Eric Lalonde is a systems engineer responsible for implementing the Project Live* runtime system.

The Live* runtime system is a thin OS-specific instrumentation that dynamically constructs a virtual root file system during an early boot stage (known as the initial root detection, or initrd). The root file system is constructed using file systems name space unification (for unstructured data) and dynamic file generation (for structured data). This work involved reverse engineering of the Linux boot process (e.g. the discovery of block devices and identification of root file system), a complex yet undocumented codebase that differs greatly across Linux distributions. Modular and portable implementation can be easily adapted to the design philosophies of various Linux distributions with vastly differing approaches to the early boot process (e,g. RedHat vs. Ubuntu).

His research interests include virtualization, operating systems, performance modeling and instrumentation, as well as file systems and storage technologies used in high-performance computing.

Education:

• MS Computer Science, University of California, Santa Cruz, 2007

• BS Information Systems, University of California, Santa Cruz, 2004