I used crosshurd to set up hurd on my machine. Since the mirrors
crosshurd used were down I downloaded a base hurd system from here
http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian/base/ as specified by
http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install. I extracted it and set
up grub to boot from it with these commands:
title GNU Hurd - Single User
root (hd1,6)
kernel /boot/gnumach.gz root=device:hd1s0 -s
module /hurd/ext2fs.static --readonly \
--multiboot-command-line=${kernel-command-line} \
--host-priv-port=${host-port} \
--device-master-port=${device-port} \
--exec-server-task=${exec-task} \
-T typed ${root} $(task-create) $(task-resume)
module /lib/ld.so.1 /hurd/exec $(exec-task=task-create)
The boot looks promising at first, but hangs with the line ed:
/lib/ld.so.1 /hurd/exec.
[...]