Advice for hacking on ufs/ffs

[Dag-Erling Smørgrav]

Shane Adams <adamsch1 at yahoo.com> writes:
> I'm a programmer that is new to kernel development.  I'm interested
> in hacking around on UFS and FFS.  I only have one machine so I
> copied the complete sys/ufs code to a new directory under fs, and
> changed a few things to get it to compile and mount.  Everything
> works, and I was ready to start hacking without worrying so much
> about screwing up my system.
>
> Naturally I've rebooted the machine a few times since then, and I
> was wondering if anyone has advice for a fledgling kernel
> programmer.  (Best practices)

Get a test machine with a PXE-capable network adapter, and set up your
workstation as bootp / dhcp and NFS server.  Having a dedicated test
box will save time as you won't have to reboot your workstation to
test your code, and setting it up diskless will help even further.  A
serial console cable will help even more, as it will save you from
moving from one keyboard to another and will give you a scrollback of
the test machine's console from which you can copy / paste error
messages, backtraces etc.

DES
-- 
Dag-Erling Smørgrav - des at des.no