All the latest Hurd information

I have designed this page specifically for the people who check my site every two or three days. If any news comes up with regard to the Hurd, I'll post it here, perhaps with a link or two to point you in the right direction.

Don't forget: the Hurd is still pre-alpha code, so it is not ready for prime-time.

Here is an index of things on this page, in order of last modification date (newest stuff is closest to the top):

1. I updated my instructions for bootstrapping the binary snapshot, now that I have a fairly stable Hurd working on an i486/16MB.
2. Michael Bushnell posted a new announcement to the Hurd mailing lists. Apparently, the Hurd can now do ftp.
3. I have updated the information in my Hurd cross-compilation instructions and the bootstrapping instructions to reflect the current situation as of October 23rd.
4. The October 5th binary snapshot has appeared in alpha.gnu.ai.mit.edu:/gnu/hurd-image.tar.gz.
5. Gord's Bootstrap Strategy. What I figure is the fastest way to get an up-to-date, working Hurd system. Updated for the October 5th snapshot.
6. My updated version of the Unofficial GNU Hurd FAQ. I've taken over the maintainance of it, since Derek Upham, the old maintainer, hasn't responded to email.
7. The Old Way. If you have a Free/NetBSD system, you can try out an older binary snapshot. You'd be on your own (I haven't done it), and it isn't as featureful or stable, but it should at least work.

The New Binary Snapshot

This snapshot, dated October 5, 1995, was made available by Roland McGrath for all of us curious pre-alpha testers. Like all of the current snapshots, this one cannot be easily booted, and Mach 4 (UK02, patch level 13) is still panicing when it shouldn't. So, it probably isn't worth downloading... wait until a working, bootable snapshot is released.

My Bootstrap Strategy

See this incomplete documentation for bootstrapping the current binary snapshot. Please don't bother the Hurd developers about this, nor should you make it public knowledge. Please don't bother me about these instructions until you've spent at least 10 days working on them, and you've at least gotten Lites working. That is all - I simply do not have time to help a lot of people try to bootstrap something that's beyond them. Soon, hopefully, bootstrapping will be easier.

The Old Way

If you have *BSD installed on your i386 machine, you can attempt to bootstrap the Hurd binary snapshot the way that some folks at Portland State University did it. The only problem is that this binary snapshot is quite (i.e. created before March) old, so it won't be as nice as ones made from the current snapshot.

This approach won't work unless you install a BSD-style partition. Sorry, Linux people, you're out of luck.