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)

Summary

In this chapter, the reader has been taken through important ideas on the design and implementation of the modern POSIX capabilities model (on the Linux OS). Among other things, we have covered what POSIX capabilities are, and, crucially, why they are important, especially from the viewpoint of security. The embedding of capabilities into a runtime process or binary executable was also covered.

The whole intent of the discussion, which started in the previous chapter, is to open the application developer's eyes to key security issues that arise when developing code. We hope we have left you, the reader, with a feeling of urgency, and of course the knowledge and tools to deal with security in a modern manner. Today's applications have to not just work; they have to be written with security in mind! or else...