Description

Backporting Linux kernel fixes (either for CVE issues or as part of general git-fixes workflow) is boring and mostly mechanical work (dealing with changes in context, renamed variables, new helper functions etc.). The idea of this project is to explore usage of LLM for backporting Linux kernel commits to SUSE kernels using LLM.

Goals

  • Create safe environment allowing LLM to run and backport patches without exposing the whole filesystem to it (for privacy and security reasons).
  • Write prompt that will guide LLM through the backporting process. Fine tune it based on experimental results.
  • Explore success rate of LLMs when backporting various patches.

Resources

  • Docker
  • Gemini CLI

Repository

Current version of the container with some instructions for use are at: https://gitlab.suse.de/jankara/gemini-cli-backporter

Looking for hackers with the skills:

ai llm kernel

This project is part of:

Hack Week 25

Activity

  • 20 days ago: jankara added keyword "ai" to this project.
  • 20 days ago: jankara added keyword "llm" to this project.
  • 20 days ago: jankara added keyword "kernel" to this project.
  • 21 days ago: jankara started this project.
  • 21 days ago: jankara originated this project.

  • Comments

    • jankara
      20 days ago by jankara | Reply

      I've created Docker container for this purpose and some scripting around it to save some typing (see the repository for details). Gemini successfully backported upstream commit 8ecb790ea8c3 ("ext4: avoid potential buffer over-read in parseapplysbmountoptions()") to SLE12-SP5 without any manual intervention. That is a good success because the commit requires applying changes to different place (and different function - the code has been significantly refactored due to mount API conversion). Backport of follow up commit ee5a977b4e ("ext4: fix string copying in parseapplysbmountoptions()") required hint to Gemini that 8ecb790ea8c3 was already backported. I have updated prompt to instruct Gemini how to search for already applied commits to possibly figure this out itself. I didn't have time to test that. Backport of commit 1d3ad18394 ("ext4: detect invalid INLINE_DATA + EXTENTS flag combination") was smooth as well but there the problem was just slightly modified context.

      On the other hand backport of commit b86433721f4 ("blk-mq: fix potential deadlock while nr_requests grown") to SL-16.0 was too much. Gemini managed to create a patch that would apply (and likely compile) but the adaptation had multiple functional issues. The problem here was that the commit was part of a larger sequence of fixes to this area that significantly refactored the code and data structures. Also I've run out of credits for the PRO model during backporting so part of the backport was done by FLASH model which is apparently not clever enough.

      To summarize the prompt certainly needs more work to better handle situations where more commits need backporting (and more thought what Gemini should do in that case - when it should decide the backport is just too complex and bail out?). Also PRO model seems to be significantly better than FLASH model but backport of one or two patches is enough to burn all your free credits for the day which somewhat slows down experimentation.

      Another research direction is trying Claude Code which has CLI client as well and is deemed to be more advanced in coding tasks than Gemini. However a quick research seems to indicate that for Claude CLI access one needs a paid version so experiments require some investment...

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