Re: hurd: gnubie doubts

[Anand Babu]

,----[ Shakthi Kannan <shakstux@yahoo.com> ]
| 1/ The Hurd servers run many tasks. Tasks communicate to the ports
| with messages, and hence a server can communicate with multiple
| ports?
`----
The GNU Hurd servers are tasks themselves. When a task serves a useful
purpose like networking, file system or authentication, it is called a
server. The GNU Hurd implements operating system services as a
collection of servers (tasks). Concept of task comes from Mach. Task
is simply a unit of resource allocation. Tasks do not have pid, gid,
groups or sessions. Hurd's process server makes a task appear as a
process.

A task (or server) can have one or more ports and can communicate with
multiple ports. What exactly is your question?

,----[ Shakthi Kannan <shakstux@yahoo.com> ]
| 2/ Multiple tasks can send messages through a port (message queues),
| where the tasks have send rights for the port?
`----
Yes, when they have a send right or send-once right to the port..

,----[ Shakthi Kannan <shakstux@yahoo.com> ]
| 3/ A single task alone has a receive right for a particular port?
`----
Yes there can only be one receive right for a port and only one task
can own it. How ever a receive right is transferable.

,----[ Shakthi Kannan <shakstux@yahoo.com> ]
| 4/ Where do translators come in the above picture?
`----
To know about translators, you should read from
http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/whatis/translator.html

But I think your question comes from, why you need to settrans every
server. It is because, the server has to register with the name server
(file system server) for send-right lookup (file_name_lookup
call). Even for a server that need not have to behave like a file or
file system, it can still use libtrivfs for name server
registration. 

,----[ Shakthi Kannan <shakstux@yahoo.com> ]
| 5/ If X server wants to talk with Y server, then it makes a request
| to the filesystem server asking for a "send right" to the Y server
| port?
`----
Yes because under GNU/Hurd, filesystem server also acts as name
server.

-- 
Anand Babu
Free as in Freedom <www.gnu.org>