Independent study?

siddhant · 2010-01-23 09:58:52

Hi everyone. I've been playing around with *nix systems for quite a while now, and have been (more or less) exclusively using Arch for like a year or so. The thing is that I am a final year student at my university, and we're supposed to submit a project as a part of the process to earn our degree. The idea of working on something related to Arch sounds amazingly cool, and it would be really great if I can get to do that. But the only problem is, I'm not sure what exactly should I do. I'd have to submit the project sometime around May, so its a 3 months long thing.
It would be great if any of you could give me some pointers on what could I work on.
So to wrap up - if any of you could suggest me something which I can work on, and which can go on for a minimum of 2-3 months, and which is possibly related to Arch or anything GNU/Linux'y, I'd really appreciate it! Thanks!

Last edited by siddhant (2010-01-23 09:59:21)

JackH79 · 2010-01-23 10:03:00

Could you be a bit more specific as to what 'area' of computing you are interested in? There's just sooooooo much to choose from.

siddhant · 2010-01-23 10:35:15

Right. Sorry I didn't mention that.
I'm generally interested in things related to distributed computing. And more recently search engines as well. I've worked with Eucalyptus clusters, so I know bits and pieces of virtual machines, cloud computing, EC2 api/ami and stuff. Anything related to web, clouds, distributed systems, or dealing with operating systems, search engines, some areas in which Arch or any other distro leaves a lot of scope to work on, and related stuff. I think this is sounding like a 10,000 ft view of what interests me. I'm not sure of what *exactly* should I be working on, but I would love to work on any of the things mentioned above. So any ideas that people might have related to these fields (or even if they are not related to these fields), will be really helpful!

Trent · 2010-01-23 15:27:33

What are your primary skills and what is your major? If you're into the electrical engineering area, you could design a single-board computer in that amount of time. With less electronics and more software expertise, you could build a cluster and demonstrate some sort of distributed system on it.

I opened a thread recently (here) about cloud-based storage and encryption that you might find interesting.

MrAllan · 2010-01-23 16:56:03

Code a fast, lightweight P2P-system for use of distributed computing. Include encryption, authentication and decentralized storage.

benob · 2010-01-23 17:24:27

Code a replacement for nfs, which would be scalable, include a local cache, and be very simple to setup.

ludovico · 2010-01-24 00:33:11

siddhant wrote:

It would be great if any of you could give me some pointers on what could I work on.

0x3a28213a, 0x6339392c, 0x6373682e

Sorry, couldn't resist

Good luck, anyway!

siddhant · 2010-01-24 09:17:52

ludovico wrote:

siddhant wrote:
It would be great if any of you could give me some pointers on what could I work on.
0x3a28213a, 0x6339392c, 0x6373682e
Sorry, couldn't resist

I hate you.

siddhant · 2010-01-24 09:29:59

The nfs/p2p ideas sound good. Thanks for pointing them out. While they'll make for a fantastic learning exercise, don't mature implementations (of some sort) of those already exist?

vkumar · 2010-01-26 05:47:36

Code a fast, lightweight P2P-system for use of distributed computing. Include encryption, authentication and decentralized storage.

I proposed something similar last year in my special-topics class. I didn't touch it over the break, but I'm starting work on it again now. The emphasis is on making something any idiot (i.e: me) can use to take advantage of a bunch of spare computers. It's nowhere close to ready yet; I still need to implement the Kademlia DHT and diffie-hellman key exchanges.

If you're interested in it, here's the code: http://code.google.com/p/udc/

jowilkin · 2010-01-26 05:54:08

What is your major and what is the scope of the project supposed to be? Do you need to do research level work? Simple development?

siddhant · 2010-01-26 06:56:00

jowilkin wrote:

What is your major and what is the scope of the project supposed to be? Do you need to do research level work? Simple development?

Mine is an IT (its almost a synonym for CS here :-) ) major. There are no restrictions as such on the project. Its just something that I can work on for 3 months, submit something usable, and then continue working on it later on. So yes there *is* scope for research. But simple development wouldn't be bad at all.

skanky · 2010-01-26 12:08:26

How about a simple to use system (eg simple to set-up) that enables you to send some sort of processor intensive process to multiple machines. Eg image processing/converting, sound-file processing/converting, video file processing/converting, all of the above, etc.?

Either (a) a specific area - image, audio, video that just deals with those areas (converting video could be good for this as there's a number of codecs out there, some are better supported than others and the files tend to be large and take a lot of power/time) or (b) a generic framework that allows a user to set up any activity easily, using existing applications (either cli and/or api based) such as imagemagick or abcde, across multiple machines.

siddhant · 2010-01-30 17:53:39

How about a simple program that can monitor each and every process on a system (and possibly on a set of systems) for any abnormal activity? Its entirely possible that I'm talking nonsense, but a simple program to monitor/log errors/exceptions on a set of processes on a set of systems might be very useful. Does anything like this exist already (if it makes sense at all )?

Arch Linux

#1 2010-01-23 09:58:52

Independent study?

#2 2010-01-23 10:03:00

Re: Independent study?

#3 2010-01-23 10:35:15

Re: Independent study?

#4 2010-01-23 15:27:33

Re: Independent study?

#5 2010-01-23 16:56:03

Re: Independent study?

#6 2010-01-23 17:24:27

Re: Independent study?

#7 2010-01-24 00:33:11

Re: Independent study?

#8 2010-01-24 09:17:52

Re: Independent study?

#9 2010-01-24 09:29:59

Re: Independent study?

#10 2010-01-26 05:47:36

Re: Independent study?

#11 2010-01-26 05:54:08

Re: Independent study?

#12 2010-01-26 06:56:00

Re: Independent study?

#13 2010-01-26 12:08:26

Re: Independent study?

#14 2010-01-30 17:53:39

Re: Independent study?

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