KernelNewbies:

There are many ways for people to start out in Linux kernel development. One good place to start is the KernelJanitors project, where you can become familiar with the Linux kernel source tree and development style by making small cleanups and bug fixes all over the tree, together with the other kernel janitors.

For Kernel Hackers

Please add suitable projects here to help Computer Science students do something useful in the time they need to spend on projects anyway. Suitable projects:

Small Linux features

A good next step is to implement small, relatively self contained, features that the Linux kernel needs but have not been implemented yet. When you "take" such a feature, please add your name in the "Developer" column and the date you decided to take the project in the "Date taken" column.

Project

Summary

Contact

Difficulty (1-10)

Developer

Date taken

Merged in

[:KernelProjects/rlimit64:setrlimit64/getrlimit64]

64 bit versions of set/getrlimit, see [http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5042 bug 5042]

Andrew Morton - akpm (at) linux-foundation.org

6

Narendra Prasad (narendramind (at) gmail.com)

26-Jan-2008

/dev/random statistics

interface that shows the amount of entropy generated via the interfaces per second or so and also the amount consumed

1

/PowerSaving

power saving tweaks

[http://linuxpowertop.org/discuss.php Powertop mailing list]

3

various

/SwapoutClustering

swap out virtually contiguous pages together

Rik van Riel - riel (at) redhat.com

5

Peter Teoh (htmldeveloper (at) gmail.com) / Advt (dsouza (at) speakmedia.com.br)

15 Oct 2007 01 Mar 2008

/Mac80211Suspend

mac80211 suspend/resume support

Johannes Berg - johannes (at) sipsolutions.net

5

Jose Ignacio Naranjo (joseignacio.naranjo (at) gmail.com)

10 Nov 2007

["/pfiles"]

add reporting of socket information to [http://sources.redhat.com/systemtap/wiki/WSPfiles pfiles] SystemTap script

Eugene Teo - eteo (at) redhat.com

3

Luís Henriques - lhenriques (at) netvisao.pt

17 Oct 2007

19 Jan 2008, see [http://www.kernel.sg/blog/2008/01/20/fiddling-with-pfiles-to-gather-opened-socket-information/ here]

/FasterRebuild

Increase speed for a build with no updates

Sam Ravnborg - sam (at) ravnborg.org

5

/FasterRebuild2

Increase speed for a build which updates a single file

Sam Ravnborg - sam (at) ravnborg.org

?

/MenuConfig

Update menuconfig to a modern ncurses look & feel

Sam Ravnborg - sam (at) ravnborg.org

5

/KconfigSelectRemoval

Allow removal of select from Kconfig files

Jörn Engel - joern (at) logfs.org

4

/Raid1ReadBalancing

Add read balancing to RAID 1

Rik van Riel - riel (at) redhat.com

4

Konstantin Sharlaimov - konstantin.sharlaimov (at) gmail.com ,prajith - emailprajith@gmail.com

17 Oct 2007

/AsynchronousSystemCalls

Make all system calls asynchronous - or at least the ones that can stall

5

["/Mac80211w"]

mac80211 802.11w support

Johannes Berg - johannes (at) sipsolutions.net

4

["/SmackInterface"]

Implement network interface default labels for Smack

Casey Schaufler - casey (at) schaufler-ca.com

5

["/SmackIPv6"]

Implement IPv6 networking for Smack

Casey Schaufler - casey (at) schaufler-ca.com

8


/!\ Edit conflict - other version:


["/SmackInterface"]

Implement network interface default labels for Smack

Casey Schaufler - casey (at) schaufler-ca.com

5

["/SmackIPv6"]

Implement IPv6 networking for Smack

Casey Schaufler - casey (at) schaufler-ca.com

8


/!\ Edit conflict - your version:



/!\ End of edit conflict


Larger projects

Alternatively, there are some larger projects. Again, when you "take" such a project, please add your name in the "Developer" column and the date you decided to take the project in the "Date taken" column.

Project

Summary

Contact

Difficulty (1-10)

Developer

Date taken

Merged in

/Mac80211TestDriver

Test mac80211 without real hardware

Johannes Berg - johannes (at) sipsolutions.net

depends

/VirtRootkitBlocker

Block rootkits using virtualization (Xen)

Rik van Riel - riel (at) redhat.com

7

prabir - android_online (at) yahoo.com

16 Oct 2007

/VirtRootkitBlocker

Block rootkits using virtualization (KVM)

Rik van Riel - riel (at) redhat.com

7

/ResourceControl

Better resource control

kalium (at) gmx.de

7

/SelfOptimizingBlockDevice

Self-optimizing read-write block devices

kalium (at) gmx.de

7

Micah Gruber - micah.gruber (at) gmail.com

19 Oct 2007

/CorrectnessProofs

Proof that caching/buffering/transactions/syncs are handled correctly.

kalium (at) gmx.de

10+

["/Impersonation"]

Add impersonation feature to the kernel

Alex (dot) Slesarev (at) gmail.com

7

VMware image mounter

Being able to map different types of virtual disk formats to appear as blockdevice or as real ide/scsi device. For example, being able to mount VMware .vmdk virtual disks or use them as blockdevice. replace ancient/unstable vmware-mount.pl. See http://communities.vmware.com/message/749768 . news on 12/26/07: Apparently, it looks vmware is adressing this. Latest beta for their hosted products has a fuse based replacement for vmware-mount.pl/vmware-loop which is able to map a virtual disk to a flat file. mapping that file to a blockdevice is easy then (losetup or device-mapper) . closed source, though.

devzero (at) web.de

?

Projects that could use more help

Another possibility is to get involved with an existing kernel project that needs some help. Since these projects need multiple people, there is no need to claim these.

Project

Summary

[http://code.google.com/p/compcache/ Compressed Caching]

Compressed Caching is a new level in the virtual memory hierarchy, where pages are stored in some compressed format, decreasing the number of page faults that are serviced by slow hard disks.

[http://www.linux1394.org/ FireWire subsystem]

The Linux1394 project has a seemingly ever-growing to-do list of bugs and other items, ranging from small cleanups to implementation of full drivers (e.g. IP over FireWire). If you have FireWire hardware, working on these drivers may be a good entry into kernel hacking because most FireWire specs are open, some even gratis. See the Wiki at linux1394.org for the to-do list and links to specifications.

[http://michaelblizek.homelinux.net/projects/cor/index.html Connection Oriented Routing]

This project addresses some shortcomings (fairness, performance, privacy) of the TCP/IP Stack in mesh networks with a new layer3/4 protocol.


KernelNewbies: KernelProjects (last edited 2008-03-18 17:41:45 by user-11fa1ab)