Dear tech-kern team,
My name is Zachary Chung, a student at the University of Southern California, and I am interested in contributing to NetBSD, specifically the “Emulating missing Linux syscalls” project for GSoC 2026.
I have experience of modifying kernel code, tracing system performance issues/behavior as well as having worked in low-level c in a systems environment. I have performed systems development in my research work at the networked systems laboratory at USC, which included debugging performance problems, as well as analyzing kernel and memory behavior using perf, among other tasks.
The compat_linux layer and how to find missing syscalls, trace the failure of linux binaries and the process of implementing those syscalls is the type of systems work I would like to gain additional experience in. I am particularly interested in how syscall translations are structured in NetBSD, as well as what decisions are made about ABI compatibility.
I will begin contributing to the kernel and becoming familiar with the appropriate parts of the kernel over the next few weeks, through the following steps:
- Building netbsd with compat_linux support enabled
- Identify an existing set of linux executables that current fail under compat_linux
- Trace the missing syscalls and additional attributes required for support
- Research existing syscall mappings and contribute incremental fixes.
If there are suggestions for an area to start, or open issues, or specific code areas with which to start contributing, I would be very grateful for your recommendations.
My goal is to contribute meaningful code before submitting a GSoC proposal so that I fully understand the scope and can work on a realistic and useful project.
Thank you for your time, and I look forward to getting involved.
Best regards,
Zachary Chung