Linux Kernel Labs

In this post I want to talk about this amazing content from the Faculty of Automatic Control and Computers of University Politechnica of Bucharest, Romania.

This Advanced Operating Systems course is organized in a ReadTheDocs template and provides a recent fork (v4.15) from the Torvalds' tree.

There's a detailed theoretical explanation of the Kernel's internal design and mechanisms, but what I found really amazing about it was the practical lab examples, where the student is guided in a series of small oriented problem solving exercises.

The kernel source code is compiled locally and then emulated in a QEMU instance, with a minimal rootfs fetched from Yocto Project's servers.
All this is automated and orchestrated by some badass make-fu.

When compared to other resources, the famous ldd3 also provides a great learning experience with a solid structure of theoretical+pratical knowledge, however based on old and outdated code (v2.6). The Linux Kernel Labs course has the advantage of providing a solid hands-on experience based on a recent kernel version.

Great tip for anyone who finally wants to swim in deeper kernel waters and has had some difficulty in finding recent and broad-ranging material on the topic.

https://linux-kernel-labs.github.io/master/

I'm thinking about recording some walk through on the practical exercises in the future :)