Hi Fernando..
Long time no talk...
I would like to know which solution is the best (if there is one who
is the best...) to experiment with the linux kernel.
I don't know which one is best, but perhaps I can share something...
I assume that my real system (I have only 1 computer) is not an option
(I need my computer to be stable), but I don't know if I should use
Qemu, UML, Xen, VMWare...
I usually use either Qemu or UML, mostly for runtime kernel observation.
Both actually nice, but UML has one "weakness". Since its arch isn't x86
or any other real machine, but UML arch, you can't really learn how the
kernel perform some specific low level architecture work. For example,
context switching is done in UML way, not really in Intel or SPARC or
any other real hardware. So, in general UML is nice, but once you hit
that low level, you better go with Qemu.
However, UML has advantage, it's pretty lightweight since it just traps
syscall. However, Qemu can closely match the speed if you use kqemu
module, because qemu no longer works fully as dynamic translator, but
kinda mix of translator+para virtualizer.
As a bonus, Qemu has a nice gdbstub where you can hook gdb there and
take a peek into the running kernel. You might need unofficial patch to
make the gdbstub works better. Check related Qemu web forum for this.
And the next question would be which distro should I install if I want
to try with several kernels. This is because I don't want to have
problems like "This module can not be compiled cause the kernel
version is not kernel-2.6.19-name_of_the_vendor" (I had similar
problems before with a well-known linux vendor)
I think you should prepare more than one disk image. Let's say,
slackware 10.x, fedora core 5 plus debian. IMHO, this is a good way to
anticipate the fact that sometimes certain distro assume certain kernel
version is running on it.... IIRC the example is, certain distro assume
certain udev version. Not really sure, so you are free to confirm it.
regards,
Mulyadi
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