Understanding the Linux Kernel, Visually

Understanding the Linux kernel is challenging due to its large and complex program state. While existing kernel debugging tools provide full access to kernel states at arbitrary levels of detail, developers often spend a significant amount of time sifting through redundant information to find what is truly useful. Additionally, the textual results provided by traditional debuggers are often insufficient for expressing high-dimensional information in a readable manner.

This paper presents Visualinux, the first debugging framework that can simplify the program state of the Linux kernel to a level that can be visually understood with low programming complexity and effort. Visualinux includes a domainspecific language for specifying simplifications of a kernel object graph, an SQL-like domain-specific language for customizing the simplified object graph, and a panel-based interactive debugger. Evaluation results show that Visualinux can visualize various complex kernel components and efficiently assist developers in diagnosing sophisticated kernel bugs.