Linux Kernel Programming

Q&A

• Projects
  • How hard are they?

Course

• Part I: overview
• Part II: different parts of the kernel
• Part III
  • Breadth, guest lectures
  • Deeper in some particular topics

What We Have Covered

• Linux basics
• Kernel basics
• System calls and /proc
• Memory management
• Process
• Time and synchronization
• Device driver
• File systems
• Networking

Guest Lectures by IBM LTC

• Current lineup
  • Apr/1: Linux kernel topics (Kenneth Rozendal)
  • Apr/5: Samba and Linux network filesystems and CIFS (Steven French)
  • Apr/22: Embedded Linux (Robert Paulsen)
  • Apr/26: Security and protection (Steve Bade)
  • Apr/29: Loadable security modules (Emily Ratliff)
• More will/can be added
  • Journal file system
  • More

What else Do You Wish To Cover

• Linux kernel topics?
• From the guest lectures?
• Other?
  • How to find a job as a system programmer?

Final Project

• Schedule
  • Apr/1-Apr/5: form teams, decide on project
  • Apr/8-May/3: do the project (4 weeks)
• Project due: May/3, 11:59pm
  • No extension!
• Project demo & grading
  • Each team schedule an 1 hour meeting with TA
  • Demonstrate the project, answer questions

Projects

• IBM Projects
  • NFS (3-4 person team)
• UML Projects
  • Extended host file system (2-4 person team)
  • SMP emulation (2 person team)
  • Frame buffer device (3-4 person team)
  • Host socket (2-3 person team)
• Propose your own projects
  • Must be approved by me
  • Explain to me by Friday Apr/4

Scope of the Project

• It is often open ended
  • Just like many other term projects
• The project description may be imprecise
  • You need refine it along the way
  • You need to let the TA know what you have done
  • What problems you run into and how you solve them
• Grade for the final project
  • You will get a B if you do the project well
  • You will get an A if you do exceptionally well, like going extra miles, very robust, adding new features, etc.