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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
Other Books You May Enjoy
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Index

Understanding and accessing the kernel task structure

As you have learned by now, every single user and kernel space thread is internally represented within the Linux kernel by a metadata structure containing all its attributes – the task structure. The task structure is represented within the kernel code here: include/linux/sched.h:struct task_struct.

To view any version of the kernel code online, a superb (searchable) system is in place here: https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/latest/source. For the 6.1.25 LTS kernel release, for example, here’s the task structure definition: https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/v6.1.25/source/include/linux/sched.h#L737.

It’s often, unfortunately, referred to as the “process descriptor,” causing no end of confusion! Thankfully, the phrase task structure is so much better; it represents a runnable task – in effect, a thread.

So, there we have it: in the Linux design, every process consists...

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Linux Kernel Programming
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