CRAK Update: Linux Checkpoint/Restart as Kernel Module

Overview

The premise of this project is to revise and update CRAK to be compliant with linux kernel 2.6 series.

CRAK itself, as the acronym implies, serves the purpose of checkpointing and restarting. Specifically, this refers to the ability to checkpoint running user-level processes, freeze their state for a fraction of a second, and save a snapshot of that process to persistent storage.

Features provided by CRAK in its original state include:

• CoW optimization
1. Look at a process's page tables.
2. Mark each section as "clean" on first write.
3. Any sections written to are marked as "dirty".
4. On update to previous checkpoint, update only dirty regions.
• User-directed checkpointing
• Incremental and periodic checkpointing
• A framework for process migration across distributed systems.

Milestones

• Review Linux 2.4.4 source code for CRAK.
• Update old source to make it compliant with Linux 2.6.25.6
• Simplify: Remove features related to network process migration.
• Document: Take note of relevant changes in kernel from 2.4 to 2.6. Take note of measures needed to port functionality based on these changes.

Log

Misc.

• Kernel Changes Analysis
• Changes between CRAK-2.2.19 and CRAK-2.4.4 LOC
• Changes between CRAK-2.2.19 and CRAK-2.4.4 Links
• Files included by CRAK source

CRAK 2.6.25.6: Coming August 2008!