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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

Understanding and using the kernel slab allocator

As seen in the first section of this chapter, Introducing kernel memory allocators, the slab allocator or slab cache is layered above the page allocator (or BSA; refer back to Figure 8.1). The slab allocator justifies its very existence with two primary ideas or purposes:

  • Object caching: Here, it serves as a cache of common “objects”; these are the frequently allocated data structures within the Linux kernel. This idea – which we’ll of course expand upon – has the slab cache allocate (and subsequently freeing) these objects on demand, resulting in higher performance.
  • Mitigate the high wastage (internal fragmentation) of the page allocator by providing small, conveniently sized caches, of various sizes that are typically fragments of a page.

Let’s now examine these ideas in a more detailed manner.

The object caching idea

Okay, we begin with the first of these...

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Linux Kernel Programming
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