KernelProjects
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:
- Are relatively self contained, so the code could be merged into the kernel after the student is done with the project.
- Have clearly defined functionality, so the student has goals and can determine whether (s)he achieved them.
- Can be of various sizes. Students need projects anywhere from 6 weeks part-time to 6 months full-time effort.
- If possible, are useful to the Linux kernel. Maybe something from your own TODO list that you did not get around to?
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
setrlimit64/getrlimit64
64 bit versions of set/getrlimit, see bug 5042
Andrew Morton - akpm (at) linux-foundation.org
6
Narendra Prasad (narendramind (at) gmail.com)
26-Jan-2008
31-Mar-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
Marat Stanichenko (maratrus (at) mail.ru)
August 2008
power saving tweaks
Powertop mailing list
3
various
swap out virtually contiguous pages together
Rik van Riel - riel (at) redhat.com
5
Himanshu Chauhan chauhan(dot)jpr(at)gmail(dot)com
September 26 2008
mac80211 suspend/resume support
Johannes Berg - johannes (at) sipsolutions.net
5
Pankaj ( pankaj.linux@gmail.com ) / BobCopeland
16-Jun-2008
19-Jan-2009 (in wireless-testing)
/pfiles
add reporting of socket information to pfiles SystemTap script
Eugene Teo - eteo (at) redhat.com
3
Luís Henriques - lhenriques (at) netvisao.pt
17 Oct 2007
19 Jan 2008, see here
Increase speed for a build with no updates
Sam Ravnborg - sam (at) ravnborg.org
5
Kumar Vishal
17 Sep 2008
ASAP
Increase speed for a build which updates a single file
Sam Ravnborg - sam (at) ravnborg.org
?
Kumar Vishal
17 Sep 2008
ASAP
Update menuconfig to a modern ncurses look & feel
Sam Ravnborg - sam (at) ravnborg.org
5
Nir Tzachar
1 Sep 2008
Allow removal of select from Kconfig files
Jörn Engel - joern (at) logfs.org
4
Narendra Prasad (narendramind (at) gmail.com)
16 Sep 2008
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
Make all system calls asynchronous - or at least the ones that can stall
5
Phanisharma
1st Apr 2008
Implement network interface default labels for Smack
Casey Schaufler - casey (at) schaufler-ca.com
5
Narendra Prasad (narendramind (at) gmail.com)
23 Apr 2008
/SmackIPv6
Implement IPv6 networking for Smack
Casey Schaufler - casey (at) schaufler-ca.com
8
Narendra Prasad (narendramind (at) gmail.com)
23 Apr 2008
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
Test mac80211 without real hardware
Johannes Berg - johannes (at) sipsolutions.net
depends
Igor - igor_trindade<at>yahoo<dot>com<dot>br
?
various commits, mostly by Jouni
Block rootkits using virtualization (Xen)
Rik van Riel - riel (at) redhat.com
7
prabir - android_online (at) yahoo.com
16 Oct 2007
Block rootkits using virtualization (KVM)
Rik van Riel - riel (at) redhat.com
7
Better resource control
kalium (at) gmx.de
7
Self-optimizing read-write block devices
kalium (at) gmx.de
7
Micah Gruber - micah.gruber (at) gmail.com
19 Oct 2007
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
Onkar Mahajan - onkar[dot]n[dot]mahajan[at]gmail[dot]com
21 Oct 2008
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
?
Real mode emulation for virtualization
Real mode support: VT support for real mode is terrible, so we need to do it in software. This means extending the x86 emulator (x86_emulate.c) to handle more instructions, and changing the execution loop to call the emulator for real mode
dor.laor (at) qumranet.com
9
Mohammed Gamal - m.gamal005[at]gmail[dot]com
Guest shared memory
Add a qemu interface for sharing memory between guests. Using a pci device to expose the shared memory is probably a good starting point.
dor.laor (at) qumranet.com
7
Onkar Mahajan - onkar[dot]n[dot]mahajan[at]gmail[dot]com
21 Oct 2008
dm-cache
A device mapper target to use flash memory as a disk accelerator
riel (at) redhat.com
6
Himanshu Barthwal- himanshu_barthu@yahoomail.com Wilson Bright - rombright@gmail.com
23 October 2008 15 Dec 2008
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
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.
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.
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.
OpenSSI
OpenSSI is a comprehensive clustering solution offering a full, highly available single-system image (SSI) environment for Linux. Development involves porting to newer kernels, regression testing, and fixing bugs in the clustering file system, process management, networking, IPC, shared memory, and init as well as userspace system utilities in a distributed computing environment.
open bugs at bugzilla.kernel.org
There are more than 1000 open bugreports in kernel bugzilla. The bugs to fix are of difficulty level 1-10 and there`s a lot to learn there, because nearly every part of the kernel gets touched. Please help identifying and fixing Linux kernel bugs.
Kernel-Testers
The Linux kernel evolves at a breath-taking speed. But while adding new features and fixing others, developers often break things and introduce regression. Some call that ....progress. 
Please help finding bugs and regression in the kernel. Be part of the QA-team. - "Don't feel bad about being a pest, because we need more pests to keep all of us kernel developers in line" ( Greg K-H at OLS2006 )
Tux3
Tux3 is a write-anywhere, atomic commit, btree-based versioning filesystem.