A month of the Hurd: hurd Debian package, union mount translator, bug fixes, and a job opening.

Samuel Thibault uploaded a new version of the hurd Debian package which improves system stability by fixing a long-standing bug in the exec server that had randomly made it hang, inhibiting the creation of new processes.

Sergiu Ivanov implemented most of the functionality of the union mount translator which allows combining the filesystem trees exported by several translators with the filesystem tree of the underlying node (in contrast to a pure unionfs, which won't do that). The patches are currently undergoing testing and review on the bug-hurd mailing list. This work is being done as a Google Summer of Code project, and we're happy to tell that Sergiu successfully passed the project's midterm evaluation.

Also, Zheng Da fixed a bug in GNU Mach's BPF (Berkeley Packet Filter) implementation and contributed a number of fixes and improvements for rpctrace which should help further debugging.

Aside from looking for new contributors all the time, here is another job opening that doesn't require specific Hurd knowledge: we're seeking someone interested in writing a regression test suite for Hurd components.