[cfarm-users] cfarm{431,432}: hurd-{amd64,i386}

[Jeffrey Walton]

On Tue, Mar 10, 2026 at 7:11 AM Luke Yasuda via cfarm-users <
cfarm-users at lists.tetaneutral.net> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> The two Debian GNU/Hurd VMs, cfarm431 (hurd-amd64) and cfarm432
> (hurd-i386) are available now. But they need some "special lovin'" as
> the highest uptime record on munin is 5.61 days so far. On the spirit of
> sharing notes and experience and hoping someone on the mailing list
> might have some insights:
>
> common issues on hurd-*:
> 1. ntp or chrony or any other NTP implementation (that I know of) won't
> work. If you notice that the time is skewed, email me so I can correct
> it manually.
> 2. we have very limited CPU and RAM resources (also see below). Large
> builds can take days. Coordination among users may be necessary. We
> should use this mailing list to coordinate when the time comes. If
> posting on this list is "too loud" etc (if anyone complains), I can
> create a mailing list under @lists.jing.rocks (mailman3 managed)
> 3. upgrading hurd and glibc might crash and even cause the system to be
> unbootable. So, from now on, I'll make a snapshot before upgrading them.
> Basically I check for package upgrades about once a week.
> 4. I absolutely cannot get IPv6 to work. I wrote a custom init script
> (/etc/init.d/networking-real) because ifupdown doesn't implement IPv6 on
> hurd yet.
> 5. mosh is not available. fstrim is not available. As well as so many
> other packages.
> 6. hurd does not support having 2 or more IPv4 addresses or configuring
> two or more netif (not including loopback "lo").
> 7. sshd may not be working at all when it's started on boot, needs to be
> restarted on tty by hand:
>
> Mar 10 10:37:29 cfarm432 sshd[860]: error: ppoll: Computer bought the
> farm
> Mar 10 10:38:00 cfarm432 last message repeated 350578 times
> Mar 10 10:38:02 cfarm432 last message repeated 25942 times
>
>
> hurd-amd64:
> 1. only 1 core is available. I cannot get the SMP kernel
> (gnumach-image-1-amd64-smp) to boot, it just resets itself after grub
> loads gnumach. I don't intend to debug it due to the lack of skills
> 2. only 6GB RAM is available. Again, it resets itself at boot time when
> there is more than about 8GB system memory
> 3. /home is 500GB large (not an issue per se). After a system crash, it
> may take 15 min or so for e2fsck to check and fix the file system.
> 4. recently, every 3~5 days or so, for some reason, /hurd/tmpfs will
> crash and also bring down the networking.
>
> hurd-i386:
> 1. similar to hurd-amd64, only 1 core is available. I cannot get the SMP
> kernel (gnumach-image-1-486-smp) to boot
> 2. only 3GB RAM is available. I cannot get the PAE kernel
> (gnumach-image-1-486-pae) to boot
> 3. /home is only 128GB large. hurd-i386 cannot recognize a disk larger
> than 128GB, any disk larger than 128GB will just appear to be 128GB,
> which seems to be an ancient C/H/S addressing limitation existed in
> windows 2000 if I remember it correctly. So, the space is tight and
> remember to clean up after yourself, dear friends.


Forwarded to the Hurd folks at <
https://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2026/03/msg00023.html>.

Jeff
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