Internship Programmes
 
Filesystem Debugging Using User Mode Linux

Project Description:
User Mode Linux is a component of the Linux Kernel, that enable a kernel component to be traced and executed at a lower privileged level.   It is occasionally used by kernel developers to debug and trace problems.   It will be good to develop a general process using UML to achieve bugs understanding at the filesystem level.

The candidate will write a simple fuzzer to generate some simple kernel bugs in the filesystem.   He will then demonstrate how UML can be applied to trace and understand the origin of the kernel bugs.   The emphasis is on establishing a systematic process for bugs analysis/identification.   Alternatively the source of bugs can come from http://bugzilla.kernel.org/ as well, but it should be restricted to filesystem bugs.   As an example how UML is used for filesystem tracing is at:
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tach2CheAc8&feature=user

The challenges of the project are:  
1) Achieve a good understanding of the overall architecture of Linux Kernel, and UML.
2) Understand the key concepts in virtualization.
3) Setup and run UML in the kernel, and subsequently install a Linux OS.  
4) Design a process for bug triage/understanding.
5) Patch the existing UML component of the Linux Kernel to enable data collection to facilitate the filesystem bugs identification.

Pre-requisite:
Some C programming and Linux user experience