[GRLUG] Tanenbaum in Ann Arbor

Tue Jan 4 12:35:23 EST 2011

Should be pretty trivial to load up in a VM.

Also, there's a Live CD.

http://www.superunprivileged.org/hurd/live-cd/

On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 12:32 PM, Bob Kline <bob.kline at gmail.com> wrote:
> Basically correct I believe.  Minix first
> came out about 30 years ago, with a
> book, as a reaction to the fact that AT&T,
> owners of Unix, would no longer let
> schools have Unix source code to study.
> A truly sad decision for the world...
> Anyone here plan to try it, if only for fun.
>     --  Bob
>
> On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 12:28 PM, Michael Mol <mikemol at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> My understanding is that it's primarily an educational tool.
>>
>> Debian and Arch both have Hurd distributions, if you want to try a
>> microkernel system. As I recall, Emacs was recently ported to Hurd as
>> well (via the Arch distribution, not directly on top, amusing as that
>> would be), which means you should be able to do darn near anything.
>>
>> Expect the driver availability issues to feel a lot like Linux in the
>> mid to late 90s.
>>
>> With luck, SATA AHCI, SVGA, USB UHCI/EHCI and a handful of
>> standardized USB profiles like HID(intput) and CDC(networking) would
>> be close to enough to get a new system's foot in the door on x86.
>>
>> On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 12:03 PM, Ben Rousch <brousch at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Just in case any of you are interested ...
>> >
>> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> > From: Dug Song <dugsong at monkey.org>
>> > Date: Mon, Jan 3, 2011 at 11:26 AM
>> > Subject: [a2geeks] Fwd: andrew tanenbaum speaking wednesday
>> > To: a2geeks <a2geeks at googlegroups.com>
>> >
>> >
>> > Wow, MINIX still going!
>> >
>> > Curious to see what new direction they've taken it in (how is this
>> > different than exokernels)? Linux did prevail after all (e.g.
>> > http://www.dina.dk/~abraham/Linus_vs_Tanenbaum.html ), and it seems
>> > there are only microkernel vestiges left in Windows or MacOS X.
>> >
>> > This should be a good one. Please fwd it to any systems folks you know!
>> >
>> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> > From: peter honeyman <honey at citi.umich.edu>
>> > Date: Mon, Jan 3, 2011 at 11:08 AM
>> > Subject: andrew tanenbaum speaking wednesday
>> > To: thebackrow at citi.umich.edu
>> > Cc: Greg Minshall <minshall at umich.edu>
>> >
>> >
>> > TITLE: MINIX3: A Reliable and Secure Operating System
>> >
>> > BY: Andrew Tanenbaum, Vrije Universiteit
>> >
>> > WHERE: Wednesday Jan 5, 4:30-5:30, 1690 CSE
>> >
>> > ABSTRACT:
>> > Most computer users nowadays are nontechnical people and have a
>> > mental model of what they expect from a computer based on their
>> > experience with TV sets and stereos: you buy it, plug it in, and
>> > it works perfectly for the next 10 years. Unfortunately, they are
>> > often disappointed as computers are not very reliable when
>> > measured against the standards of other consumer electronics
>> > devices.
>> >
>> > A large part of the problem is the operating system, which is
>> > often millions of lines of kernel code, each of which can
>> > potentially bring the system down. The worst offenders are the
>> > device drivers, which have been shown to have bug rates 3-7x more
>> > than the rest of the system. As long as we maintain the current
>> > structure of the operating system as a huge single monolithic
>> > program full of foreign code and running in kernel mode, the
>> > situation will only get worse. While there have been ad hoc
>> > attempts to patch legacy systems, what is needed is a different
>> > approach.
>> >
>> > In an attempt to provide much higher reliability, we have created
>> > a new multiserver operating system with only 5000 lines in kernel
>> > and the rest of the operating system split up into small
>> > components each running as a separate user-mode process. For
>> > example, each device driver runs as a separate process and is
>> > rigidly controlled by the kernel to give it the absolute minimum
>> > amount of power to prevent bugs in it from damaging other system
>> > components. A reincarnation server periodically tests each user-
>> > mode component and automatically replaces failed or failing
>> > components on the fly, without bringing the system down and in
>> > some cases without affecting user processes. The talk will
>> > discuss the architecture of this system, called MINIX 3.
>> >
>> > The system can be downloaded for free from www.minix3.org.
>> >
>> > BIO:
>> > Andrew Stuart "Andy" Tanenbaum is a member of the faculty of the
>> > Department of Computer Systems, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, in
>> > the Netherlands. He is best known as the author of Minix, a free
>> > UNIX operating system, and for his computer science textbooks. He
>> > was born in New York City and raised in White Plains, NY. He
>> > received his undergraduate degree from MIT and his doctorate from
>> > UC Berkeley. Currently, he teaches courses about Computer Organization
>> > and Operating Systems. He is well recognized for his texts on
>> > computer science, which are famous as standard texts in the field,
>> > including "Computer Networks", "Operating Systems: Design and
>> > Implementation", and "Structured Computer Organization".
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > http://monkey.org/~dugsong/
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Discuss mailing list
>> > Discuss at mug.org
>> > http://www.mug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>> >
>> > --
>> >   Ben Rousch
>> >   brousch at gmail.com
>> >   http://ishmilok.blogspot.com/
>> >
>> > --
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>>
>>
>>
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