Book Image

Hands-On System Programming with Linux

By : Kaiwan N. Billimoria, Tigran Aivazian
Book Image

Hands-On System Programming with Linux

By: Kaiwan N. Billimoria, Tigran Aivazian

Overview of this book

The Linux OS and its embedded and server applications are critical components of today’s software infrastructure in a decentralized, networked universe. The industry's demand for proficient Linux developers is only rising with time. Hands-On System Programming with Linux gives you a solid theoretical base and practical industry-relevant descriptions, and covers the Linux system programming domain. It delves into the art and science of Linux application programming— system architecture, process memory and management, signaling, timers, pthreads, and file IO. This book goes beyond the use API X to do Y approach; it explains the concepts and theories required to understand programming interfaces and design decisions, the tradeoffs made by experienced developers when using them, and the rationale behind them. Troubleshooting tips and techniques are included in the concluding chapter. By the end of this book, you will have gained essential conceptual design knowledge and hands-on experience working with Linux system programming interfaces.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)

Linux System Architecture

This chapter informs the reader about the system architecture of the Linux ecosystem. It first conveys the elegant Unix philosophy and design fundamentals, then delves into the details of the Linux system architecture. The importance of the ABI, CPU privilege levels, and how modern operating systems (OSes) exploit them, along with the Linux system architecture's layering, and how Linux is a monolithic architecture, will be covered. The (simplified) flow of a system call API, as well as kernel-code execution contexts, are key points.

In this chapter, the reader will be taken through the following topics:

  • The Unix philosophy in a nutshell
  • Architecture preliminaries
  • Linux architecture layers
  • Linux—a monolithic OS
  • Kernel execution contexts

Along the way, we'll use simple examples to make the key philosophical and architectural points clear.