hss - Hurd Socket Stat

A practical, heuristics-based socket table emulator for GNU/Hurd that mimics modern Linux ss and netstat behavior.

Architectural Motivation

On monolithic kernels like Linux, ss queries a centralized kernel-space socket array via Netlink (sock_diag). GNU/Hurd has no monolithic kernel — the network stack and tasks are isolated user-space translators. A single global "socket-to-PID" lookup table does not exist by design. hss emulates this missing table from user space.

Features

Non-blocking heuristics: Lightning-fast connection scans using O_NONBLOCK and select() across interfaces
Low-level Mach/Hurd inspection: Crawls the Mach process server using proc_getallpids and proc_getprocargs
Zero memory leaks: Explicit vm_deallocate for all Mach page memory
Fast runtime: Resolves the entire user-space distributed map in ~0.320 seconds
Dual compiler support: Compiles with both tcc (rapid development) and gcc (production)

Sample Output

Netid    State        Local Address:Port             Process
tcp      LISTEN       192.168.86.42:22               users:(("sshd-session",pid=13635),...)
tcp      LISTEN       localhost:8000                 users:(("python3",pid=14434))

Usage

hss [target] [options]

Options

Option	Description
`target`	Host to scan (default: localhost)
`--all-processes`	Show all processes for each port
`--process-limit=N`	Limit processes shown per port (default: 3)

Examples

# Scan localhost with default settings
hss

# Scan remote host
hss 192.168.1.100

# Show all processes
hss localhost --all-processes

# Limit to 5 processes per port
hss localhost --process-limit=5

Compilation & Build

Dependencies

libc6-dev (standard C library)
hurd-dev (Hurd system headers)
gcc or tcc (compiler)

GCC (Production)

gcc -Wall -Wextra -O2 -o hss hss.c

TCC (Development)

tcc -run hss.c

Debian Package Target

Planned for official inclusion with a standard debian/ directory targeting Architecture: hurd-any.

License

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Author

Mark Robillard Jr (MARKMENTAL)

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