Introduction to writing kernel modules

[Dieter BSD]

> all it does is crash the kernel. Is there a way of debugging this
> without going through reboot and fsck

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, you can reduce/eliminate fsck
by booting to single user mode, or you can umount or mount -u -r as many
filesystems as possible before loading your module.

> I can'T set up a virtual machine if a want to talk to
> real hardware.

It might be that the crash happens before it needs access to hardware?

IIRC there is a way to allow bochs access to hardware, although
I'd guess it is unlikely to have support for the device you're
working on.