Kernel Development Learning Pipeline

Intro to Kernel Development: The Topics

Working in Linux as an engineer

• setting up development env
• using git
• using ./configure && make (autotools)
• commandline basics & tips, tricks
• awk & more cool stuff

What is a Unix-like Operating System?

• Linux vs Unix & history: where does Linux come from?
• building a distro, minimal distro (“aparatus”)
• what is a Linux process, syscall basics, file descriptor intro
• e.g. grep in a child process (bill cs308 assignment 2)
• open read write fork exec dup pipe wait close exit
• character devices and their operations

Hardware meets software

• What is CPU privilege
  • trying to execute forbidden instructions (rdmsr_priv_demo)
  • kernel abilities vs userspace
• exceptions: traps, interupts, aborts
• featured example: Syscalls end-to-end
  • tracing a syscall intruction from the invocation
  • ??? stuff happens ???
  • response back to userspace

Assembly and C for kernel development

• writing makefiles
• C compilation deep dive, object files
• assembly vs machine code
• writing assembly to interact with the kernel without libc

Debugging

• searching code: cscope, elixr, git grep
• raw ftrace vs library ftrace
• ptrace
• strace
• perf
• gdb with qemu-system
• bpftrace
• valgrind

Pseudo-filesystems as kernel interfaces: a Linux specialty

• /proc
• /sys
• /dev
• cgroup & ftrace

Kernel Modules as a way to learn about writing kernel code

• hello world module
• data types
• concurrency & kernel locking API

Participating in open source communities

• public speaking
• technical writing
• sending patches in general
• upstream Linux mailing list tour
• code review