Hi,

First of all, it is a great idea. I am on your side.

I'm a NetBSD fan from China. In China mainland, seldom people interested in
hacking NetBSD system compared with Linux(even with FreeBSD). I think the
roadblock prevent people from enrolling in NetBSD is the lack of documents
on system hacking and the whole framework modeling. All documents I can get
are from http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/, some papers from USENIX
written by NetBSD hackers and some unoffical articles written by other
NetBSD fans(most of the papers and atricles are come from google), and
online manual-page section 9. The classic book, <4.4BSD design and
implementation>, also can't catch up with the the modern NetBSD evolutions
like SA, LKM, LWP, etc. The <NetBSD internals> from NetBSD offical website
is incomplete now. And the maillist seems more suitable for discussing
rather than study. Besides that classic book, most of the documents focuing
on a specific topic that can not help newbies like me to comprehending
the overall system design, implementation and the framework.

So, for the reasons mentioned above, I strongly hope somebody could light
the way for newbies to the kernel road. The online class Jeremy proposed is
what I want if it can introduce more people to the mysterious kernel world
more systemically. And a wish, if possible, have a document which to NetBSD
is like as the <Understanding Linux Kernel> to Linux even if that document
not as elaborated as ULK.

Now, althought I'm not a NetBSD guru and I actually study NetBSD just about
1 year, I have wrote some articles based on my own study experience to
help people from China who interested in NetBSD hacking more easily.(URL *in
chinese*
http://search.chinaunix.net/cgi-bin/search?mode=all_author&u=192271&key=gvim&forum_num=-1
 )

BTW, if there has other valuable documents, books or online pages, artcles,
please let me know. Thanks


On 9/20/06, Jeremy C. Reed <reed@reedmedia.net> wrote:
>
> (I bcc'd this to tech-kern.)
>
> It seems like it would be very useful and quite interesting to have online
> instruction covering:
>
> 1) how to port NetBSD
>
> 2) developing (or porting) drivers
>
> This would be useful for existing developers and for potential
> developers.
>
> Porting the NetBSD class maybe could be done by using an emulator or cheap
> hardware. (The instruction could be just one area of the porting, such as
> boot loader.)
>
> And the driver class could be done by using some inexpensive hardware (or
> maybe non-hardware based driver).
>
> The courses could be informal and students join as they please.
>
> But the actual class would have a defined start date, course session
> times, and ending date.
>
> The class could include a weekly or twice weekly lesson (maybe an hour in
> length). This lesson could be done as an HTML (or other presentation) and
> using irc (or other). Then this would be immediately be made available as
> a webpage for those who miss the class and for reference. (I am sure
> students can help make the webpages.)
>
> The group of students and interested experts and instructors can have a
> mailing list to discuss questions of the development.
>
> This could be done as a volunteer basis, or if instructors need to be paid
> I am sure students could pay some.
>
> I can coordinate this.
>
> Basically the instructor(s) would:
>
> - choose the hardware they will cover,
> - define their goals for the training sessions,
> - provide students with tasks to do and other exercises,
> - point the students to examples and documentation (and/or write new
> docs),
> - participate on the mailing list about class questions,
> - and select some dates for the training.
>
> Anyone interested in teaching?
>
> Anyone interested in participating?
>
>
>
> Jeremy C. Reed
>



-- 
-dan