Honestly to say, these days I haven't enough time to do the gsoc stuff. The school work had taken almost all of my time. And I am so sorry to that I haven't got any significant progress at the beginning week.

I am reading the gdb source code, and the gnu-nat.c file has captured my eyes. According to the mach's exception model, I have tried to write a debugger demo on Hurd (not completed yet).  But I got some puzzles below:

1) What is the S_exception_raise_request()?

The exception model says: victim raise, victim wait, handler catch, handler take action. In my knowledge, handler catch the notification by invoking mach_msg(), and I finally found this invoke in gun_wait() function. But, I also found something strange like S_exception_raise_request(). The comment says ""The rpc handler called by exc_server ". What is the exc_server? And how to understand this why seems two place to catch the exception notification?

2) what is the role of ptrace in gdb port on Hurd?

I have found only one place to use ptrace like ptrace(PTRACE_TRACEME,..).  The rest directly use the vm_read,vm_write to access the inferior's memory instead of ptrace(PTRACE_PEEKDATA). what's plus, I have found the implementation of ptrace support PTRACE_PEEKDATA under Hurd in glibc.

Next week goal:

1. finish the debugger demo which support modifying the debugged process's memory and inserting breakpoint.

2. continue to read the source code. get clearly with the above questions.