opinion now seems to be that
this large tarball is easier than using individual .debs
You also need GRUB, the GRand Unified Bootloader. Grab the image from
ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/grub/grub-0.90-i386-pc.ext2fs.
Then write it to a clean and new floppy:
dd if=grub-0.90-i386-pc.ext2fs of=/dev/fd0 bs=512
Fourth - Cross-install the hurd
The instructions that follow apply if you are using the individual
.debs. If you are using the large tarball, follow the instructions at the end of this section.
Put all those .debs (unless you're using cross-install's auto-download
feature) and scripts in the same directory (cross-install will
also cope with a directory hierarchy that resembles the Debian archive),
cd to that directory, and make sure the scripts are executable:
chmod +x cross-install
chmod +x native-install
chmod +x dpkg-hurd
Edit cross-install, using your editor of choice, and change the
hostname to the name of your machine.
Then mount the Hurd partition:
mount /dev/hdb1 /gnu
If you're using the auto-download feature, invoke cross-install like
this:
./cross-install /gnu --download ftp.debian.org (any Debian
mirror will do)
Otherwise:
./cross-install /gnu
This may take a little time.
Untar the tarball onto your hurd partition:
tar --same-owner -zxvpf /path/to/tarball /gnu
Fifth - The single-user boot
Unmount the Hurd filesystem, and reboot with the GRUB floppy in the
drive. When you reach a menu asking you to select one of five options,
hit c to get to a command prompt. You now bring the
machine up by hand. Note that grub supports tab-completion for the
arguments to these commands.
root=(hd1,0)
Where this is the GRUB name of your root partition. If GRUB
says it has found an ext2 filesystem then this has worked. If not,
check the partition type, and that you entered the partition
correctly. The next command is:
kernel=/boot/gnumach.gz root=hd1s1 -s
This time, use the Hurd name of your root filesystem. The
-s flag tells Hurd to boot single-user. If this works,
you get a line about ELF object code. Then type:
module=/boot/serverboot.gz
This is a Mach executable that loads the servers needed to run the
rest of Hurd. Finally, boot it:
boot
Mach now starts its general boot process. Note that it doesn't support
IRQ sharing, so you may find a conflict (especially with serial ports)
that didn't occur with Linux. If this is the case, changing the
offending port's IRQ or disabling it should work. Eventually, you will
get a prompt.
Now finish the basic install process, using the native-install script:
./native-install
If this gives setttrans errors, then you forgot to
specify the -o hurd option to mke2fs. Run the e2os script
under Linux to fix this. Note that the cross-install script will no
longer install more than a minimal set of packages (to prevent dpkg
choking on errors), so you will need to install any other packages
using the Debian packaging system later. You should now reboot,
and follow the above instructions again, in order to run
native-install a second time.
Sixth - Make devices, and more configuration
Every time you enter single-user mode, you have to type:
export TERM=mach
to use the mach terminal information. Do that now. Next you need to make some
devices:
cd /dev
./MAKEDEV foo bar baz
Native-install should have created a device file for the root partition for
you. Other partitions or swap partitions and the floppy drive
(probably fd0) can be added manually. It is
important to note that you need to make devices for the drives
themselves as well as any partitions on those drives you wish to
use. Next, you need to set up the network. Native-install sets up
/servers/socket/2 with no parameters now, so you have to make this go
away before you can configure the network:
settrans /servers/socket/2 --goaway
settrans -acpfg /servers/socket/2 \
/hurd/pfinet --interface=eth0 --address=NN.NN.NN.NN \
--gateway=GG.GG.GG.GG --netmask=MM.MM.MM.MM
These should all be numerical IP addresses. The values to insert will
be found on your Linux box in /etc/init.d/network.
Now, if you want to boot multiuser, you'll want your users to have
the same home directory on both Linux and Hurd, won't you? So you need
to mount the Linux partition. Hurd mounts are permanent between boots,
which is really useful. For example, if your Linux partition is
/dev/hda4, then mount it in /Linux thus:
cd /
settrans -c /linux /hurd/ext2fs /dev/hd0s4
ln -s /linux/home /home
The last line makes /home a symlink to
/linux/home. The /hurd/ext2fs tells Hurd
it's an ext2 format partition. You can mount (non-transiently) nfs
partitions in this way too. To make the filesystem read-only, give the
-r argument after the filesystem type, and to
make the settrans transient (like a Linux mount), supply the
-a argument directly after settrans. To remove a
settrans, type settrans /mnt without any further
arguments. To change the status after setting the translator, you can call
fsysopts /linux with the appropriate options.
Now issue the reboot command, and go back to linux:
/sbin/reboot
Seventh - Final preparations
Then edit the menu provided by the GRUB floppy, which is in the file
/floppy/boot/grub/menu.lst. You need to change the
single-user and multi-user options to those you used earlier
(remembering the -s flag for the single-user boot
option). That's it! Just reboot, and select the multi-user menu option
from the boot floppy.
Eigth - Mailing lists
There are four Hurd mailing lists:
- debian-hurd@lists.debian.org
- The mailing list for the Debian GNU/Hurd project. I recommend this
to everyone, especially those interested in porting things to
GNU/Hurd, and using their Hurd box for anything useful. Send a message
with subscribe as the subject to debian-hurd-request@lists.debian.org
to subscribe. Archives can be found at http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/#debian-hurd
- help-hurd@gnu.org
- The mailing
list for people involved with the Hurd project. There are quite a few
cross-posts to debian-hurd, but this list is probably of interest to
everyone. Send a message with subscribe as the subject to help-hurd-request@gnu.org
to subscribe.
- bug-hurd@gnu.org
- The mailing list for reporting hurd bugs (as opposed to those in
debian hurd packages).Send a message with subscribe as the subject to bug-hurd-request@gnu.org
to subscribe.
- web-hurd@gnu.org
- The mailing list for people interested in the development of the
GNU/Hurd web pages. Send a message with subscribe as the subjecct to
web-hurd-request@gnu.org
to subscribe.
Ninth - To conclude
A couple of further links you may well find helpful:
- http://angg.twu.net/the_hurd_links.html
- A large collection of links containing information for GNU/Hurd
developers and users.
- http://hurddocs.sourceforge.net/
- The home of the GNU/Hurd documentation project.
I hope this has been helpful. I'm sorry it's so long, but I've tried
to make everything simple by explaining everything step by
step. Please send me feedback! I can only improve
this guide if you tell me what you'd like to see here.
Have Fun!
Matthew Vernon,
matthew@debian.org,
http://www.pick.ucam.org