os/doc
3
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull requests Projects Releases Wiki Activity
doc/en/projects/summerofcode.sgml
Brad Davis e9d861b825 Remove an extra space before the colon. 
Translators:	whitespace only change
Approved by:	ceri (mentor)
2005-06-02 19:51:26 +00:00

269 lines
12 KiB
Text
Raw Blame History

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" [
<!ENTITY base CDATA "..">
<!ENTITY date "$FreeBSD: www/en/projects/summerofcode.sgml,v 1.18 2005/06/02 18:47:45 brooks Exp $">
<!ENTITY title "FreeBSD Summer Projects">
<!ENTITY % includes SYSTEM "../includes.sgml"> %includes;
<!ENTITY % developers SYSTEM "../developers.sgml"> %developers;
]>
<html>
&header;
<p>The FreeBSD Project is excited to take part in the Google <a
href="http://code.google.com/summerofcode.html">Summer of Code
2005</a>. This project endeavors to fund students to contribute to
an open source project over the summer break.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="#ideas">Example Proposal Ideas</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#p-userland">Userland / Installation Tools</a></li>
<li><a href="#p-filesystem">Filesystem</a></li>
<li><a href="#p-networking">Networking</a></li>
<li><a href="#p-security">Security</a></li>
<li><a href="#p-kernel">Kernel</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#mentors">Possible Mentors</a></li>
</ul>
<a name="ideas"></a>
<h2>Example Proposal Ideas</h2>
<a name="p-userland"></a>
<h3>Userland / Installation Tools</h3>
<ul>
<!-- <li><strong>FreeBSD website redesign</strong></li> -->
<li><strong>Integrate BSD Installer</strong>: Prepare a prototype
merge of the <a href="http://www.bsdinstaller.org/">BSD
Installer</a> as a complete replacement for the venerable FreeBSD
sysinstall program. Enough of the groundwork has been laid out now
that someone with a few months and some background could do a lot
of good work here, especially with adequate mentoring by more
senior FreeBSD developers.</li>
<li><strong>Bundled PXE Installer</strong>: It would be great to
have a bundled PXE installer. This would allow one to boot an
install server from a FreeSBIE live CDROM on one box, set the BIOS
on subsequent boxes to PXE boot, and then have the rest happen by
magic. This would be very helpful for installing cluster nodes,
etc.</li>
<li><strong>Fully Integrated SNMP monitoring</strong>: Plugins for
our BSNMP pieces to monitor elements of system state such as load,
disk space, VM statistics, entropy, firewall rules and states,
sendmail queues and accepts/rejects, and the like. An SNMP client
that could pull and centralize the data gathering, render it,
etc. <a href="mailto:philip@FreeBSD.org">&a.philip;</a>, <a
href="mailto:glebius@FreeBSD.org">&a.glebius;</a>, and <a
href="mailto:rwatson@FreeBSD.org">&a.rwatson;</a> are
coordinating.</li>
<li><strong>Integrate Xen Support</strong>: Support for the <a
href="http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/">Xen virtual
machine monitor</a> is coming into FreeBSD -CURRENT, so the
installer could be updated to make it possible to setup a Xen
system with several FreeBSD nodes, etc.</li>
<li><strong>Rewrite CVSup in C</strong>: <a
href="http://www.cvsup.org">CVSup</a> is the CVS-Optimized
General-Purpose Network File Distribution System. It has been
used heavily for nearly 10 years to distribute the FreeBSD CVS
tree to mirrors around the world. CVSup was written in Modula-3
and a rewrite in C would encourage more users to improve it.
CVSup is a multi-threaded application by design so the applicant
should have at least some experience with pthreads.
Additional requested features include understanding of Subversion
fsfs repositories and Perforce depots. Currently part of the work
and research has already been completed. <a
href="mailto:mux@FreeBSD.org">&a.mux;</a> is the coordinator.</li>
<li><strong>Improve our regression testing system</strong>: Nik
Clayton has written a regression test infrastructure using Perl.
More of the regression tests should be made to work with libtap.
There are two main parts to it. First, many of the existing tests
should be moved from using assert() to using ok() and friends from
libtap. Second, more regression tests should be written.
Students familiar with scripting languages and software testing
are encouraged to work on this. <a
href="mailto:nik@FreeBSD.org">&a.nik;</a> is the coordinator.
</li>
<li><strong>Tracking performance over time</strong>: One of the major
issues in a project the size of FreeBSD is monitoring changes in
performance characteristics over time. Doing this requires several
things. Those include a suite of appropriate tests, hardware to run
the tests on, a database to store results in, and software to
extract intresting results and display them. Solving the whole
problems is probably beyond the scope of one summer's work, but an
intresting subset should be managable. <a
href="mailto:brooks@FreeBSD.org">&a.brooks;</a> is the coordinator.</li>
</ul>
<a name="p-filesystem"></a>
<h3>Filesystem</h3>
<ul>
<li><strong>UFS Journalling</strong>: Add transaction journalling and
playback to the UFS filesystem. The goal is to increase the reliability
of the filesystem and greatly reduce the need for a full 'fsck' after
a crash or power loss. This is a project that deals with not only
the filesystem internals, but also the VM and buffer/cache systems,
so it is an excellent opportunity to learn about many fundamental
aspects of an operating system.<br>
Work is already in progress on this task, but more help is always
needed and welcome. Candidates should have at least a cursory
understanding of filesystem data structures (inodes, free lists,
directories) and a strong desire to learn more about such systems.
This project would be a major contribution to anyone's resume, but it
is not for the faint of heart. <a
href="mailto:scottl@FreeBSD.org">&a.scottl;</a> is the coordinator.
<li><strong>Autofs</strong>: Create the autofs filesystem from a
specification. Candidates should have some filesystem knowledge
and network filesystem knowledge. Most of this work is done,
however kernel transport and interaction with the "amd"
automounter needs to be completed. <a
href="mailto:alfred@FreeBSD.org">&a.alfred;</a> is coordinating.</li>
<li><strong>Logical Volume Manager</strong></li>
</ul>
<a name="p-networking"></a>
<h3>Networking</h3>
<ul>
<li><strong>Network Disk Device</strong>: Add the ability to
remotely access devices from one system to another. The goal is
to allow remote access to resources such as disks, sound devices,
and other miscellaneous pieces of hardware over the network.
Prospective candidates should have an understanding or interest in
remote procedure call systems, networking (TCP/IP), an interest to
learn how Unix device drivers work as well as process management
will be required. This project would be a good resume builder,
but is not for the faint of heart. <a
href="mailto:alfred@FreeBSD.org">&a.alfred;</a> is coordinating.</li>
<li><strong>NFS Lockd (improve semantics)</strong>: Improve the
semantics of the NFS lockd in FreeBSD. Apple has made certain
enhancements that can be leveraged in our code base. Implement
state recovery in the lockd. Candidate would learn how to port
code from one kernel to another as well as how to maintain state
on the client side. This would be a good resume addition. <a
href="mailto:alfred@FreeBSD.org">&a.alfred;</a> is coordinating.</li>
<li><strong>NFS Lockd (kernel implementation)</strong>: Improve the
semantics of the NFS lockd in FreeBSD. Moving the lockd
implementation into the kernel provides several key performance
and semantic improvements. Candidates should have a good
understanding of NFS, locking, RPC and kernel networking. This is
a great resume addition, providing you want to be saddled with
"knowing NFS" for the rest of your career, it is not for the faint
of heart. <a href="mailto:alfred@FreeBSD.org">&a.alfred;</a> is
coordinating.</li>
<li><strong>Userland/kernel interface cleanups (net/if_var.h)</strong>:
Over <em>eight</em> years ago, the network interface headers
were split into net/if.h and net/if_var.h. The intent was for
net/if_var.h to be kernel only and net/if.h to contain public
interfaces. Today, the internal header, net/if_var.h is still
included in many userland applications. In some cases, this is
due to interfaces that are not in fact kernel internal. In other
cases, these structures are being used in conjunction with libkvm to
access kernel information directly. This project would correct both
classes of problems, primarily rewriting the netstat(1) command and
any other network related libkvm consumers to user alternate
interfaces, creating those interfaces if needed. Netstat's
coredump analysis features would likely be split into a separate
program. <a href="mailto:brooks@FreeBSD.org">&a.brooks;</a> is
coordinating.</li>
<li><strong>Web100 port to FreeBSD</strong>: The <a
href="http://www.web100.org/">Web100</a> project was created to
address the problems of TCP performance over long-fat network
pipes. They created an intresting set of tuning and monitoring
patches for Linux which enable signifcantly better performance
in this area. Integrating this work into FreeBSD could provide
significant benefits in terms of TCP performance in certain
environments. The features of Web100 need to be mapped into
appropriate FreeBSD abstractions and integrated in to the
system. The performance impact of these changes would have
to be quantified before the changes could be introduced. An
ideal canidate for this task would have some knowledge of the
operation of the TCP protocol and familiarity with kernel
interfaces. <a href="mailto:brooks@FreeBSD.org">&a.brooks;</a> is
coordinating.</li>
</ul>
<a name="p-security"></a>
<h3>Security</h3>
<ul>
<li><strong>SecureMines</strong>: Add meta-data to the
system in order to trap intruders and provide an audit log. The
goal of this project is to create several means of marking an
event as a foreign act (such as opening a trap file) which halts
the system and provides as much information as possible,
possibilities include using extended attributes to tag such
"mines". Candidates should have an understanding of the Unix
process model. <a
href="mailto:alfred@FreeBSD.org">&a.alfred;</a> is coordinating.</li>
</ul>
<a name="p-kernel"></a>
<h3>Kernel</h3>
<ul>
<li><strong>Update the Linuxulator</strong>: FreeBSD provides Linux
binary compatibility through a Linux system call table that is
invoked when Linux ELF binaries are executed. This implementation
should be compared with an up-to-date Linux Kernel so that
important missing syscalls can be added to ensure that all
mainstream applications continue to work on FreeBSD. The student
should be able to read and understand foreign C code, write C
code, and have a good understanding of how to do a clean room
implementation of GPLed code (no copy & paste!).</li>
</ul>
<a name="mentors"></a>
<h2>Mentors</h2>
<p>If you are interested in working on a project not explicitly
mentioned above, you may want to contact one of the potential
mentors below about writing a proposal in one of the following broad
categories.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Networking</strong>:
<a href="mailto:alfred@FreeBSD.org">&a.alfred;</a>,
<a href="mailto:brooks@FreeBSD.org">&a.brooks;</a>,
<a href="mailto:sam@FreeBSD.org">&a.sam;</a></li>
<li><strong>Filesystems</strong>: <a
href="mailto:scottl@FreeBSD.org">&a.scottl;</a>, <a href="mailto:alfred@FreeBSD.org">&a.alfred;</a></li>
<li><strong>GEOM</strong>: <a
href="mailto:phk@FreeBSD.org">&a.phk;</a></li>
<li><strong>Release Engineering / Integration</strong>: <a
href="mailto:re@FreeBSD.org">re@FreeBSD.org</a></li>
<li><strong>TrustedBSD / Security</strong>: <a
href="mailto:rwatson@FreeBSD.org">&a.rwatson;</a></li>
<li><strong>Pluggable Disk Schedulers</strong>: <a href="mailto:luigi@FreeBSD.org">&a.luigi;</a>.</li>
</ul>
<p>Additional projects may be found by browsing the <a
href="index.html">FreeBSD Development Projects</a> page or by
viewing some of the recent <a href="&base;/news/status">Developer
Status Reports</a>.</p>
<p>If your project is not selected for funding by Google, but you
still think you have a feasible project proposal, then please email
<a href="mailto:core@FreeBSD.org">core@FreeBSD.org</a>.</p>
&footer;
</body>
</html>
Reference in a new issue View git blame Copy permalink