AQuoSA for Linux Kernel 2.6 is now available

2006-07-12

• a minimally invasive patch to the Linux kernel allowing expandibility of the scheduler through loadable kernel modules;
• a loadable kernel module featuring a Resource Reservation based scheduling policy allowing processes to run on a virtual dedicated, slower processor;
• an easy-to-use application library allowing an application to "reserve" the needed fraction of the CPU to its process(es);
• a supervisor component built into the kernel that mediates requests made by applications, checking for schedulability of the overall requests actuating a customizable policy for acceptance, reject or remodulation of the requests;
• a separate supervisor library, to be used by privileged programs to configure the supervisor policy;
• a sample "wrapper" program that may be used for launching any executable with a fixed reservation of the processor during its run (no need to change or recompile the original program);

Released components are available both for the older 2.4.x and for the 2.6.x series of the Linux kernel, currently as separate downloadables, but sources will be unified in a short time.

For the purpose of easying the task of trying/testing the above cited components (whose compilation would require i.e. compilation of the entire Linux kernel) for non-kernel developers, a few Debian/Ubuntu packages have been precompiled for an i386 architecture and made available from the SourceForge Area of the project.

Any comments and feedback on the project by Linux users and developers is more than welcome. At the moment, the communication channel to be privileged for communicating with the project team is the project mailing list: aquosa-users@lists.sourceforge.net.