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Linux Kernel Programming

Linux Kernel Programming - Second Edition

By : Kaiwan N. Billimoria
4.8 (33)
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Linux Kernel Programming

Linux Kernel Programming

4.8 (33)
By: Kaiwan N. Billimoria

Overview of this book

The 2nd Edition of Linux Kernel Programming is an updated, comprehensive guide for those new to Linux kernel development. Built around the latest 6.1 Long-Term Support (LTS) Linux kernel, which is maintained until December 2026, this edition explores its key features and enhancements. Additionally, with the Civil Infrastructure Project extending support for the 6.1 Super LTS (SLTS) kernel until August 2033, this book will remain relevant for years to come. You'll begin this exciting journey by learning how to build the kernel from source. Step by step, you will then learn how to write your first kernel module by leveraging the kernel's powerful Loadable Kernel Module (LKM) framework. With this foundation, you will delve into key kernel internals topics including Linux kernel architecture, memory management, and CPU (task) scheduling. You'll finish with understanding the deep issues of concurrency, and gain insight into how they can be addressed with various synchronization/locking technologies (for example, mutexes, spinlocks, atomic/refcount operators, rw-spinlocks and even lock-free technologies such as per-CPU and RCU). By the end of this book, you'll build a strong understanding of the fundamentals to writing the Linux kernel and kernel module code that can straight away be used in real-world projects and products.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
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14
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15
Index

Using the spinlock

In the Determining which lock to use – in practice section, you learned – practically speaking – when to use the spinlock instead of the mutex lock and vice versa. For convenience, we have reproduced the key statements we provided previously here:

  • Is the critical section running in an atomic (for example, interrupt) context, or in process context where it cannot sleep? Use the spinlock.
  • Is the critical section running in process context and is sleep or blocking I/O in the critical section possible? Use the mutex lock.

In this section, we shall consider that you’ve now decided to use the spinlock.

Spinlock – simple usage

For all the spinlock APIs, you must include the relevant header file, that is, #include <linux/spinlock.h>.

Similar to the mutex lock, you must declare and initialize the spinlock to the unlocked state before use. The spinlock is an “object” that’s...

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