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<nexussfan>How's the java patching going

<nexussfan>Also, is there a way to make grub use the smp kernel by default?

<youpi>nexussfan: with the GRUB_DEFAULT variable in /etc/default/grub

<rrq>damo22: I built v1.8+git20260224 (./configure --build=x86_64 --enable-ncpus=32) and running smp=4 ... all happy

<rrq>though /proc/cpuinfo only reports 1 cpu, while /proc/hostinfo reports both the gnumach limit of 32 and available 4

<gnucode>morning friends!

<gnucode>well, grrrr. Using Gnus on the hurd on real hardware is pretty slow. I figure that I would try to set up mu4e and isync. mu4e is not installable.

<gnucode>mu4e depends on maildir-utils, which is not installable. :(

<gnucode>anybody aware of an email client that works on local mail that the Hurd runs fairly well ?

<gnucode>also sorry about the irc noise yesterday when I was talking about mariadb. I meant that chat to go into #openbsd

<gnucode>also I'm not entirely certain what the point is of this webpage:

<gnucode> https://hurdos.com/wiki/open_issues/translators_set_up_by_untrusted_users.html

<gnucode>if I won't follow translators set by others by default (which is the current default), then this page seems rather unnecessary. Unless we want to eventually create a "trusted" users group that others users can follow their translators by default.

<gnucode>and I suppose I really did like in the commentary on that web page...when it talked about private namespaces. For example, when I cannot run this command:

<gnucode>$ settrans -fgcap /dev/rumpnet /hurd/rumpnet

<gnucode>I can't set a translator on /dev/ because dev is owned by root and the group is root.

<gnucode>So I have to run

<gnucode># settrans -fgcap /dev/rumpnet /hurd/rumpnet

<gnucode>It should be possible to do this as non-root, and it only affects my view of the filesystem. No one else is aware of this change (except for perhaps root).

<azert>gnucode: for that you would need a private filesystem

<azert>and unionmount that on top of the common ext2 in a way that your root sits on this union

<azert>while other’s root differ

<azert>I think this should be possible in the Hurd

<azert>however it seems too complicated to be practicable

<gnucode>sneek later tell youpi what purpose does this web page serve ? https://hurdos.com/wiki/open_issues/translators_set_up_by_untrusted_users.html You make it sound like there currently is not possible to run translators set up by others, which is good. But then maybe we should delete or rename that wiki page...I'll tweak what I have and email in an update. But it sounds like it's not possible for a user to run a malicious translator

<gnucode>that was set up by another user.

<sneek>Okay.

<gnucode>azert: would it be too slow ? Or is developing that feature just hairy ?

<azert>too slow? I’m not sure but I expect some overhead

<azert>i just think it diverges from Linux enough that Debian wouldn’t use it

<azert>i wouldn’t use it

<azert>seems way too fancy to be of any practical use

<azert>im not sure im clear: I use two kind of infrastructures, single users systems and shared computational workstations/clusters

<azert>For the former I have no interest in that and I just don’t care about this kind of discussion

<azert>sudo works well enough

<azert>For the latter I can see how the Hurd provides advantages over things like docker

<azert>Which would mean almost complete compartmentalization with few shared components

<azert>What you propose is a almost fully shared components with a few compertmentalized elements which is kind of weirs

<azert>weird

<gnucode>azert: is it possible to use rumpnet as a non-root user ? Currently to set up rumpnet, I had to become root. I wonder if it's possible to do it non-root.

<gnucode>azert to be clear, it's not something that I'm proposing. I just saw it as something that should be possible in old irc logs.

<azert>I think it’s theoretically possible just don’t use /dev

<azert>But you might have issue with accessing pci and io ports

<azert>So basically I don’t think so

<gnucode>I think you might also have to use /servers/socket/2 ?

<gnucode>does root run translators set up by other users by default ?

<gnucode>I believe that it does.

<gnucode>I just made a symlink translator, then had root access that node. It forwarded my request.

<gnucode>I also made a symlink from /home/joshua/tmp to /tmp . When root ran cd /home/joshua/tmp; ls

<gnucode>root saw all the /tmp files.

<gnucode>I'm still trying to wrap my head around the implications of running translators set up by other users. If only everyone was super nice and not a hacker, then we could all use each other's translators. :(

<gnucode>off topic joke...incoming...

<gnucode>eh, nevermind. ask me privately, if you are curious.

<gnucode>I guess mutt is an option for an email client.

<gnucode>I also had a thought the other day, that someone could write hurd translators in C + guile, since guile is designed to be embedded in a C program.

<jab>looks like I can start running a SMP kernel soon! That's awesome!

<damo22>rrq: im not sure if cpuinfo has it all wired up

<damo22>also, the machine boots with only one but makes available N-1 as a slave processor set that you have to explicitly make available to a process using /sbin/smp /path/to/binary

<damo22>but be aware, there are still race conditions that cause crashes

<rrq>thanks

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2026-02-26.log