There is an effort to write linux drivers for peripherals in Pine Ox64 https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Ox64 , the chip(BL808) documentation is not that great. But would be a good exercise to write some drivers.
Ask HN: Project ideas for a Linux kernel module
41–48 of 48 posts
Re: Ask HN: Project ideas for a Linux kernel module
#42If you have any interest, HardMAC 802.15.4 driver support in the kernel is poor. I’m learning this the hard way, right now.
Re: Ask HN: Project ideas for a Linux kernel module
#43Just write i2c or SPI for a baremetal firmware, not esp32 nor stm. linux is way overkill for small devices.
Re: Ask HN: Project ideas for a Linux kernel module
#44Can I get '/dev/chatgpt'? That would make scripting easier.
Re: Ask HN: Project ideas for a Linux kernel module
#45Writing or modifying an existing driver for something like an I2S DAC would suit you, I think. You'd have to figure out phandle support for the I2C configuration channel, fire up I2S streaming by enabling it in the kernel and piping audio to the DAC, then playing it into some speakers. Could expand it by adding some filtering. Many DACs have filter banks that you can populate with coefficients via I2C. There's some d…
Thank you, that does sound interesting, and I do have an interest in cybersecurity (just not IT security as in firewalls, incident response ...etc). I saw some interesting stuff being done recently from programming/writing code to emulate a microcontroller/CPU in something like qemu, to power glitching and bypassing protection on some chips to allow accessing serial/debug interface or even some of the mobile baseband…
Our work is much closer to the metal. There's a big hardware component. Based on what you describe, we have work that I strongly suspect you'd find interesting. Your intuition was correct - low level coding and OS stuff is where all the goods are at.
Shoot me an email at cushychicken@gmail.com and I can tell you about what we do in a bit more detail.
Re: Ask HN: Project ideas for a Linux kernel module
#46Id love a way for userspace applications to leverage the MMUs memory protection to trigger user code. Let me give you an example: Lets say I have large block of memory that is encrypted. I want to random access this memory, but i don't want to decrypt the entire memory before i start using it. I may have worker threads that start decrypting the data for me, but i don't want to wait for them. Ideally, id like to set a…
Re: Ask HN: Project ideas for a Linux kernel module
#47If you're willing to forgo Linux, there is a lot of work / interest in Zephyr.
But really, to answer your question; the best thing is to find something that you actually want your computer to do that's feasible, but not possible because there's no kernel module. Then you'll be incentivized to keep going with the project, not just a resume/interview material project.
Re: Ask HN: Project ideas for a Linux kernel module
#48There is an effort to write linux drivers for peripherals in Pine Ox64 https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Ox64 , the chip(BL808) documentation is not that great. But would be a good exercise to write some drivers.
What kind of documentation one would normally need for this sort of project? If the documentation are not great or missing something, is there steps that could be taken to figure out the chips functions in order to implement them?