Re: What was your first kernel hack?

[Daniel Drake <dan@reactivated.net>]

Hi,

My experience: I had a problem with the USB printer driver (usblp) on one of 
the earlier 2.6.0-test kernels. I reported the bug, and was asked to compile 
the driver with debug info. I added the #define to include this in compilation.

After that define was added, and the debug code was to be compiled in, the 
driver did not compile - the debug code had been copy/pasted from the 2.4 
driver, but not updated to work with the 2.6 structures.  I fixed the debug 
code, and later on found some problems with the debug code in other USB 
drivers too and fixed the code there.
These were all small (1-3 line) fixes here and there.

Since then, I've stepped back to desktop-orientated hacking to brush up my C 
skills a bit. But I've also bought a couple of books on the kernel, and 
learning a lot from watching the LKML closely.

Daniel.

Since then, I've been
Tim Cambrant wrote:
> Hi, I am new to Linux kernel development and fairly novice
> to programming in general, and I'm having the usual "Don't
> know where to begin"-problem. I read the code to try to
> understand how things work, such as the scheduler etc, but
> it's all too complex for me to even make a simple but useful
> kernel module or driver yet.
> 
> Now I was thinking about what you all did to get your hands
> dirty. It would be nice if you shared a bit of where you
> begun with kernel-coding and what you did. It doesn't
> necessarily have to be code that was accepted into the
> kernel, but just regular newbie-stuff that got you started.
> 
> Happy new year everyone.
> 
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