GSoC project about virtualization using Hurd mechanisms

[zhengda]

Hello,

I want to do the project of virtualization using Hurd mechanisms.
There are two choices for me: to improve subhurds and to create a new 
subenvironments.
Here are the descriptions about them:
In my understanding, Hurd is a set of servers which provide the services 
provided by the monolithic kernel before such as file system, networking 
and etc. These servers run as normal processes on a microkernel such as 
Mach or L4, whose responsibility is to help servers communicate with 
each other. Because of this architecture, it is possible for us to run 
duplicate servers. If we run another full set of servers, we can get 
another Hurd on our machine. This is my understanding of how subhurd 
works. But currently there are no communication channels between the 
subhurd and the main one, and no mechanism for safe sharing of hardware 
devices. This could be the task of the project.

In the other hand, if we can run some duplicate servers, we can get a 
smaller subenvirnoment which lives within the main system and uses most 
of its facilities. The advantage is that we can get a virtual 
subenvironment but save a lot of resources on the computer. I want to 
create a virtual network by running several servers of network protocols 
at the same time and give different IP address to these servers. In this 
case, we have to provide a mechanism to allow the user's program to 
choose which server to use, and provide a mechanism to allow servers 
communicate with each other.
The virtual network I mentioned above is actually a network simulator. 
Its work is to simulate a network in the operating system, so different 
processes in the operating system think they are running on different 
IPs. For example, there are 3 processes: A, B, C. Process A thinks it 
runs on ADDR_A, B thinks it on ADDR_B, C thinks it on ADDR_C. Process A, 
B, C runs in the same machine actually, but they all think others run on 
the machine of different IPs. So if Process A sends a message to ADDR_B 
and Process B is listening, the message should be delivered to Process 
B. The reason I want to create such a kind of network simulator is that 
it should be easier for us to test some distributed programs (sometime 
we may not be able to find enough machines to run it, for example).In 
Hurd, we can run one server of networking for one IP. It should be easy  
to be done in Hurd. Then we have to provide a mechanism to allow the 
process to choose which server to use, and provide a mechanism to allow 
servers communicate with each other.

Best,
Zheng Da