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Linux Kernel Explorer
91–100 of 101 posts
Re: Linux Kernel Explorer
#92You know, I think this Explorer is exactly the tool many of us lacked. Reading the Linux kernel source always felt daunting — thousands of files, confusing paths, complex structure. This feels like a “map” that helps you orient yourself, see how parts interconnect, how VFS works, how modules tie together. Yeah, sometimes a feature breaks (API limits, errors opening directories), but even so — this is a great way to p…
Not that I care much if things are written by AI or not, but there has been a large stream of new accounts posting " " template posts with em dashes and other generically "AI styled" writing hints. My only thought is it's an easy way to get bot accounts past karma thresholds. Whatever the reasons for these new accounts, and I'm not writing this to say that you are one such account or not, adopting a near identical st…
Apologies for the double post, my browser said the connection failed the first time so I went back in my history and submitted again but didn't notice until after the delete window :).
Re: Linux Kernel Explorer
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This isn’t a guide to writing kernel code. It’s an effort to understand how the Linux kernel thinks. > not of function calls, but of how the kernel responds > The kernel is not a process but the very foundation > The Linux kernel is not just a set of subsystems—it is a layered system that enforces structure at runtime > This flexibility does not come from runtime detection or dynamic reconfiguration. It comes from…
Do you have any constructive feedback on how I can fix it?
Have a human write it instead of ChatGPT.
Re: Linux Kernel Explorer
#94I love this idea. I like exploring code of interesting projects even if I don't intend to ever work on them, but in complex software I don't know much about it's hard to even find where are the most important basic parts. This allows me to easily find and see how some things in the kernel look like. Found a bug: in the Chapter 2, when I click on "open" next to "mm/" or other dirs, I get an error: " Failed to load fil…
Yes it's good idea and nicely executed. For the same reason I created a couple of projects with the same goal of lowering the barrier to entry to the linux kernel: - an app to follow the UDP packet flow in the linux kernel source code: https://dmkskd.github.io/linux-kernel-network-stack-visualiz... - a (hopefully) simple way to play with the linux kernel source code on a mac: https://github.com/dmkskd/linux-kernel-de…
One of the best introductions to how kernel works was implementing a timer based context switching RTOS on a microcontroller, so little lines of code but something to build up over and jump into the linux kernel.
Re: Linux Kernel Explorer
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
This article (and comment you’re replying to) is about Linux, which does represent its own threads as pid 0. Yes, there are concepts that aren’t threads. Nevertheless, in a very real sense the kernel is a special process zero.
Again, no it's not. Most kernel code doesn't run as PID 0. What you're talking about is the idle task , a very small part of the kernel. I also did have Linux in mind when writing my comment, but this is basic to how any major general purpose operating system works. Besides, I can't possibly exclude Linux when I say "any modern operating system."
The kernel has many, many threads other than the idle task. Ok, some of them technically have pids other than zero because this is how Linux implements threads. But they all share address space, like threads in any other process. I count, you know, 265 kernel threads on a random Linux system.
Re: Linux Kernel Explorer
#96@reverserdev This is neat. What is the expected use case you have in mind? At first glance - I thought it was guided tour through the kernel code with question for knowledge check.
Re: Linux Kernel Explorer
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Again, no it's not. Most kernel code doesn't run as PID 0. What you're talking about is the idle task , a very small part of the kernel. I also did have Linux in mind when writing my comment, but this is basic to how any major general purpose operating system works. Besides, I can't possibly exclude Linux when I say "any modern operating system."
The kernel has many, many threads other than the idle task. Ok, some of them technically have pids other than zero because this is how Linux implements threads. But they all share address space, like threads in any other process. I count, you know, 265 kernel threads on a random Linux system.
Some kernel threads, besides the idle task, have PIDs other than 0? You mean literally all of them.
More crucially, kthreads are supplementary components of the Linux kernel. They represent just one method of running tasks asynchronously and don't represent the entirety of the kernel.
At this point you’re arguing over technicalities to somehow validate your objectively incorrect statements. The kernel isn't "special process zero," period. The kernel isn't a process. You can't rely on a process to implement the machinery required to run processes. Furthermore, the parts that do have PIDs aren't even assigned PID 0, except for the idle task.
If you don't believe me, just ask the kernel itself. There is no /proc/0.
Re: Linux Kernel Explorer
#98I must be missing something, we had kernel source browsing online for years, e.g. https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/v6.17.9/source/fs , this is another one, what extra features it provides. in fact the bootlin one provides some search functions but I did not spot that here. I was expecting some LLM explanation for the code, or dependency graphs etc in the AI era for a new kernel navigator...
Apparently it has an integrated guide on the right side of the page, which is "Based on \"The Kernel in The Mind\" by Moon Hee Lee".
Re: Linux Kernel Explorer
#99I must be missing something, we had kernel source browsing online for years, e.g. https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/v6.17.9/source/fs , this is another one, what extra features it provides. in fact the bootlin one provides some search functions but I did not spot that here. I was expecting some LLM explanation for the code, or dependency graphs etc in the AI era for a new kernel navigator...
Apparently it has an integrated guide on the right side of the page, which is "Based on \"The Kernel in The Mind\" by Moon Hee Lee".
which is static and not context-aware for the code of choice?
Re: Linux Kernel Explorer
#100The value here isn't just indexing; it's narrative.
Reading the Linux kernel linearly is impossible because it’s not just code anymore—it’s 30 years of hardware quirks, scheduling theory, and architectural compromises solidified into C.
Tools like Elixir tell you where a symbol is defined. Tools like this attempt to answer why it's structured that way. As systems complexity outpaces human working memory, we need more "archaeological" tools that visualize the state machine, not just the text.