Kernel-2.6.32-573.12.1.el6_kernel-docs

Index of Documentation for People Interested in Writing and/or

               Understanding the Linux Kernel.

      Juan-Mariano de Goyeneche <jmseyas@dit.upm.es>

/*

  • The latest version of this document may be found at:

  • http://www.dit.upm.es/~jmseyas/linux/kernel/hackers-docs.html

  • /

    The need for a document like this one became apparent in the
    linux-kernel mailing list as the same questions, asking for pointers
    to information, appeared again and again.

    Fortunately, as more and more people get to GNU/Linux, more and more
    get interested in the Kernel. But reading the sources is not always
    enough. It is easy to understand the code, but miss the concepts, the
    philosophy and design decisions behind this code.

    Unfortunately, not many documents are available for beginners to
    start. And, even if they exist, there was no “well-known” place which
    kept track of them. These lines try to cover this lack. All documents
    available on line known by the author are listed, while some reference
    books are also mentioned.

    PLEASE, if you know any paper not listed here or write a new document,
    send me an e-mail, and I’ll include a reference to it here. Any
    corrections, ideas or comments are also welcomed.

    The papers that follow are listed in no particular order. All are
    cataloged with the following fields: the document’s “Title”, the
    “Author”/s, the “URL” where they can be found, some “Keywords” helpful
    when searching for specific topics, and a brief “Description” of the
    Document.

    Enjoy!

    ON-LINE DOCS:

    • Title: “Linux Device Drivers, Third Edition”
      Author: Jonathan Corbet, Alessandro Rubini, Greg Kroah-Hartman
      URL: http://lwn.net/Kernel/LDD3/
      Description: A 600-page book covering the (2.6.10) driver
      programming API and kernel hacking in general. Available under the
      Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

    • Title: “The Linux Kernel”
      Author: David A. Rusling.
      URL: http://www.tldp.org/LDP/tlk/tlk.html
      Keywords: everything!, book.
      Description: On line, 200 pages book describing most aspects of
      the Linux Kernel. Probably, the first reference for beginners.
      Lots of illustrations explaining data structures use and
      relationships in the purest Richard W. Stevens’ style. Contents:
      “1.-Hardware Basics, 2.-Software Basics, 3.-Memory Management,
      4.-Processes, 5.-Interprocess Communication Mechanisms, 6.-PCI,
      7.-Interrupts and Interrupt Handling, 8.-Device Drivers, 9.-The
      File system, 10.-Networks, 11.-Kernel Mechanisms, 12.-Modules,
      13.-The Linux Kernel Sources, A.-Linux Data Structures, B.-The
      Alpha AXP Processor, C.-Useful Web and FTP Sites, D.-The GNU
      General Public License, Glossary”. In short: a must have.

    • Title: “Linux Device Drivers, 2nd Edition”
      Author: Alessandro Rubini and Jonathan Corbet.
      URL: http://www.xml.com/ldd/chapter/book/index.html
      Keywords: device drivers, modules, debugging, memory, hardware,
      interrupt handling, char drivers, block drivers, kmod, mmap, DMA,
      buses.
      Description: O’Reilly’s popular book, now also on-line under the
      GNU Free Documentation License.
      Notes: You can also buy it in paper-form from O’Reilly. See below
      under BOOKS (Not on-line).

    • Title: “Conceptual Architecture of the Linux Kernel”
      Author: Ivan T. Bowman.
      URL: http://plg.uwaterloo.ca/~itbowman/papers/CS746G-a1.html
      Keywords: conceptual software architecture, extracted design,
      reverse engineering, system structure.
      Description: Conceptual software architecture of the Linux kernel,
      automatically extracted from the source code. Very detailed. Good
      figures. Gives good overall kernel understanding.

    • Title: “Concrete Architecture of the Linux Kernel”
      Author: Ivan T. Bowman, Saheem Siddiqi, and Meyer C. Tanuan.
      URL: http://plg.uwaterloo.ca/~itbowman/papers/CS746G-a2.html
      Keywords: concrete architecture, extracted design, reverse
      engineering, system structure, dependencies.
      Description: Concrete architecture of the Linux kernel,
      automatically extracted from the source code. Very detailed. Good
      figures. Gives good overall kernel understanding. This papers
      focus on lower details than its predecessor (files, variables…).

    • Title: “Linux as a Case Study: Its Extracted Software
      Architecture”
      Author: Ivan T. Bowman, Richard C. Holt and Neil V. Brewster.
      URL: http://plg.uwaterloo.ca/~itbowman/papers/linuxcase.html
      Keywords: software architecture, architecture recovery,
      redocumentation.
      Description: Paper appeared at ICSE’99, Los Angeles, May 16-22,

      1. A mixture of the previous two documents from the same
        author.
    • Title: “Overview of the Virtual File System”
      Author: Richard Gooch.
      URL: http://www.atnf.csiro.au/~rgooch/linux/vfs.txt
      Keywords: VFS, File System, mounting filesystems, opening files,
      dentries, dcache.
      Description: Brief introduction to the Linux Virtual File System.
      What is it, how it works, operations taken when opening a file or
      mounting a file system and description of important data
      structures explaining the purpose of each of their entries.

    • Title: “The Linux RAID-1, 4, 5 Code”
      Author: Ingo Molnar, Gadi Oxman and Miguel de Icaza.
      URL: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=2391
      Keywords: RAID, MD driver.
      Description: Linux Journal Kernel Korner article. Here is it’s
      abstract: “A description of the implementation of the RAID-1,
      RAID-4 and RAID-5 personalities of the MD device driver in the
      Linux kernel, providing users with high performance and reliable,
      secondary-storage capability using software”.

    • Title: “Dynamic Kernels: Modularized Device Drivers”
      Author: Alessandro Rubini.
      URL: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=1219
      Keywords: device driver, module, loading/unloading modules,
      allocating resources.
      Description: Linux Journal Kernel Korner article. Here is it’s
      abstract: “This is the first of a series of four articles
      co-authored by Alessandro Rubini and Georg Zezchwitz which present
      a practical approach to writing Linux device drivers as kernel
      loadable modules. This installment presents an introduction to the
      topic, preparing the reader to understand next month’s
      installment”.

    • Title: “Dynamic Kernels: Discovery”
      Author: Alessandro Rubini.
      URL: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=1220
      Keywords: character driver, init_module, clean_up module,
      autodetection, mayor number, minor number, file operations,
      open(), close().
      Description: Linux Journal Kernel Korner article. Here is it’s
      abstract: “This article, the second of four, introduces part of
      the actual code to create custom module implementing a character
      device driver. It describes the code for module initialization and
      cleanup, as well as the open() and close() system calls”.

    • Title: “The Devil’s in the Details”
      Author: Georg v. Zezschwitz and Alessandro Rubini.
      URL: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=1221
      Keywords: read(), write(), select(), ioctl(), blocking/non
      blocking mode, interrupt handler.
      Description: Linux Journal Kernel Korner article. Here is it’s
      abstract: “This article, the third of four on writing character
      device drivers, introduces concepts of reading, writing, and using
      ioctl-calls”.

    • Title: “Dissecting Interrupts and Browsing DMA”
      Author: Alessandro Rubini and Georg v. Zezschwitz.
      URL: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=1222
      Keywords: interrupts, irqs, DMA, bottom halves, task queues.
      Description: Linux Journal Kernel Korner article. Here is it’s
      abstract: “This is the fourth in a series of articles about
      writing character device drivers as loadable kernel modules. This
      month, we further investigate the field of interrupt handling.
      Though it is conceptually simple, practical limitations and
      constraints make this an ``interesting’’ part of device driver
      writing, and several different facilities have been provided for
      different situations. We also investigate the complex topic of
      DMA”.

    • Title: “Device Drivers Concluded”
      Author: Georg v. Zezschwitz.
      URL: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=1287
      Keywords: address spaces, pages, pagination, page management,
      demand loading, swapping, memory protection, memory mapping, mmap,
      virtual memory areas (VMAs), vremap, PCI.
      Description: Finally, the above turned out into a five articles
      series. This latest one’s introduction reads: “This is the last of
      five articles about character device drivers. In this final
      section, Georg deals with memory mapping devices, beginning with
      an overall description of the Linux memory management concepts”.

    • Title: “Network Buffers And Memory Management”
      Author: Alan Cox.
      URL: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=1312
      Keywords: sk_buffs, network devices, protocol/link layer
      variables, network devices flags, transmit, receive,
      configuration, multicast.
      Description: Linux Journal Kernel Korner. Here is the abstract:
      “Writing a network device driver for Linux is fundamentally
      simple—most of the complexity (other than talking to the
      hardware) involves managing network packets in memory”.

    • Title: “Writing Linux Device Drivers”
      Author: Michael K. Johnson.
      URL: http://users.evitech.fi/~tk/rtos/writing_linux_device_d.html
      Keywords: files, VFS, file operations, kernel interface, character
      vs block devices, I/O access, hardware interrupts, DMA, access to
      user memory, memory allocation, timers.
      Description: Introductory 50-minutes (sic) tutorial on writing
      device drivers. 12 pages written by the same author of the “Kernel
      Hackers’ Guide” which give a very good overview of the topic.

    • Title: “The Venus kernel interface”
      Author: Peter J. Braam.
      URL:
      http://www.coda.cs.cmu.edu/doc/html/kernel-venus-protocol.html
      Keywords: coda, filesystem, venus, cache manager.
      Description: “This document describes the communication between
      Venus and kernel level file system code needed for the operation
      of the Coda filesystem. This version document is meant to describe
      the current interface (version 1.0) as well as improvements we
      envisage”.

    • Title: “Programming PCI-Devices under Linux”
      Author: Claus Schroeter.
      URL:
      ftp://ftp.llp.fu-berlin.de/pub/linux/LINUX-LAB/whitepapers/pcip.ps.gz
      Keywords: PCI, device, busmastering.
      Description: 6 pages tutorial on PCI programming under Linux.
      Gives the basic concepts on the architecture of the PCI subsystem,
      as long as basic functions and macros to read/write the devices
      and perform busmastering.

    • Title: “Writing Character Device Driver for Linux”
      Author: R. Baruch and C. Schroeter.
      URL:
      ftp://ftp.llp.fu-berlin.de/pub/linux/LINUX-LAB/whitepapers/drivers.ps.gz
      Keywords: character device drivers, I/O, signals, DMA, accessing
      ports in user space, kernel environment.
      Description: 68 pages paper on writing character drivers. A little
      bit old (1.993, 1.994) although still useful.

    • Title: “Design and Implementation of the Second Extended
      Filesystem”
      Author: Rémy Card, Theodore Ts’o, Stephen Tweedie.
      URL: http://web.mit.edu/tytso/www/linux/ext2intro.html
      Keywords: ext2, linux fs history, inode, directory, link, devices,
      VFS, physical structure, performance, benchmarks, ext2fs library,
      ext2fs tools, e2fsck.
      Description: Paper written by three of the top ext2 hackers.
      Covers Linux filesystems history, ext2 motivation, ext2 features,
      design, physical structure on disk, performance, benchmarks,
      e2fsck’s passes description… A must read!
      Notes: This paper was first published in the Proceedings of the
      First Dutch International Symposium on Linux, ISBN 90-367-0385-9.

    • Title: “Analysis of the Ext2fs structure”
      Author: Louis-Dominique Dubeau.
      URL: http://www.nondot.org/sabre/os/files/FileSystems/ext2fs/
      Keywords: ext2, filesystem, ext2fs.
      Description: Description of ext2’s blocks, directories, inodes,
      bitmaps, invariants…

    • Title: “Journaling the Linux ext2fs Filesystem”
      Author: Stephen C. Tweedie.
      URL:
      ftp://ftp.uk.linux.org/pub/linux/sct/fs/jfs/journal-design.ps.gz
      Keywords: ext3, journaling.
      Description: Excellent 8-pages paper explaining the journaling
      capabilities added to ext2 by the author, showing different
      problems faced and the alternatives chosen.

    • Title: “Kernel API changes from 2.0 to 2.2”
      Author: Richard Gooch.
      URL:
      http://www.atnf.csiro.au/~rgooch/linux/docs/porting-to-2.2.html
      Keywords: 2.2, changes.
      Description: Kernel functions/structures/variables which changed
      from 2.0.x to 2.2.x.

    • Title: “Kernel API changes from 2.2 to 2.4”
      Author: Richard Gooch.
      URL:
      http://www.atnf.csiro.au/~rgooch/linux/docs/porting-to-2.4.html
      Keywords: 2.4, changes.
      Description: Kernel functions/structures/variables which changed
      from 2.2.x to 2.4.x.

    • Title: “Linux Kernel Module Programming Guide”
      Author: Ori Pomerantz.
      URL: http://tldp.org/LDP/lkmpg/2.6/html/index.html
      Keywords: modules, GPL book, /proc, ioctls, system calls,
      interrupt handlers .
      Description: Very nice 92 pages GPL book on the topic of modules
      programming. Lots of examples.

    • Title: “I/O Event Handling Under Linux”
      Author: Richard Gooch.
      URL: http://www.atnf.csiro.au/~rgooch/linux/docs/io-events.html
      Keywords: IO, I/O, select(2), poll(2), FDs, aio_read(2), readiness
      event queues.
      Description: From the Introduction: “I/O Event handling is about
      how your Operating System allows you to manage a large number of
      open files (file descriptors in UNIX/POSIX, or FDs) in your
      application. You want the OS to notify you when FDs become active
      (have data ready to be read or are ready for writing). Ideally you
      want a mechanism that is scalable. This means a large number of
      inactive FDs cost very little in memory and CPU time to manage”.

    • Title: “The Kernel Hacking HOWTO”
      Author: Various Talented People, and Rusty.
      Location: in kernel tree, Documentation/DocBook/kernel-hacking/
      (must be built as “make {htmldocs | psdocs | pdfdocs})
      Keywords: HOWTO, kernel contexts, deadlock, locking, modules,
      symbols, return conventions.
      Description: From the Introduction: “Please understand that I
      never wanted to write this document, being grossly underqualified,
      but I always wanted to read it, and this was the only way. I
      simply explain some best practices, and give reading entry-points
      into the kernel sources. I avoid implementation details: that’s
      what the code is for, and I ignore whole tracts of useful
      routines. This document assumes familiarity with C, and an
      understanding of what the kernel is, and how it is used. It was
      originally written for the 2.3 kernels, but nearly all of it
      applies to 2.2 too; 2.0 is slightly different”.

    • Title: “Writing an ALSA Driver”
      Author: Takashi Iwai tiwai@suse.de
      URL: http://www.alsa-project.org/~iwai/writing-an-alsa-driver/index.html
      Keywords: ALSA, sound, soundcard, driver, lowlevel, hardware.
      Description: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture for developers,
      both at kernel and user-level sides. ALSA is the Linux kernel
      sound architecture in the 2.6 kernel version.

    • Title: “Programming Guide for Linux USB Device Drivers”
      Author: Detlef Fliegl.
      URL: http://usb.in.tum.de/usbdoc/
      Keywords: USB, universal serial bus.
      Description: A must-read. From the Preface: “This document should
      give detailed information about the current state of the USB
      subsystem and its API for USB device drivers. The first section
      will deal with the basics of USB devices. You will learn about
      different types of devices and their properties. Going into detail
      you will see how USB devices communicate on the bus. The second
      section gives an overview of the Linux USB subsystem [2] and the
      device driver framework. Then the API and its data structures will
      be explained step by step. The last section of this document
      contains a reference of all API calls and their return codes”.
      Notes: Beware: the main page states: “This document may not be
      published, printed or used in excerpts without explicit permission
      of the author”. Fortunately, it may still be read…

    • Title: “Linux Kernel Mailing List Glossary”
      Author: various
      URL: http://kernelnewbies.org/glossary/
      Keywords: glossary, terms, linux-kernel.
      Description: From the introduction: “This glossary is intended as
      a brief description of some of the acronyms and terms you may hear
      during discussion of the Linux kernel”.

    • Title: “Linux Kernel Locking HOWTO”
      Author: Various Talented People, and Rusty.
      Location: in kernel tree, Documentation/DocBook/kernel-locking/
      (must be built as “make {htmldocs | psdocs | pdfdocs})
      Keywords: locks, locking, spinlock, semaphore, atomic, race
      condition, bottom halves, tasklets, softirqs.
      Description: The title says it all: document describing the
      locking system in the Linux Kernel either in uniprocessor or SMP
      systems.
      Notes: “It was originally written for the later (>2.3.47) 2.3
      kernels, but most of it applies to 2.2 too; 2.0 is slightly
      different”. Freely redistributable under the conditions of the GNU
      General Public License.

    • Title: “Global spinlock list and usage”
      Author: Rick Lindsley.
      URL: http://lse.sourceforge.net/lockhier/global-spin-lock
      Keywords: spinlock.
      Description: This is an attempt to document both the existence and
      usage of the spinlocks in the Linux 2.4.5 kernel. Comprehensive
      list of spinlocks showing when they are used, which functions
      access them, how each lock is acquired, under what conditions it
      is held, whether interrupts can occur or not while it is held…

    • Title: “Porting Linux 2.0 Drivers To Linux 2.2: Changes and New
      Features “
      Author: Alan Cox.
      URL: http://www.linux-mag.com/1999-05/gear_01.html
      Keywords: ports, porting.
      Description: Article from Linux Magazine on porting from 2.0 to
      2.2 kernels.

    • Title: “Porting Device Drivers To Linux 2.2: part II”
      Author: Alan Cox.
      URL: http://www.linux-mag.com/1999-06/gear_01.html
      Keywords: ports, porting.
      Description: Second part on porting from 2.0 to 2.2 kernels.

    • Title: “How To Make Sure Your Driver Will Work On The Power
      Macintosh”
      Author: Paul Mackerras.
      URL: http://www.linux-mag.com/1999-07/gear_01.html
      Keywords: Mac, Power Macintosh, porting, drivers, compatibility.
      Description: The title says it all.

    • Title: “An Introduction to SCSI Drivers”
      Author: Alan Cox.
      URL: http://www.linux-mag.com/1999-08/gear_01.html
      Keywords: SCSI, device, driver.
      Description: The title says it all.

    • Title: “Advanced SCSI Drivers And Other Tales”
      Author: Alan Cox.
      URL: http://www.linux-mag.com/1999-09/gear_01.html
      Keywords: SCSI, device, driver, advanced.
      Description: The title says it all.

    • Title: “Writing Linux Mouse Drivers”
      Author: Alan Cox.
      URL: http://www.linux-mag.com/1999-10/gear_01.html
      Keywords: mouse, driver, gpm.
      Description: The title says it all.

    • Title: “More on Mouse Drivers”
      Author: Alan Cox.
      URL: http://www.linux-mag.com/1999-11/gear_01.html
      Keywords: mouse, driver, gpm, races, asynchronous I/O.
      Description: The title still says it all.

    • Title: “Writing Video4linux Radio Driver”
      Author: Alan Cox.
      URL: http://www.linux-mag.com/1999-12/gear_01.html
      Keywords: video4linux, driver, radio, radio devices.
      Description: The title says it all.

    • Title: “Video4linux Drivers, Part 1: Video-Capture Device”
      Author: Alan Cox.
      URL: http://www.linux-mag.com/2000-01/gear_01.html
      Keywords: video4linux, driver, video capture, capture devices,
      camera driver.
      Description: The title says it all.

    • Title: “Video4linux Drivers, Part 2: Video-capture Devices”
      Author: Alan Cox.
      URL: http://www.linux-mag.com/2000-02/gear_01.html
      Keywords: video4linux, driver, video capture, capture devices,
      camera driver, control, query capabilities, capability, facility.
      Description: The title says it all.

    • Title: “PCI Management in Linux 2.2”
      Author: Alan Cox.
      URL: http://www.linux-mag.com/2000-03/gear_01.html
      Keywords: PCI, bus, bus-mastering.
      Description: The title says it all.

    • Title: “Linux 2.4 Kernel Internals”
      Author: Tigran Aivazian and Christoph Hellwig.
      URL: http://www.moses.uklinux.net/patches/lki.html
      Keywords: Linux, kernel, booting, SMB boot, VFS, page cache.
      Description: A little book used for a short training course.
      Covers building the kernel image, booting (including SMP bootup),
      process management, VFS and more.

    • Title: “Linux IP Networking. A Guide to the Implementation and
      Modification of the Linux Protocol Stack.”
      Author: Glenn Herrin.
      URL: http://www.cs.unh.edu/cnrg/gherrin
      Keywords: network, networking, protocol, IP, UDP, TCP, connection,
      socket, receiving, transmitting, forwarding, routing, packets,
      modules, /proc, sk_buff, FIB, tags.
      Description: Excellent paper devoted to the Linux IP Networking,
      explaining anything from the kernel’s to the user space
      configuration tools’ code. Very good to get a general overview of
      the kernel networking implementation and understand all steps
      packets follow from the time they are received at the network
      device till they are delivered to applications. The studied kernel
      code is from 2.2.14 version. Provides code for a working packet
      dropper example.

    • Title: “Get those boards talking under Linux.”
      Author: Alex Ivchenko.
      URL: http://www.edn.com/article/CA46968.html
      Keywords: data-acquisition boards, drivers, modules, interrupts,
      memory allocation.
      Description: Article written for people wishing to make their data
      acquisition boards work on their GNU/Linux machines. Gives a basic
      overview on writing drivers, from the naming of functions to
      interrupt handling.
      Notes: Two-parts article. Part II is at
      URL: http://www.edn.com/article/CA46998.html

    • Title: “Linux PCMCIA Programmer’s Guide”
      Author: David Hinds.
      URL: http://pcmcia-cs.sourceforge.net/ftp/doc/PCMCIA-PROG.html
      Keywords: PCMCIA.
      Description: “This document describes how to write kernel device
      drivers for the Linux PCMCIA Card Services interface. It also
      describes how to write user-mode utilities for communicating with
      Card Services.

    • Title: “The Linux Kernel NFSD Implementation”
      Author: Neil Brown.
      URL:
      http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~neilb/oss/linux-commentary/nfsd.html
      Keywords: knfsd, nfsd, NFS, RPC, lockd, mountd, statd.
      Description: The title says it all.
      Notes: Covers knfsd’s version 1.4.7 (patch against 2.2.7 kernel).

    • Title: “A Linux vm README”
      Author: Kanoj Sarcar.
      URL: http://reality.sgi.com/kanoj_engr/vm229.html
      Keywords: virtual memory, mm, pgd, vma, page, page flags, page
      cache, swap cache, kswapd.
      Description: Telegraphic, short descriptions and definitions
      relating the Linux virtual memory implementation.

    • Title: “(nearly) Complete Linux Loadable Kernel Modules. The
      definitive guide for hackers, virus coders and system
      administrators.”
      Author: pragmatic/THC.
      URL: http://packetstormsecurity.org/docs/hack/LKM_HACKING.html
      Keywords: syscalls, intercept, hide, abuse, symbol table.
      Description: Interesting paper on how to abuse the Linux kernel in
      order to intercept and modify syscalls, make
      files/directories/processes invisible, become root, hijack ttys,
      write kernel modules based virus… and solutions for admins to
      avoid all those abuses.
      Notes: For 2.0.x kernels. Gives guidances to port it to 2.2.x
      kernels.

      BOOKS: (Not on-line)

    • Title: “Linux Device Drivers”
      Author: Alessandro Rubini.
      Publisher: O’Reilly & Associates.
      Date: 1998.
      Pages: 439.
      ISBN: 1-56592-292-1

    • Title: “Linux Device Drivers, 2nd Edition”
      Author: Alessandro Rubini and Jonathan Corbet.
      Publisher: O’Reilly & Associates.
      Date: 2001.
      Pages: 586.
      ISBN: 0-59600-008-1
      Notes: Further information in
      http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/linuxdrive2/

    • Title: “Linux Device Drivers, 3nd Edition”
      Authors: Jonathan Corbet, Alessandro Rubini, and Greg Kroah-Hartman
      Publisher: O’Reilly & Associates.
      Date: 2005.
      Pages: 636.
      ISBN: 0-596-00590-3
      Notes: Further information in
      http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/linuxdrive3/
      PDF format, URL: http://lwn.net/Kernel/LDD3/

    • Title: “Linux Kernel Internals”
      Author: Michael Beck.
      Publisher: Addison-Wesley.
      Date: 1997.
      ISBN: 0-201-33143-8 (second edition)

    • Title: “The Design of the UNIX Operating System”
      Author: Maurice J. Bach.
      Publisher: Prentice Hall.
      Date: 1986.
      Pages: 471.
      ISBN: 0-13-201757-1

    • Title: “The Design and Implementation of the 4.3 BSD UNIX
      Operating System”
      Author: Samuel J. Leffler, Marshall Kirk McKusick, Michael J.
      Karels, John S. Quarterman.
      Publisher: Addison-Wesley.
      Date: 1989 (reprinted with corrections on October, 1990).
      ISBN: 0-201-06196-1

    • Title: “The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD UNIX
      Operating System”
      Author: Marshall Kirk McKusick, Keith Bostic, Michael J. Karels,
      John S. Quarterman.
      Publisher: Addison-Wesley.
      Date: 1996.
      ISBN: 0-201-54979-4

    • Title: “Programmation Linux 2.0 API systeme et fonctionnement du
      noyau”
      Author: Remy Card, Eric Dumas, Franck Mevel.
      Publisher: Eyrolles.
      Date: 1997.
      Pages: 520.
      ISBN: 2-212-08932-5
      Notes: French.

    • Title: “Unix internals – the new frontiers”
      Author: Uresh Vahalia.
      Publisher: Prentice Hall.
      Date: 1996.
      Pages: 600.
      ISBN: 0-13-101908-2

    • Title: “The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD UNIX
      Operating System”
      Author: Marshall Kirk McKusick, Keith Bostic, Michael J. Karels,
      John S. Quarterman.
      Publisher: Addison-Wesley.
      Date: 1996.
      ISBN: 0-201-54979-4

    • Title: “Programming for the real world - POSIX.4”
      Author: Bill O. Gallmeister.
      Publisher: O’Reilly & Associates, Inc..
      Date: 1995.
      Pages: ???.
      ISBN: I-56592-074-0
      Notes: Though not being directly about Linux, Linux aims to be
      POSIX. Good reference.

    • Title: “UNIX Systems for Modern Architectures: Symmetric
      Multiprocesssing and Caching for Kernel Programmers”
      Author: Curt Schimmel.
      Publisher: Addison Wesley.
      Date: June, 1994.
      Pages: 432.
      ISBN: 0-201-63338-8

    • Title: “The Design and Implementation of the 4.3 BSD UNIX
      Operating System”
      Author: Samuel J. Leffler, Marshall Kirk McKusick, Michael J.
      Karels, John S. Quarterman.
      Publisher: Addison-Wesley.
      Date: 1989 (reprinted with corrections on October, 1990).
      ISBN: 0-201-06196-1

    • Title: “The Design of the UNIX Operating System”
      Author: Maurice J. Bach.
      Publisher: Prentice Hall.
      Date: 1986.
      Pages: 471.
      ISBN: 0-13-201757-1

      MISCELLANEOUS:

    • Name: linux/Documentation
      Author: Many.
      URL: Just look inside your kernel sources.
      Keywords: anything, DocBook.
      Description: Documentation that comes with the kernel sources,
      inside the Documentation directory. Some pages from this document
      (including this document itself) have been moved there, and might
      be more up to date than the web version.

    • Name: “Linux Source Driver”
      URL: http://lsd.linux.cz
      Keywords: Browsing source code.
      Description: “Linux Source Driver (LSD) is an application, which
      can make browsing source codes of Linux kernel easier than you can
      imagine. You can select between multiple versions of kernel (e.g.
      0.01, 1.0.0, 2.0.33, 2.0.34pre13, 2.0.0, 2.1.101 etc.). With LSD
      you can search Linux kernel (fulltext, macros, types, functions
      and variables) and LSD can generate patches for you on the fly
      (files, directories or kernel)”.

    • Name: “Linux Kernel Source Reference”
      Author: Thomas Graichen.
      URL: http://innominate.org/~graichen/projects/lksr/
      Keywords: CVS, web, cvsweb, browsing source code.
      Description: Web interface to a CVS server with the kernel
      sources. “Here you can have a look at any file of the Linux kernel
      sources of any version starting from 1.0 up to the (daily updated)
      current version available. Also you can check the differences
      between two versions of a file”.

    • Name: “Cross-Referencing Linux”
      URL: http://lxr.linux.no/source/
      Keywords: Browsing source code.
      Description: Another web-based Linux kernel source code browser.
      Lots of cross references to variables and functions. You can see
      where they are defined and where they are used.

    • Name: “Linux Weekly News”
      URL: http://lwn.net
      Keywords: latest kernel news.
      Description: The title says it all. There’s a fixed kernel section
      summarizing developers’ work, bug fixes, new features and versions
      produced during the week. Published every Thursday.

    • Name: “Kernel Traffic”
      URL: http://kt.zork.net/kernel-traffic/
      Keywords: linux-kernel mailing list, weekly kernel news.
      Description: Weekly newsletter covering the most relevant
      discussions of the linux-kernel mailing list.

    • Name: “CuTTiNG.eDGe.LiNuX”
      URL: http://edge.kernelnotes.org
      Keywords: changelist.
      Description: Site which provides the changelist for every kernel
      release. What’s new, what’s better, what’s changed. Myrdraal reads
      the patches and describes them. Pointers to the patches are there,
      too.

    • Name: “New linux-kernel Mailing List FAQ”
      URL: http://www.tux.org/lkml/
      Keywords: linux-kernel mailing list FAQ.
      Description: linux-kernel is a mailing list for developers to
      communicate. This FAQ builds on the previous linux-kernel mailing
      list FAQ maintained by Frohwalt Egerer, who no longer maintains
      it. Read it to see how to join the mailing list. Dozens of
      interesting questions regarding the list, Linux, developers (who
      is …?), terms (what is…?) are answered here too. Just read it.

    • Name: “Linux Virtual File System”
      Author: Peter J. Braam.
      URL: http://www.coda.cs.cmu.edu/doc/talks/linuxvfs/
      Keywords: slides, VFS, inode, superblock, dentry, dcache.
      Description: Set of slides, presumably from a presentation on the
      Linux VFS layer. Covers version 2.1.x, with dentries and the
      dcache.

    • Name: “Gary’s Encyclopedia - The Linux Kernel”
      Author: Gary (I suppose…).
      URL: http://slencyclopedia.berlios.de/index.html
      Keywords: linux, community, everything!
      Description: Gary’s Encyclopedia exists to allow the rapid finding
      of documentation and other information of interest to GNU/Linux
      users. It has about 4000 links to external pages in 150 major
      categories. This link is for kernel-specific links, documents,
      sites… This list is now hosted by developer.Berlios.de,
      but seems not to have been updated since sometime in 1999.

    • Name: “The home page of Linux-MM”
      Author: The Linux-MM team.
      URL: http://linux-mm.org/
      Keywords: memory management, Linux-MM, mm patches, TODO, docs,
      mailing list.
      Description: Site devoted to Linux Memory Management development.
      Memory related patches, HOWTOs, links, mm developers… Don’t miss
      it if you are interested in memory management development!

    • Name: “Kernel Newbies IRC Channel”
      URL: http://www.kernelnewbies.org
      Keywords: IRC, newbies, channel, asking doubts.
      Description: #kernelnewbies on irc.openprojects.net. From the web
      page: “#kernelnewbies is an IRC network dedicated to the ‘newbie’
      kernel hacker. The audience mostly consists of people who are
      learning about the kernel, working on kernel projects or
      professional kernel hackers that want to help less seasoned kernel
      people. […] #kernelnewbies is on the Open Projects IRC Network,
      try irc.openprojects.net or irc..openprojects.net as your
      server and then /join #kernelnewbies”. It also hosts articles,
      documents, FAQs…

    • Name: “linux-kernel mailing list archives and search engines”
      URL: http://vger.kernel.org/vger-lists.html
      URL: http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/index.html
      URL: http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel
      URL: http://groups.google.com/group/mlist.linux.kernel
      URL: http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/linux/linux-kernel/
      URL: http://www.lib.uaa.alaska.edu/linux-kernel/
      Keywords: linux-kernel, archives, search.
      Description: Some of the linux-kernel mailing list archivers. If
      you have a better/another one, please let me know.


    Document last updated on Sat 2005-NOV-19