Kernel Boot/Testing Framework with LinuxKit
Problem statement
Once a kernel is built, a developer/janitor may want to boot the kernel for various reasons, such as performing simple boot test or running tests and workloads from user space or simply playing around in a shell. However, an easy to use and a descriptive tool to perform those tasks doesn't exist to our knowledge.
We talked to kernel developers and were told to have a look at the following resources:
The approach
We plan to address this issue in the upcoming Hackweek. Our idea is to leverage LinuxKit as a driver to boot a given kernel image in different environments (qemu, Hyper-V, VMware and public clouds). As linuxkit is container-based, it is trivial to boot the kernel with various rootfs-images of all kinds of distributions. Note that it's easy to create custom rootfs images.
The tool we seek to implement should wrap everything up into something useful for developers and CI systems to use from the command line as well as from configuration files. The benefits of using a container-based infrastructure include:
Reproducibility: We bundle kernel images with the desired rootfs together and store them for a given amount of time. Re-running and re-creating those becomes trivial and easy.
Declarative approach: All steps to create the desired image are baked into configuration files. The benefits are again reproducibility and documentation.
Flexibility: In theory, we can bundle any kernel image with any rootfs and add as many files, binaries and directories on top as we please. Supporting different kinds of environments, including public clouds, makes the tool attractive for a broader audience.
Looking for hackers with the skills:
This project is part of:
Hack Week 16
Activity
Comments
Similar Projects
VulnHeap by r1chard-lyu
Description
The VulnHeap project is dedicated to the in-depth analysis and exploitation of vulnerabilities within heap memory management. It focuses on understanding the intricate workflow of heap allocation, chunk structures, and bin management, which are essential to identifying and mitigating security risks.
Goals
- Familiarize with heap
- Heap workflow
- Chunk and bin structure
- Vulnerabilities
- Vulnerability
- Use after free (UAF)
- Heap overflow
- Double free
- Use Docker to create a vulnerable environment and apply techniques to exploit it
Resources
- https://heap-exploitation.dhavalkapil.com/divingintoglibc_heap
- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cloudburst/libheap/master/heap.png
- https://github.com/shellphish/how2heap?tab=readme-ov-file
Explore simple and distro indipendent declarative Linux starting on Tumbleweed or Arch Linux by janvhs
Description
Inspired by mkosi the idea is to experiment with a declarative approach of defining Linux systems. A lot of tools already make it possible to manage the systems infrastructure by using description files, rather than manual invocation. An example for this are systemd presets for managing enabled services or the /etc/fstab file for describing how partitions should be mounted.
If we would take inspiration from openSUSE MicroOS and their handling of the /etc/ directory, we could theoretically use systemd-sysupdate to swap out the /usr/ partition and create an A/B boot scheme, where the /usr/ partition is always freshly built according to a central system description. In the best case it would be possible to still utilise snapshots, but an A/B root scheme would be sufficient for the beginning. This way you could get the benefit of NixOS's declarative system definition, but still use the distros package repositories and don't have to deal with the overhead of Flakes or the Nix language.
Goals
- A simple and understandable system
- Check fitness of
mkosior write a simple extensible image builder tool for it - Create a declarative system specification
- Create a system with swappable
/usr/partition - Create an A/B root scheme
- Swap to the new system without reboot (kexec?)
Resources
- Ideas that have been floating around in my head for a while
- https://0pointer.net/blog/fitting-everything-together.html
- GNOME OS
- MicroOS
- systemd mkosi
- Vanilla OS
Contributing to Linux Kernel security by pperego
Description
A couple of weeks ago, I found this blog post by Gustavo Silva, a Linux Kernel contributor.
I always strived to start again into hacking the Linux Kernel, so I asked Coverity scan dashboard access and I want to contribute to Linux Kernel by fixing some minor issues.
I want also to create a Linux Kernel fuzzing lab using qemu and syzkaller
Goals
- Fix at least 2 security bugs
- Create the fuzzing lab and having it running
The story so far
- Day 1: setting up a virtual machine for kernel development using Tumbleweed. Reading a lot of documentation, taking confidence with Coverity dashboard and with procedures to submit a kernel patch
- Day 2: I read really a lot of documentation and I triaged some findings on Coverity SAST dashboard. I have to confirm that SAST tool are great false positives generator, even for low hanging fruits.
- Day 3: Working on trivial changes after I read this blog post:
https://www.toblux.com/posts/2024/02/linux-kernel-patches.html. I have to take confidence
with the patch preparation and submit process yet.
- First trivial patch sent: using strtruefalse() macro instead of hard-coded strings in a staging driver for a lcd display
- Fix for a dereference before null check issue discovered by Coverity (CID 1601566) https://scan7.scan.coverity.com/#/project-view/52110/11354?selectedIssue=1601566
- Day 4: Triaging more issues found by Coverity.
- The patch for CID 1601566 was refused. The check against the NULL pointer was pointless so I prepared a version 2 of the patch removing the check.
- Fixed another dereference before NULL check in iwlmvmparsewowlaninfo_notif() routine (CID 1601547). This one was already submitted by another kernel hacker :(
- Day 5: Wrapping up. I had to do some minor rework on patch for CID 1601566. I found a stalker bothering me in private emails and people I interacted with me, advised he is a well known bothering person. Markus Elfring for the record.
Wrapping up: being back doing kernel hacking is amazing and I don't want to stop it. My battery pack is completely drained but changing the scope gave me a great twist and I really want to feel this energy not doing a single task for months.
I failed in setting up a fuzzing lab but I was too optimistic for the patch submission process.
The patches
toptop - a top clone written in Go by dshah
Description
toptop is a clone of Linux's top CLI tool, but written in Go.
Goals
Learn more about Go (mainly bubbletea) and Linux
Resources
Testing and adding GNU/Linux distributions on Uyuni by juliogonzalezgil
Join the Gitter channel! https://gitter.im/uyuni-project/hackweek
Uyuni is a configuration and infrastructure management tool that saves you time and headaches when you have to manage and update tens, hundreds or even thousands of machines. It also manages configuration, can run audits, build image containers, monitor and much more!
Currently there are a few distributions that are completely untested on Uyuni or SUSE Manager (AFAIK) or just not tested since a long time, and could be interesting knowing how hard would be working with them and, if possible, fix whatever is broken.
For newcomers, the easiest distributions are those based on DEB or RPM packages. Distributions with other package formats are doable, but will require adapting the Python and Java code to be able to sync and analyze such packages (and if salt does not support those packages, it will need changes as well). So if you want a distribution with other packages, make sure you are comfortable handling such changes.
No developer experience? No worries! We had non-developers contributors in the past, and we are ready to help as long as you are willing to learn. If you don't want to code at all, you can also help us preparing the documentation after someone else has the initial code ready, or you could also help with testing :-)
The idea is testing Salt and Salt-ssh clients, but NOT traditional clients, which are deprecated.
To consider that a distribution has basic support, we should cover at least (points 3-6 are to be tested for both salt minions and salt ssh minions):
- Reposync (this will require using spacewalk-common-channels and adding channels to the .ini file)
- Onboarding (salt minion from UI, salt minion from bootstrap scritp, and salt-ssh minion) (this will probably require adding OS to the bootstrap repository creator)
- Package management (install, remove, update...)
- Patching
- Applying any basic salt state (including a formula)
- Salt remote commands
- Bonus point: Java part for product identification, and monitoring enablement
- Bonus point: sumaform enablement (https://github.com/uyuni-project/sumaform)
- Bonus point: Documentation (https://github.com/uyuni-project/uyuni-docs)
- Bonus point: testsuite enablement (https://github.com/uyuni-project/uyuni/tree/master/testsuite)
If something is breaking: we can try to fix it, but the main idea is research how supported it is right now. Beyond that it's up to each project member how much to hack :-)
- If you don't have knowledge about some of the steps: ask the team
- If you still don't know what to do: switch to another distribution and keep testing.
This card is for EVERYONE, not just developers. Seriously! We had people from other teams helping that were not developers, and added support for Debian and new SUSE Linux Enterprise and openSUSE Leap versions :-)
Pending
FUSS
FUSS is a complete GNU/Linux solution (server, client and desktop/standalone) based on Debian for managing an educational network.
https://fuss.bz.it/
Seems to be a Debian 12 derivative, so adding it could be quite easy.
[W]Reposync (this will require using spacewalk-common-channels and adding channels to the .ini file)[W]Onboarding (salt minion from UI, salt minion from bootstrap script, and salt-ssh minion) (this will probably require adding OS to the bootstrap repository creator) --> Working for all 3 options (salt minion UI, salt minion bootstrap script and salt-ssh minion from the UI).[W]Package management (install, remove, update...) --> Installing a new package works, needs to test the rest.[I]Patching (if patch information is available, could require writing some code to parse it, but IIRC we have support for Ubuntu already). No patches detected. Do we support patches for Debian at all?[W]Applying any basic salt state (including a formula)[W]Salt remote commands[ ]Bonus point: Java part for product identification, and monitoring enablement
RISC-V emulator in GLSL capable of running Linux by favogt
Description
There are already numerous ways to run Linux and some programs through emulation in a web browser (e.g. x86 and riscv64 on https://bellard.org/jslinux/), but none use WebGL/WebGPU to run the emulation on the GPU.
I already made a PoC of an AArch64 (64-bit Arm) emulator in OpenCL which is unfortunately hindered by a multitude of OpenCL compiler bugs on all platforms (Intel with beignet or the new compute runtime and AMD with Mesa Clover and rusticl). With more widespread and thus less broken GLSL vs. OpenCL and the less complex implementation requirements for RV32 (especially 32bit integers instead of 64bit), that should not be a major problem anymore.
Goals
Write an RISC-V system emulator in GLSL that is capable of booting Linux and run some userspace programs interactively. Ideally it is small enough to work on online test platforms like Shaderoo with a custom texture that contains bootstrap code, kernel and initrd.
Minimum:
riscv32 without FPU (RV32 IMA) and MMU (µClinux), running Linux in M-mode and userspace in U-mode.
Stretch goals:
FPU support, S-Mode support with MMU, SMP. Custom web frontend with more possibilities for I/O (disk image, network?).
Resources
RISC-V ISA Specifications
Shaderoo
OpenGL 4.5 Quick Reference Card
Result as of Hackweek 2024
WebGL turned out to be insufficient, it only supports OpenGL ES 3.0 but imageLoad/imageStore needs ES 3.1. So we switched directions and had to write a native C++ host for the shaders.
As of Hackweek Friday, the kernel attempts to boot and outputs messages, but panics due to missing memory regions.
Since then, some bugs were fixed and enough hardware emulation implemented, so that now Linux boots with framebuffer support and it's possible to log in and run programs!
The repo with a demo video is available at https://github.com/Vogtinator/risky-v
Create DRM drivers for VESA and EFI framebuffers by tdz
Description
We already have simpledrm for firmware framebuffers. But the driver is originally for ARM boards, not PCs. It is already overloaded with code to support both use cases. At the same time it is missing possible features for VESA and EFI, such as palette modes or EDID support. We should have DRM drivers for VESA and EFI interfaces. The infrastructure exists already and initial drivers can be forked from simpledrm.
Goals
- Initially, a bare driver for VESA or EFI should be created. It can take functionality from simpledrm.
- Then we can begin to add additional features. The boot loader can provide EDID data. With VGA hardware, VESA can support paletted modes or color management. Example code exists in vesafb.
Improve UML page fault handler by ptesarik
Description
Improve UML handling of segmentation faults in kernel mode. Although such page faults are generally caused by a kernel bug, it is annoying if they cause an infinite loop, or panic the kernel. More importantly, a robust implementation allows to write KUnit tests for various guard pages, preventing potential kernel self-protection regressions.
Goals
Convert the UML page fault handler to use oops_* helpers, go through a few review rounds and finally get my patch series merged in 6.14.
Resources
Wrong initial attempt: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20231215121431.680-1-petrtesarik@huaweicloud.com/T/
FizzBuzz OS by mssola
Project Description
FizzBuzz OS (or just fbos) is an idea I've had in order to better grasp the fundamentals of the low level of a RISC-V machine. In practice, I'd like to build a small Operating System kernel that is able to launch three processes: one that simply prints "Fizz", another that prints "Buzz", and the third which prints "FizzBuzz". These processes are unaware of each other and it's up to the kernel to schedule them by using the timer interrupts as given on openSBI (fizz on % 3 seconds, buzz on % 5 seconds, and fizzbuzz on % 15 seconds).
This kernel provides just one system call, write, which allows any program to pass the string to be written into stdout.
This project is free software and you can find it here.
Goal for this Hackweek
- Better understand the RISC-V SBI interface.
- Better understand RISC-V in privileged mode.
- Have fun.
Resources
Results
The project was a resounding success 
Lots of learning, and the initial target was met.
Model checking the BPF verifier by shunghsiyu
Project Description
BPF verifier plays a crucial role in securing the system (though less so now that unprivileged BPF is disabled by default in both upstream and SLES), and bugs in the verifier has lead to privilege escalation vulnerabilities in the past (e.g. CVE-2021-3490).
One way to check whether the verifer has bugs to use model checking (a formal verification technique), in other words, build a abstract model of how the verifier operates, and then see if certain condition can occur (e.g. incorrect calculation during value tracking of registers) by giving both the model and condition to a solver.
For the solver I will be using the Z3 SMT solver to do the checking since it provide a Python binding that's relatively easy to use.
Goal for this Hackweek
Learn how to use the Z3 Python binding (i.e. Z3Py) to build a model of (part of) the BPF verifier, probably the part that's related to value tracking using tristate numbers (aka tnum), and then check that the algorithm work as intended.
Resources
- Formal Methods for the Informal Engineer: Tutorial #1 - The Z3 Theorem Prover and its accompanying notebook is a great introduction into Z3
- Has a section specifically on model checking
- Software Verification and Analysis Using Z3 a great example of using Z3 for model checking
- Sound, Precise, and Fast Abstract Interpretation with Tristate Numbers - existing work that use formal verification to prove that the multiplication helper used for value tracking work as intended
- [PATCH v5 net-next 00/12] bpf: rewrite value tracking in verifier - initial patch set that adds tristate number to the verifier
Drag Race - comparative performance testing for pull requests by balanza
Description
«Sophia, a backend developer, submitted a pull request with optimizations for a critical database query. Once she pushed her code, an automated load test ran, comparing her query against the main branch. Moments later, she saw a new comment automatically added to her PR: the comparison results showed reduced execution time and improved efficiency. Smiling, Sophia messaged her team, “Performance gains confirmed!”»
Goals
- To have a convenient and ergonomic framework to describe test scenarios, including environment and seed;
- to compare results from different tests
- to have a GitHub action that executes such tests on a CI environment
Resources
The MVP will be built on top of Preevy and K6.
Testing and adding GNU/Linux distributions on Uyuni by juliogonzalezgil
Join the Gitter channel! https://gitter.im/uyuni-project/hackweek
Uyuni is a configuration and infrastructure management tool that saves you time and headaches when you have to manage and update tens, hundreds or even thousands of machines. It also manages configuration, can run audits, build image containers, monitor and much more!
Currently there are a few distributions that are completely untested on Uyuni or SUSE Manager (AFAIK) or just not tested since a long time, and could be interesting knowing how hard would be working with them and, if possible, fix whatever is broken.
For newcomers, the easiest distributions are those based on DEB or RPM packages. Distributions with other package formats are doable, but will require adapting the Python and Java code to be able to sync and analyze such packages (and if salt does not support those packages, it will need changes as well). So if you want a distribution with other packages, make sure you are comfortable handling such changes.
No developer experience? No worries! We had non-developers contributors in the past, and we are ready to help as long as you are willing to learn. If you don't want to code at all, you can also help us preparing the documentation after someone else has the initial code ready, or you could also help with testing :-)
The idea is testing Salt and Salt-ssh clients, but NOT traditional clients, which are deprecated.
To consider that a distribution has basic support, we should cover at least (points 3-6 are to be tested for both salt minions and salt ssh minions):
- Reposync (this will require using spacewalk-common-channels and adding channels to the .ini file)
- Onboarding (salt minion from UI, salt minion from bootstrap scritp, and salt-ssh minion) (this will probably require adding OS to the bootstrap repository creator)
- Package management (install, remove, update...)
- Patching
- Applying any basic salt state (including a formula)
- Salt remote commands
- Bonus point: Java part for product identification, and monitoring enablement
- Bonus point: sumaform enablement (https://github.com/uyuni-project/sumaform)
- Bonus point: Documentation (https://github.com/uyuni-project/uyuni-docs)
- Bonus point: testsuite enablement (https://github.com/uyuni-project/uyuni/tree/master/testsuite)
If something is breaking: we can try to fix it, but the main idea is research how supported it is right now. Beyond that it's up to each project member how much to hack :-)
- If you don't have knowledge about some of the steps: ask the team
- If you still don't know what to do: switch to another distribution and keep testing.
This card is for EVERYONE, not just developers. Seriously! We had people from other teams helping that were not developers, and added support for Debian and new SUSE Linux Enterprise and openSUSE Leap versions :-)
Pending
FUSS
FUSS is a complete GNU/Linux solution (server, client and desktop/standalone) based on Debian for managing an educational network.
https://fuss.bz.it/
Seems to be a Debian 12 derivative, so adding it could be quite easy.
[W]Reposync (this will require using spacewalk-common-channels and adding channels to the .ini file)[W]Onboarding (salt minion from UI, salt minion from bootstrap script, and salt-ssh minion) (this will probably require adding OS to the bootstrap repository creator) --> Working for all 3 options (salt minion UI, salt minion bootstrap script and salt-ssh minion from the UI).[W]Package management (install, remove, update...) --> Installing a new package works, needs to test the rest.[I]Patching (if patch information is available, could require writing some code to parse it, but IIRC we have support for Ubuntu already). No patches detected. Do we support patches for Debian at all?[W]Applying any basic salt state (including a formula)[W]Salt remote commands[ ]Bonus point: Java part for product identification, and monitoring enablement
Yearly Quality Engineering Ask me Anything - AMA for not-engineering by szarate
Goal
Get a closer look at how developers work on the Engineering team (R & D) of SUSE, and close the collaboration gap between GSI and Engineering
Why?
Santiago can go over different development workflows, and can do a deepdive into how Quality Engineering works (think of my QE Team, the advocates for your customers), The idea of this session is to help open the doors to opportunities for collaboration, and broaden our understanding of SUSE as a whole.
Objectives
- Give $audience a small window on how to get some questions answered either on the spot or within days of how some things at engineering are done
- Give Santiago Zarate from Quality Engineering a look into how $audience sees the engineering departments, and find out possibilities of further collaboration
How?
By running an "Ask me Anything" session, which is a format of a kind of open Q & A session, where participants ask the host multiple questions.
How to make it happen?
I'm happy to help joining a call or we can do it async (online/in person is more fun). Ping me over email-slack and lets make the magic happen!. Doesn't need to be during hackweek, but we gotta kickstart the idea during hackweek ;)
Rules
The rules are simple, the more questions the more fun it will be; while this will be only a window into engineering, it can also be the place to help all of us get to a similar level of understanding of the processes that are behind our respective areas of the organization.
Dynamics
The host will be monitoring the questions on some pre-agreed page, and try to answer to the best of their knowledge, if a question is too difficult or the host doesn't have the answer, he will do his best to provide an answer at a later date.
Atendees are encouraged to add questions beforehand; in the case there aren't any, we would be looking at how Quality Engineering tests new products or performs regression tests
Agenda
- Introduction of Santiago Zarate, Product Owner of Quality Engineering Core team
- Introduction of the Group/Team/Persons interested
- Ice breaker
- AMA time! Add your questions $PAGE
- Looking at QE Workflows: How is
- A maintenance update being tested before being released to our customers
- Products in development are tested before making it generally available
- Engineering Opportunity Board
Automated Test Report reviewer by oscar-barrios
Description
In SUMA/Uyuni team we spend a lot of time reviewing test reports, analyzing each of the test cases failing, checking if the test is a flaky test, checking logs, etc.
Goals
Speed up the review by automating some parts through AI, in a way that we can consume some summary of that report that could be meaningful for the reviewer.
Resources
No idea about the resources yet, but we will make use of:
- HTML/JSON Report (text + screenshots)
- The Test Suite Status GithHub board (via API)
- The environment tested (via SSH)
- The test framework code (via files)
Make more sense of openQA test results using AI by livdywan
Description
AI has the potential to help with something many of us spend a lot of time doing which is making sense of openQA logs when a job fails.
User Story
Allison Average has a puzzled look on their face while staring at log files that seem to make little sense. Is this a known issue, something completely new or maybe related to infrastructure changes?
Goals
- Leverage a chat interface to help Allison
- Create a model from scratch based on data from openQA
- Proof of concept for automated analysis of openQA test results
Bonus
- Use AI to suggest solutions to merge conflicts
- This would need a merge conflict editor that can suggest solving the conflict
- Use image recognition for needles
Resources
Timeline
Day 1
- Conversing with open-webui to teach me how to create a model based on openQA test results
- Asking for example code using TensorFlow in Python
- Discussing log files to explore what to analyze
- Drafting a new project called Testimony (based on Implementing a containerized Python action) - the project name was also suggested by the assistant
Day 2
- Using NotebookLLM (Gemini) to produce conversational versions of blog posts
- Researching the possibility of creating a project logo with AI
- Asking open-webui, persons with prior experience and conducting a web search for advice
Highlights
- I briefly tested compared models to see if they would make me more productive. Between llama, gemma and mistral there was no amazing difference in the results for my case.
- Convincing the chat interface to produce code specific to my use case required very explicit instructions.
- Asking for advice on how to use open-webui itself better was frustratingly unfruitful both in trivial and more advanced regards.
- Documentation on source materials used by LLM's and tools for this purpose seems virtually non-existent - specifically if a logo can be generated based on particular licenses
Outcomes
- Chat interface-supported development is providing good starting points and open-webui being open source is more flexible than Gemini. Although currently some fancy features such as grounding and generated podcasts are missing.
- Allison still has to be very experienced with openQA to use a chat interface for test review. Publicly available system prompts would make that easier, though.
Improve Development Environment on Uyuni by mbussolotto
Description
Currently create a dev environment on Uyuni might be complicated. The steps are:
- add the correct repo
- download packages
- configure your IDE (checkstyle, format rules, sonarlint....)
- setup debug environment
- ...
The current doc can be improved: some information are hard to be find out, some others are completely missing.
Dev Container might solve this situation.
Goals
Uyuni development in no time:
- using VSCode:
- setting.json should contains all settings (for all languages in Uyuni, with all checkstyle rules etc...)
- dev container should contains all dependencies
- setup debug environment
- implement a GitHub Workspace solution
- re-write documentation
Lots of pieces are already implemented: we need to connect them in a consistent solution.
Resources
- https://github.com/uyuni-project/uyuni/wiki
Enable the containerized Uyuni server to run on different host OS by j_renner
Description
The Uyuni server is provided as a container, but we still require it to run on Leap Micro? This is not how people expect to use containerized applications, so it would be great if we tested other host OSs and enabled them by providing builds of necessary tools for (e.g. mgradm). Interesting candidates should be:
- openSUSE Leap
- Cent OS 7
- Ubuntu
- ???
Goals
Make it really easy for anyone to run the Uyuni containerized server on whatever OS they want (with support for containers of course).
Port the classic browser game HackTheNet to PHP 8 by dgedon
Description
The classic browser game HackTheNet from 2004 still runs on PHP 4/5 and MySQL 5 and needs a port to PHP 8 and e.g. MariaDB.
Goals
- Port the game to PHP 8 and MariaDB 11
- Create a container where the game server can simply be started/stopped
Resources
- https://github.com/nodeg/hackthenet
SUSE AI Meets the Game Board by moio
Use tabletopgames.ai’s open source TAG and PyTAG frameworks to apply Statistical Forward Planning and Deep Reinforcement Learning to two board games of our own design. On an all-green, all-open source, all-AWS stack!
Results: Infrastructure Achievements
We successfully built and automated a containerized stack to support our AI experiments. This included:
- a Fully-Automated, One-Command, GPU-accelerated Kubernetes setup: we created an OpenTofu based script, tofu-tag, to deploy SUSE's RKE2 Kubernetes running on CUDA-enabled nodes in AWS, powered by openSUSE with GPU drivers and gpu-operator
- Containerization of the TAG and PyTAG frameworks: TAG (Tabletop AI Games) and PyTAG were patched for seamless deployment in containerized environments. We automated the container image creation process with GitHub Actions. Our forks (PRs upstream upcoming):
./deploy.sh and voilà - Kubernetes running PyTAG (k9s, above) with GPU acceleration (nvtop, below)
Results: Game Design Insights
Our project focused on modeling and analyzing two card games of our own design within the TAG framework:
- Game Modeling: We implemented models for Dario's "Bamboo" and Silvio's "Totoro" and "R3" games, enabling AI agents to play thousands of games ...in minutes!
- AI-driven optimization: By analyzing statistical data on moves, strategies, and outcomes, we iteratively tweaked the game mechanics and rules to achieve better balance and player engagement.
- Advanced analytics: Leveraging AI agents with Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) and random action selection, we compared performance metrics to identify optimal strategies and uncover opportunities for game refinement .
- more about Bamboo on Dario's site
- more about R3 on Silvio's site (italian, translation coming)
- more about Totoro on Silvio's site
A family picture of our card games in progress. From the top: Bamboo, Totoro, R3
Results: Learning, Collaboration, and Innovation
Beyond technical accomplishments, the project showcased innovative approaches to coding, learning, and teamwork:
- "Trio programming" with AI assistance: Our "trio programming" approach—two developers and GitHub Copilot—was a standout success, especially in handling slightly-repetitive but not-quite-exactly-copypaste tasks. Java as a language tends to be verbose and we found it to be fitting particularly well.
- AI tools for reporting and documentation: We extensively used AI chatbots to streamline writing and reporting. (Including writing this report! ...but this note was added manually during edit!)
- GPU compute expertise: Overcoming challenges with CUDA drivers and cloud infrastructure deepened our understanding of GPU-accelerated workloads in the open-source ecosystem.
- Game design as a learning platform: By blending AI techniques with creative game design, we learned not only about AI strategies but also about making games fun, engaging, and balanced.
Last but not least we had a lot of fun! ...and this was definitely not a chatbot generated line!
The Context: AI + Board Games
Technical talks at universities by agamez
Description
This project aims to empower the next generation of tech professionals by offering hands-on workshops on containerization and Kubernetes, with a strong focus on open-source technologies. By providing practical experience with these cutting-edge tools and fostering a deep understanding of open-source principles, we aim to bridge the gap between academia and industry.
For now, the scope is limited to Spanish universities, since we already have the contacts and have started some conversations.
Goals
- Technical Skill Development: equip students with the fundamental knowledge and skills to build, deploy, and manage containerized applications using open-source tools like Kubernetes.
- Open-Source Mindset: foster a passion for open-source software, encouraging students to contribute to open-source projects and collaborate with the global developer community.
- Career Readiness: prepare students for industry-relevant roles by exposing them to real-world use cases, best practices, and open-source in companies.
Resources
- Instructors: experienced open-source professionals with deep knowledge of containerization and Kubernetes.
- SUSE Expertise: leverage SUSE's expertise in open-source technologies to provide insights into industry trends and best practices.