Implement virtio drivers for jnode (A) (*/**)

• Description : Virtio allows to have drivers (network, hard drive ...) faster than regular ones running in virtualized environments (kvm, VirtualBox, vmware, xen ...).
• References :
  • Rusty Russell (a linux kernel developer) is writting specifications of virtio. He will really appreciate your feedback (his mail is in the document).
  • You can also have a look in the sources of the virtio drivers for the linux kernel. You should also have a look at the includes directory (search for virtio*.h files).
  • http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Virtio
  • http://lwn.net/Articles/239238/
  • http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1400108&dl=GUIDE&coll=GUIDE&CFID=5...
  • small doc explaining the basic idea : http://ozlabs.org/~rusty/index.cgi/tech/2007-05-21.html
  • also look at existing implementations (in kvm)
• Steps
  1. write a DeviceToDriverMapper that will detect virtio devices in jnode. Look at the function virtio_pci_probe in the linux kernel.
  2. write a driver for the virtio devices
     1. block : Look at virtio_blk.h and virtio_blk.c in the linux kernel
     2. network : Look at virtio_net.h and virtio_net.c in the linux kernel
• Level : easy/average
• Assigned to : Ibrahim Ghiyati and Yi Xenfung

    The git repository is located here