My Linux Kernel Bugfix Mentorship Experience

During my time in the Linux Foundation Kernel Mentorship Program, I learned a lot and gained valuable hands-on experience working on the Linux kernel.

Key Contributions and Activities:

Spelling Fixes with Codespell I started with something simple: fixing spelling mistakes in code comments and error messages. Using the codespell tool, I identified and corrected these errors, which resulted in four patches being accepted. This was a great way to get familiar with the process of contributing to the kernel.
Addressing Coverity Scan Issues I worked on bugs reported by the Coverity Scan tool. While some issues were false positives, the valid ones were relatively straightforward to debug and resolve. Fixing these helped me improve my understanding of static analysis tools and kernel internals.
Exploring Syzkaller and Syzbot I also experimented with syzkaller, an automated kernel testing tool, to reproduce bugs reported by syzbot. Unfortunately, I couldn’t fully resolve these issues due to hardware limitations (my laptop overheated and froze during testing). Despite this, the experience introduced me to the power of fuzz testing tools in kernel development.
Learning Static Analysis Tools

During the mentorship, I got hands-on experience with tools like Coccinelle, Sparse, and Smatch, which are commonly used to analyze and clean up kernel code.

Overcoming Challenges:
At the start of the program, I was unsure about where to begin. My first patch, a spelling fix in one of Greg Kroah-Hartman’s repositories, didn’t meet the formatting standards for patches. However, Greg kindly guided me to the right resources and wished me luck. This rejection of patch, though initially disappointing, motivated me to learn about proper patch submission practices. With the help of my mentors, I quickly improved and started contributing more effectively.

Lessons Learned:

Properly Targeting Patches I learned how to use the --scm option with get_maintainer.pl to identify the correct tree for submitting patches.

For example:
./scripts/get_maintainer.pl --scm net/xfrm/xfrm_user.c

Initially, I mistakenly sent a patch for a bug in ipsec to the wrong tree (linux-next instead of ipsec-next), but I’ve since mastered this process.

Attributing Contributors
I also learned to include the original contributor whose changes introduced a bug by running get_maintainer.pl on the generated patch.

Community Support:
The mentorship program was a fantastic environment to learn and grow. The mentors, Shuah Khan and Anup, were incredibly supportive, reviewing patches and providing valuable feedback. Fellow mentees and community members were always there to answer questions and clarify doubts. I also received helpful feedback from Dan Carpenter on the Kernel Janitor mailing list, which motivated me to keep improving.