My installation of the Hurd

Make a partition


I have two disks on this machine so I re-installed my Linux with four partitions of 990Mb. The Hurd root partition is /gnu to Linux, and the other three are /home, /Source and /Debs to both systems. The same swap partitions is used by both Linux and the Hurd.

Get that Hurd!


Just get the tar ball, it is found at: Hurd

The file you need is gnu-200000301.tar.gz

You can get grub from the same place.

Using the large tarball


Untar the tarball onto your hurd partition:
The tar ball unpacks relative to / (root), so the easiest way is as follows. On my machine the /gnu partition is /dev/hdb1 to Linux:

cd /

umount /gnu

mke2fs -o hurd /dev/hdb1

mount -a

gzip -d < gnu-20000301.tar.gz | tar -xvf -

The Grub will boot files that are gziped, but I find it easier to change these. So:

cd /gnu/boot

gzip -d *.gz

Now mount and edit the Grub floppy:

mount /dev/fd0 /floppy

cd /floppy/boot/grub

and edit menu.1st to look something like (changing the partition to yours):

title= hurd (single user mode)

root= (hd1,0)

kernel= /boot/gnumach root=hd1s1 -s

module= /boot/serverboot

title= hurd (multi user)

root= (hd1,0)

kernel= /boot/gnumach root=hd1s1

module= /boot/serverboot

The single-user boot


You can now reboot your machine. Let the Hurd boot in single user mode then run the install script:

./native-install

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
The device for the root partition will already be there.

./MAKEDEV hd0

./MAKEDEV hd0s1

and so on to build a driver for each partition. Mount the partitions you need using settrans, (the swap partition can be put into the fstab):

settrans -c /home /hurd/ext2fs /dev/hd0s2
Now issue the reboot command. Select option two from the floppy as the machine reboots, and the Hurd run in multi user mode

Under construction

-- more to follow

To be continued