How to find bugs to fix

How to find bugs to fix

[Joshua Chamberlain]

Howdy,

I've been using Linux for years and I am interested in fixing bugs. I
have been looking on https://bugzilla.kernel.org/ to try to find bugs,
but it seems bugs are supposed to be reported in the mailing lists
instead. This is making it difficult to find a simple bug I can fix.

Do you guys have any advice on how to find bugs to work on?

Thanks,
-Josh

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Re: How to find bugs to fix

[Eric Curtin]

On 1 February 2018 at 00:23, Joshua Chamberlain
<chamberlain.dev@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Howdy,
>
> I've been using Linux for years and I am interested in fixing bugs. I
> have been looking on https://bugzilla.kernel.org/ to try to find bugs,
> but it seems bugs are supposed to be reported in the mailing lists
> instead. This is making it difficult to find a simple bug I can fix.
>
> Do you guys have any advice on how to find bugs to work on?
>
> Thanks,
> -Josh
>
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs

Hi Josh,

Sorry should have replied to your email in plaintext. Gmail Android client
defaulting to HTML. Anyway...

One way is to Install Linux on whatever hardware you have lying around at home
(not in a VM). Check that all your hardware works as expected, keyboard, mouse,
touchpad, brightness keys, USB devices, etc.

Check kernel logs for errors and other logging info. Or if any hardware doesn't
seem to behave right or is quirky, it's likely you may have found a bug or a
feature of your hardware that hasn't been implemented yet. That's one place to
start looking for bugs that you can test, reproduce and fix on your local setup.

Hope this helps!

Or you know, jump straight into the deep-end and write some mitigations for the
Spectre & Meltdown vunerabilities on all the various CPU architectures. The CPU
manufacturers would be greatful :)
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Re: How to find bugs to fix

[Joshua Chamberlain]

Thanks for the input. I was hoping to fix bugs that were affecting many
people, not just me. 

I just tried all my USB devices I had lying around,
but could not find any bugs. I didn't think to check the buttons on my
laptop, so thanks for that!

The bugs that I tend to see on laptops seem to not be a part of the OS
itself. For instance, when I resume my laptop from hibernation, the
networking interface doesn't work, which I think is an issue somehwere
in Ubuntu. I can't believe I'm complaining about this, but LINUX IS TOO
STABLE!

Thanks though...
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Re: How to find bugs to fix

[Christos Gkekas]

On 02/02/18 11:55:22 -0700, Joshua Chamberlain wrote:
> Thanks for the input. I was hoping to fix bugs that were affecting many
> people, not just me. 
> 
> I just tried all my USB devices I had lying around,
> but could not find any bugs. I didn't think to check the buttons on my
> laptop, so thanks for that!
> 
> The bugs that I tend to see on laptops seem to not be a part of the OS
> itself. For instance, when I resume my laptop from hibernation, the
> networking interface doesn't work, which I think is an issue somehwere
> in Ubuntu. I can't believe I'm complaining about this, but LINUX IS TOO
> STABLE!
> 
> Thanks though...
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs

Hi Josh,

I would highly recommend browsing the Kernel newbies site here:
https://kernelnewbies.org/

It contains a lot of information to get you started, including how to
navigate through the Linux code, how the development process works, how
to locate bugs, submit patches and so on. I think it is important to
read through this material if you have not already done so.

Additionally you can compile the kernel and have a look at the warnings
that gcc generates during compilation. The majority of them will be red
herrings, but some of them can point to genuine issues with the code and
actual bugs. I think that is a good way to get started.

Regards,
Christos

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