From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Jun 19 20:16:49 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from math.smsu.edu (math.smsu.edu [146.7.45.198]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id C93C337B40C for ; Wed, 19 Jun 2002 20:16:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 21663 invoked by uid 1000); 20 Jun 2002 03:16:44 -0000 Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 22:16:44 -0500 From: Erik Greenwald To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: projects? Message-ID: <20020620031644.GA21643@math.smsu.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.28i Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG "David E. Cross" said: > I have a graduate student who cam to me about a masters project > involving > some work with FreeBSD. He has currently zero knowledge of the > Kernel, and > is looking to change that, but he needs ideas. His previous areas of > interest are primarily focused on networking; RED/GRED/ECN, routing, > etc. interesting stuff > He is however "quite sick" of networking, and was originally looking > at > the VM code as a potential area (he is gaining an interest in > parallelization and synchronization). I suggested this may be too > ambitious for someone with zero previous exposure to the kernel (what > do others think?) As alternate projects I suggested: I've found the fbsd kernel to be pretty clean, but I'm not kernel guru :D I had no problem jumping into driver stuff, the only thing slowing me down is trying to get a listening/accepting socket inside of the kernel > > Memory Compaction: compacting physical memory, maintaining coloring > VFS: nullfs, unionfs, etc... > OpenAFS: Speaks for itself. > > What do people here think? Anyone have other ideas that I can forward > on? > He is eager to work with others and seek guidance; some of which I can > provide (how much depends on the project of course ;). > > (He is looking to spend 2 hours a day for roughly 6 months on this > project; > ideally he would want a project where he can gather data on the > results, most > of my projects do not fall into that category). > what about distributed computing? linux has been making a lot of noise with beowulf and mosix stuff, it's an interesting concept with a lot of theoretical work behind it, but it seems to be "coming of age" with people looking to move away from expensive proprietary mainframes? fbsd has good computational abilities, excellent networking abilities, and runs well on commodity hardware, this might be a good avenue to use his network expertise, expose him to kernel/system issues, and produce something of utility that can get some use as well as something he can show prospective employers? :) > -- > David Cross | email: crossd@cs.rpi.edu > Lab Director | Rm: 308 Lally Hall > Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, | Ph: 518.276.2860 > Department of Computer Science | Fax: 518.276.4033 > I speak only for myself. | WinNT:Linux::Linux:FreeBSD > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message -- -Erik [http://math.smsu.edu/~erik] The opinions expressed by me are not necessarily opinions. In all probability, they are random rambling, and to be ignored. Failure to ignore may result in severe boredom or confusion. Shake well before opening. Keep Refrigerated. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message