Free kernel recovery software for linux

gnome-kernel-manager is a tool for managing kernel modules and more.
gnome-kernel-manager is a gui for managing the kernel modules, .... Only Linux kernel is supported.
Main features:
- Shows the list of loaded modules.
- Shows the list of all installed modules.
- Shows information about modules.
- Supports (un)loading modules.

suser-jengelh Kernel Patchset is a patch collection for the Linux kernel. suser-jengelh Kernel Patchset includes code from a lot of projects, such as ttyrpld, MultiAdmin, parts of NF POM, cdfs, unionfs, and various accumulated bugfixes still not present in the vanilla kernel.
Enhancements:
- New netfilter modules (xt_TRACE, xt_connlimit, xt_u32, xt_gateway, xt_TARPIT, xt_time) and tproxy4 have been added.
- A number of patches have been outsourced to standalone packages.

Kernel Version Monitor is a Superkaramba theme that creates a widget displaying the current version information of the Linux kernel as put forth by the kernel.org RSS feed here: http://kernel.org/kdist/rss.xml . Kernel Version Monitor uses the Tux icon from the nuoveXT icon theme found at http://nuovext.pwsp.net

Kudos and thanks to Richard "Ricardo" Szlachta for his advice on refining the aesthetics of this theme.

This is my first Superkaramba theme and a work in progress. I would love to hear comments, opinions and suggestions in order to improve this theme.

Kernel Mode Linux project is a technology which enables us to execute user programs in kernel mode. In Kernel Mode Linux, user programs can be executed as user processes that have the privilege level of kernel mode.
The benefit of executing user programs in kernel mode is that the user programs can access a kernel address space directly. So, for example, user programs can invoke system calls very fast because it is unnecessary to switch between a kernel mode and a user mode by using costly software interruptions or context switches. Unlike kernel modules, user programs are executed as ordinary processes (except for their privilege level), so scheduling and paging are performed as usual.
Although it seems dangerous to let user programs access a kernel directly, safety of the kernel can be ensured, for example, by static type checking, software fault isolation, and so forth. For proof of concept, we are developing a system which is based on the combination of Kernel Mode Linux and Typed Assembly Language, TAL.
Version restrictions:
- On IA-32, programs executed in kernel mode shouldnt modify their CS, DS, FS and SS registers.
- On AMD64, programs executed in kernel mode shouldnt modify their CS register.
Enhancements:
- This version was merged with the 2.4.35.1 Linux kernel.

The Kernel-Machine Library is a freely available (released under the GPL) C++ library to promote the use and progress of kernel machines. It is both for academic use and for developing real world applications.
The Kernel-Machine Library draws heavily from features of modern C++ such as template meta-programming to achieve high performance while at the same time offering a comfortable interface.
It enables compile-time selection of specialised algorithms on the basis of data types: for example, the specific case of a SVM in combination with a linear kernel can be computed by a specialised efficient algorithm.
The Kernel-Machine Library has implementations for the following kernel machines and their cited algorithms:
- Support Vector Machine [1, 2, 3]
- Relevance Vector Machine [4]
- Kernel Recursive Least Squares [5]
- Adaptive Sparseness using Jeffreys Prior [6]
- Smooth Relevance Vector Machine [7]
Up till now, the focus has been on regression. The handling of classification and ranking problems is being added.

OpenVZ is a modified Linux kernel with additional support for OpenVZ Virtual Private servers (VPS).
VPSs are isolated, secure environments on a single physical server, enabling better server utilization and ensuring that applications do not conflict.
Each VPS performs and executes exactly like a stand-alone server; VPSs can be rebooted independently and have root access, users, IP addresses, memory, processes, files, applications, system libraries, and configuration files. OpenVZ is a subset of Virtuozzo.
Enhancements:
- Updated to the latest FC5 kernel and the latest OpenVZ kernel (including the checkpointing/live migration feature).

Kernel Mode Linux project is a technology which enables us to execute user programs in kernel mode. In Kernel Mode Linux, user programs can be executed as user processes that have the privilege level of kernel mode.
The benefit of executing user programs in kernel mode is that the user programs can access a kernel address space directly. So, for example, user programs can invoke system calls very fast because it is unnecessary to switch between a kernel mode and a user mode by using costly software interruptions or context switches.
Unlike kernel modules, user programs are executed as ordinary processes (except for their privilege level), so scheduling and paging are performed as usual.
Although it seems dangerous to let user programs access a kernel directly, safety of the kernel can be ensured, for example, by static type checking, software fault isolation, and so forth.
For proof of concept, we are developing a system which is based on the combination of Kernel Mode Linux and Typed Assembly Language, TAL. (TAL can ensure safety of programs through its type checking and the type checking can be done at machine binary level.
Version restrictions:
- User processes executed in kernel mode should obey the following limitations. Otherwise, your system will be in an undefined state. In the worst-case scenario, your system will crash.
- On IA-32, programs executed in kernel mode shouldnt modify their CS, DS, FS and SS registers.
- On AMD64, programs executed in kernel mode shouldnt modify their CS register.
- In addition, on AMD64, IA-32 binaries cannot be executed in kernel mode.
Enhancements:
- This release has been merged with the 2.6.19 Linux kernel.

The Linux SMP kernel uses spinlocks to protect data structures from concurrent, potentially conflicting accesses. Linux Kernel Spinlock Metering is a kernel patch that allows you to build an i386, ia64, Alpha, Sparc64, or mips64 kernel that can perform simple "metering" (record-keeping) of spinlock usage. Also available is source for an associated new command, lockstat, that is used to instruct the kernel to turn this lock metering on or off, and to retrieve the metering data from the kernel and display it in a human-readable format.

Data displayed includes the number of lock attempts, per-spinlock per-caller, the number of those attempts that were immediately successful vs. those that required the attempting locker to wait for the current lock-holder to release; the mean and max hold-time, and the mean, max, and cumulative wait-time. Whenever possible, the locking caller and the spinlocks are identified by their symbolic names, not by their virtual addresses.

Various patch sets are available. Version 1.1.4 patches the 2.2.14 kernel and reflects a relatively old flavor of Lockmeter. Version 1.4.11 patches the 2.4.16, 2.4.17, 2.5.3, and 2.5.5 kernels, and the previous release v1.4.9 patches various other releases of the 2.4.x kernel. This version 1.4 supports i386, alpha, ia64, mips64, and sparc64. The most recent version 1.5 is available as a patch against the 2.4.18 and various 2.5.x kernels, and it additionally supports mips (32-bit mips). Each is approximately 22 KB in gziped size. (Patches against a few older kernel versions are also available in the old subdirectory.) After applying the appropriate patch, make oldconfig presents a new Kernel lock metering option in the Kernel hacking subsection -- although only if CONFIG_SMP (Symmetric multi-processing support) has been enabled. The spinlock metering code is compiled into the kernel only when this new option is turned on.

Compiling the spinlock metering code into the kernel does not materially affect the kernel size because the additional code is roughly compensated for by the shrinking effect of the normally in-line locking routines now becoming procedure calls. A metering-capable kernel (i.e., with the patch applied, but data collection turned off) is negligibly slower than a non-metering-capable kernel, though a metering-capable kernel does slow when the metering data collection is turned on using the lockstat command (typically 8% for a systime==25% workload). Care has been taken to minimize performance degradation, and further improvements are in progress.

The lockstat command must also be downloaded, compiled, and installed. lockstat is a privileged command that requires root access. It reads and writes to the node /proc/lockmeter to control the kernels metering as follows:

lockstat on enables the kernels metering data collection,
lockstat options displays the collected data, and
lockstat off disables the metering data collection.

Run lockstat with no arguments to see a verbose description of the command arguments and options.

When metering is enabled, count and time data is collected in malloced arrays that are private to each CPU, thereby avoiding costly cacheblock coherency operations that would otherwise be required if all CPUs updated the same count and time fields. The lockstat command accumulates and sorts the per-cpu data at display time.

Lockmetering attempts to provide both "cause" and "effect" information about spinlock usage. The "hold time" metering exposes which spinlocks are being held and for how long, identified by where they are held inside the kernel. The "wait-time" metering exposes the effects of these hold-times when multiple CPUs concurrently contend for the same lock.