Any clean-up work?

Any clean-up work?

[Yousef Alhashemi]

Hi,

I understand I should be posting this elsewhere, and I know I'll
probably get shot for asking this here, but I'm trying to get involved
with kernel development, and I'm interested in networking (not
necessarily wireless). I've tried other places (including
kernelnewbies) before coming here.

I have done some _very_ basic kernel development, like modifying a
CPU/IO scheduler, creating a RAM disk, creating new system calls,
..etc. I am now trying to do some "real" kernel development. The
problem is, everywhere I ask I get pointed to books like Robert Love's
Linux Kernel Development, which I already read. That, or I get to
pointed to lists like http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/Net:TODO or
http://www.linuxdriverproject.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/DriversNeeded,
both of which include projects which are basically impossible for me
to do (because they require way too much background knowledge about
the particular problem/protocol/device and also require great
knowledge of the kernel internals).

Now I understand that networking (or the networking subsystem) is
fairly complicated, but I was wondering if the there is any clean up
work that I can help with (that will hopefully get me familiarized
with the kernel in general, and the networking stuff in particular).
I'm also wondering if anyone here would be willing to give me a little
bit of hand-holding with the more advanced stuff (if help is needed in
a particular area but that area is too difficult for a starter like me
to undertake).

I'm fairly proficient in C and I understand basic OS principles (CPU
scheduling, virtual memory, filesystems, ..etc). I also have general
knowledge of networking (protocols and layering, packet/frame
transmission, error detection, TCP/IP, and all the other stuff that
are typical of an introductory networking class).

Thanks,
Yousef

P.S. The kernel projects list on kernelnewbies.org hasn't changed
forever. All projects are either taken or already merged.

Re: Any clean-up work?

[John W. Linville]

On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 06:14:23AM -0700, Yousef Alhashemi wrote:

> Now I understand that networking (or the networking subsystem) is
> fairly complicated, but I was wondering if the there is any clean up
> work that I can help with (that will hopefully get me familiarized
> with the kernel in general, and the networking stuff in particular).
> I'm also wondering if anyone here would be willing to give me a little
> bit of hand-holding with the more advanced stuff (if help is needed in
> a particular area but that area is too difficult for a starter like me
> to undertake).

drivers/staging has an embarassingly large number of wireless drivers
in it.  They are there for various reasons, mostly centering around
either attrocious style/maintainability issues or flagrant duplication
of functionality with mainline kernel infrastructure (i.e. should be
using mac80211 instead of their internal stack).  If you have (or
can get) access to any of the covered wireless hardware, anything
you can do to correct style/maintainability issues, keep up-to-date
with changing kernel APIs, and (especially) porting to the mac80211
infrastructure would be most useful.

Hth!

John
-- 
John W. Linville		Someday the world will need a hero, and you
linville@tuxdriver.com			might be all we have.  Be ready.