Advanced Kernel Programming

This is the home page for the "Advanced Kernel Programming" course. Here, you can find information about the lessons and all the material used during the course

For the previous editions of the course, check the old websites: 2019/2020 and 2022/2023 (WARNING: This edition of the course was attended by students that did not attend the Linux Kernel Programming course... So, I was forced to repeat topics from the previous course).

Lessons:

• First lesson: 2024/11/04, 9:30 -> 11:30
  • Introduction to the course
  • Recall some basic concepts about Linux
  • SCHED_DEADLINE
• Second lesson: 2024/11/07, 9:30 -> 11:30
  • Affinity masks, and their usage
  • Multi-core scheduling, push/pull functions
  • Some more details about the scheduler implementation (scheduling classes, some functions pointed in the classes, how to block/wakeup a task, the schedule() function)
  • Transforming SCHED_DEADLINE into a partitioned scheduler
• Third lesson: 2024/11/11, 9:30 -> 11:30
  • Introduction to memory management in the Linux kernel
• Fourth lesson: 2024/11/14, 9:30 -> 11:30
  • Virtual memory and its management in Linux
• Fifth lesson: 2024/11/18, 9:30 -> 11:30
• Fifth lesson: 2024/11/21, 9:30 -> 11:30
• Sixth lesson 2024/11/25, 9:30 -> 11:30
• Seventh lesson 2024/11/28, 9:30 -> 11:30
• Eighth lesson 2024/12/02, 9:30 -> 11:30
• Nineth lesson 2024/12/05, 9:30 -> 11:30
• Tenth lesson 2024/12/09, 9:30 -> 11:30

Interesting Kernel CallChains:

• Some callchains related to the scheduler
• Something about the buddy allocator
• How page faults are handled
• Some more details about mm_populate()

Downloads:

• The linux kernel source
• A minimal fs to boot it
• Program to schedule threads/processes as SCHED_DEADLINE
• A Patch transforming SCHED_DEADLINE into a partitioned scheduler

Interesting Papers:

• Bonwick, Jeff. "The slab allocator: An object-caching kernel memory allocator." USENIX summer. Vol. 16. 1994.
• Bonwick, Jeff, and Jonathan Adams. "Magazines and Vmem: Extending the Slab Allocator to Many CPUs and Arbitrary Resources." USENIX Annual Technical Conference, General Track. 2001.
• Mogul, Jeffrey C., and K. K. Ramakrishnan. "Eliminating receive livelock in an interrupt-driven kernel." ACM Transactions on Computer Systems 15.3 (1997): 217-252.