All organizations · GSoC 2026 · Operating systems, Infrastructure and cloud

CRIU

Chekpoint/Restore for Linux tasks and containers

CRIU (stands for Checkpoint/Restore In Userspace), is a Linux software. It can freeze a running container (or an individual application) and checkpoint its state to disk. The data saved can be used to restore the application and run it exactly as it was during the time of the freeze. Using this functionality, application or container live migration, snapshots, remote debugging, and many other things are now possible. CRIU is packaged for all leading Linux distributions and it is integrated wit lots of popular projects such as Docker, Podman, LXC/LXD, OpenVZ, runc, open-mpi and others

c
python
linux
go

cloud
containers
Checkpoint/Restore

Project ideas

12 ideas on its 2026 ideas page; of the 12 that state a difficulty: 1 easy, 6 medium, 5 hard. Sizes: 10 large. 7 mentors named.

Kubernetes Operator for Automated Checkpointing large medium
Forensic Checkpointing Framework for Kubernetes large medium
Enabling Checkpoint/Restore of Rootless Containers large medium
Checkpointing of POSIX message queues large medium
Add support for SCMCREDENTIALS / SCMPIDFD and friends large hard
Integrate with Live Update Orchestrator (LUO) large hard
Optimize COW memory dumping large hard
Optimize logging engine large medium
IOUring support large hard
Add support for SPFS hard
Anonymise image files easy
Add support for checkpoint/restore of CORK-ed UDP socket large medium

Read the ideas page. Ideas are for scope reference; never copy one into a proposal.

History

In GSoC since 2019, 8 years. Projects per year: '19: 1, '20: 3, '21: 3, '22: 2, '23: 3, '24: 3, '25: 3, '26: 4.

On GitHub

7 repositories pushed to in the last year. Main languages: Go (3), Rust (3), C (1).

Links and channels

Website: https://criu.org
Ideas page: https://criu.org/Google_Summer_of_Code_Ideas
Contributor guide: https://github.com/checkpoint-restore/criu/blob/criu-dev/CONTRIBUTING.md
Source code: https://github.com/checkpoint-restore/criu
Mailing list: criu@lists.linux.dev
Chat: https://gitter.im/save-restore/CRIU

go deeper in your terminal

git-into-gsoc org "CRIU" --shortlist
git-into-gsoc repos "CRIU"
git-into-gsoc issues --org "CRIU"

or ask your assistant:
"Which CRIU repositories merge
newcomers' pull requests, and which beginner
issues are still free?"

Those commands read live data: which repositories merge outside pull requests, and which beginner issues nobody has claimed. Install in two minutes.