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Index of Documentation for People Interested in Writing and/or
Understanding the Linux Kernel.
Juan-Mariano de Goyeneche < jmseyas@dit.upm.es>
/*
* The latest version of this document may be found at:
* http://www.dit.upm.es/~jmseyas/linux/kernel/hackers-docs.html
*/
The need for a document like this one became apparent in the
linux-kernel mailing list as the same questions, asking for pointers
to information, appeared again and again.
Fortunately, as more and more people get to GNU/Linux, more and more
get interested in the Kernel. But reading the sources is not always
enough. It is easy to understand the code, but miss the concepts, the
philosophy and design decisions behind this code.
Unfortunately, not many documents are available for beginners to
start. And, even if they exist, there was no "well-known" place which
kept track of them. These lines try to cover this lack. All documents
available on line known by the author are listed, while some reference
books are also mentioned.
PLEASE, if you know any paper not listed here or write a new document,
send me an e-mail, and I'll include a reference to it here. Any
corrections, ideas or comments are also welcomed.
The papers that follow are listed in no particular order. All are
cataloged with the following fields: the document's "Title", the
"Author"/s, the "URL" where they can be found, some "Keywords" helpful
when searching for specific topics, and a brief "Description" of the
Document.
Enjoy!
ON-LINE DOCS:
* Title: "The Linux Kernel"
Author: David A. Rusling.
URL: http://sunsite.unc.edu/linux/LDP/tlk/tlk.html
Keywords: everything!, book.
Description: On line, 200 pages book describing most aspects of
the Linux Kernel. Probably, the first reference for beginners.
Lots of illustrations explaining data structures use and
relationships in the purest Richard W. Stevens' style. Contents:
"1.-Hardware Basics, 2.-Software Basics, 3.-Memory Management,
4.-Processes, 5.-Interprocess Communication Mechanisms, 6.-PCI,
7.-Interrupts and Interrupt Handling, 8.-Device Drivers, 9.-The
File system, 10.-Networks, 11.-Kernel Mechanisms, 12.-Modules,
13.-The Linux Kernel Sources, A.-Linux Data Structures, B.-The
Alpha AXP Processor, C.-Useful Web and FTP Sites, D.-The GNU
General Public License, Glossary". In short: a must have.
* Title: "The Linux Kernel Hackers' Guide"
Author: Michael K.Johnson and others.
URL: http://khg.redhat.com/HyperNews/get/khg.html
Keywords: everything!
Description: No more Postscript book-like version. Only HTML now.
Many people have contributed. The interface is similar to web
available mailing lists archives. You can find some articles and
then some mails asking questions about them and/or complementing
previous contributions. A little bit anarchic in this aspect, but
with some valuable information in some cases.
* Title: "Conceptual Architecture of the Linux Kernel"
Author: Ivan T. Bowman.
URL: http://plg.uwaterloo.ca/~itbowman/papers/CS746G-a1.html
Keywords: conceptual software arquitecture, extracted design,
reverse engineering, system structure.
Description: Conceptual software arquitecture of the Linux kernel,
automatically extracted from the source code. Very detailed. Good
figures. Gives good overall kernel understanding.
* Title: "Concrete Architecture of the Linux Kernel"
Author: Ivan T. Bowman, Saheem Siddiqi, and Meyer C. Tanuan.
URL: http://plg.uwaterloo.ca/~itbowman/papers/CS746G-a2.html
Keywords: concrete arquitecture, extracted design, reverse
engineering, system structure, dependencies.
Description: Concrete arquitecture of the Linux kernel,
automatically extracted from the source code. Very detailed. Good
figures. Gives good overall kernel understanding. This papers
focus on lower details than its predecessor (files, variables...).
* Title: "Linux as a Case Study: Its Extracted Software
Architecture"
Author: Ivan T. Bowman, Richard C. Holt and Neil V. Brewster.
URL: http://plg.uwaterloo.ca/~itbowman/papers/linuxcase.html
Keywords: software architecture, architecture recovery,
redocumentation.
Description: Paper appeared at ICSE'99, Los Angeles, May 16-22,
1999. A mixture of the previous two documents from the same
author.
* Title: "Overview of the Virtual File System"
Author: Richard Gooch.
URL: http://www.atnf.csiro.au/~rgooch/linux/vfs.txt
Keywords: VFS, File System, mounting filesystems, opening files,
dentries,
dcache. Description: Brief introduction to the Linux Virtual File
System. What is it, how it works, operations taken when opening a
file or mounting a file system and description of important data
structures explaining the purpose of each of their entries.
* Title: "The Linux RAID-1, 4, 5 Code"
Author: Ingo Molnar, Gadi Oxman and Miguel de Icaza.
URL: http://www.ssc.com/lj/issue44/2391.html
Keywords: RAID, MD driver.
Description: Linux Journal Kernel Korner article. Here is it's
abstract: "A description of the implementation of the RAID-1,
RAID-4 and RAID-5 personalities of the MD device driver in the
Linux kernel, providing users with high performance and reliable,
secondary-storage capability using software".
* Title: "Dynamic Kernels: Modularized Device Drivers"
Author: Alessandro Rubini.
URL: http://www.ssc.com/lj/issue23/1219.html
Keywords: device driver, module, loading/unloading modules,
allocating resources.
Description: Linux Journal Kernel Korner article. Here is it's
abstract: "This is the first of a series of four articles
co-authored by Alessandro Rubini and Georg Zezchwitz which present
a practical approach to writing Linux device drivers as kernel
loadable modules. This installment presents an introduction to the
topic, preparing the reader to understand next month's
installment".
* Title: "Dynamic Kernels: Discovery"
Author: Alessandro Rubini.
URL: http://www.ssc.com/lj/issue24/kk24.html
Keywords: character driver, init_module, clean_up module,
autodetection,
mayor number, minor number, file operations, open(), close().
Description: Linux Journal Kernel Korner article. Here is it's
abstract: "This article, the second of four, introduces part of
the actual code to create custom module implementing a character
device driver. It describes the code for module initialization and
cleanup, as well as the open() and close() system calls".
* Title: "The Devil's in the Details"
Author: Georg v. Zezschwitz and Alessandro Rubini.
URL: http://www.ssc.com/lj/issue25/kk25.html
Keywords: read(), write(), select(), ioctl(), blocking/non
blocking mode, interrupt handler.
Description: Linux Journal Kernel Korner article. Here is it's
abstract: "This article, the third of four on writing character
device drivers, introduces concepts of reading, writing, and using
ioctl-calls".
* Title: "Dissecting Interrupts and Browsing DMA"
Author: Alessandro Rubini and Georg v. Zezschwitz.
URL: http://www.ssc.com/lj/issue26/interrupt.html
Keywords: interrupts, irqs, DMA, bottom halves, task queues.
Description: Linux Journal Kernel Korner article. Here is it's
abstract: "This is the fourth in a series of articles about
writing character device drivers as loadable kernel modules. This
month, we further investigate the field of interrupt handling.
Though it is conceptually simple, practical limitations and
constraints make this an ``interesting'' part of device driver
writing, and several different facilities have been provided for
different situations. We also investigate the complex topic of
DMA".
* Title: "Network Buffers And Memory Management"
Author: Alan Cox.
URL: http://www.ssc.com/lj/issue30/kk30.html
Keywords: sk_buffs, network devices, protocol/link layer
variables, network devices flags, transmit, receive,
configuration, multicast.
Description: Linux Journal Kernel Korner. Here is the abstract:
"Writing a network device driver for Linux is fundamentally
simple---most of the complexity (other than talking to the
hardware) involves managing network packets in memory".
* Title: "An Introduction to the Linux 1.3.x Networking Code"
Author: Vipul Gupta.
URL: http://anchor.cs.binghamton.edu/courses/cs628/linux-net.html
Keywords: files, sk_buffs.
Description: A short description of files under the net/
directory. Each file has a one or two lines paragraph description.
sk_buffs explained, too, with some beautiful pictures. A little
bit outdated.
* Title: "Linux ioctl() Primer"
Author: Vipul Gupta.
URL: http://anchor.cs.binghamton.edu/courses/cs628/ioctl.html
Keywords: ioctl, socket.
Description: Little description and examples on the use and
implementation of the ioctl() system call. A little bit biased
towards sockets.
* Title: "Writing Linux Device Drivers"
Author: Michael K. Johnson.
URL: http://www.redhat.com/~johnsonm/devices.html
Keywords: files, VFS, file operations, kernel interface, character
vs block devices, I/O access, hardware interrupts, DMA, access to
user memory, memory allocation, timers.
Description: Introductory 50-minutes (sic) tutorial on writing
device drivers. 12 pages written by the same author of the "Kernel
Hackers' Guide" which give a very good overview of the topic.
* Title: "The Venus kernel interface"
Author: Peter J. Braam.
URL:
http://www.coda.cs.cmu.edu/doc/html/kernel-venus-protocol.html
Keywords: coda, filesystem, venus, cache manager.
Description: "This document describes the communication between
Venus and kernel level file system code needed for the operation
of the Coda filesystem. This version document is meant to describe
the current interface (version 1.0) as well as improvements we
envisage".
* Title: "Programming PCI-Devices under Linux"
Author: Claus Schroeter.
URL:
ftp://ftp.llp.fu-berlin.de/pub/linux/LINUX-LAB/whitepapers/pcip.ps
.gz
Keywords: PCI, device, busmastering.
Description: 6 pages tutorial on PCI programming under Linux.
Gives the basic concepts on the architecture of the PCI subsystem,
as long as basic functions and macros to read/write the devices
and perform busmastering.
* Title: "Writing Character Device Driver for Linux"
Author: R. Baruch and C. Schroeter.
URL:
ftp://ftp.llp.fu-berlin.de/pub/linux/LINUX-LAB/whitepapers/drivers
.ps.gz
Keywords: character device drivers, I/O, signals, DMA, accesing
ports in user space, kernel environment.
Description: 68 pages paper on writing character drivers. A little
bit old (1.993, 1.994) although still useful.
* Title: "The Second Extended Filesystem"
Author: Matthew Wilcox.
URL: http://pocket.fluff.org/~mrw/linux/ext2.txt
Keywords: ext2, filesystem.
Description: Description of ext2's blocks, directories, inodes ...
* Title: "Analysis of the Ext2fs structure"
Author: Louis-Dominique Dubeau.
URL: http://step.polymtl.ca/~ldd/ext2fs/ext2fs_toc.html
Keywords: ext2, filesystem, ext2fs.
Description: Description of ext2's blocks, directories, inodes,
bitmaps, invariants ...
* Title: "Kernel API changes from 2.0 to 2.2"
Author: Richard Gooch.
URL:
http://www.atnf.csiro.au/~rgooch/linux/docs/porting-to-2.2.html
Keywords: 2.2, changes.
Description: Kernel functions/structures/variables which changed
from 2.0.x to 2.2.x.
* Title: "Kernel API changes from 2.2 to 2.3"
Author: Richard Gooch.
URL:
http://www.atnf.csiro.au/~rgooch/linux/docs/porting-to-2.2.html
Keywords: 2.3, changes.
Description: Kernel functions/structures/variables which changed
from 2.2.x to 2.3.x.
* Title: "Linux Kernel Module Programming Guide"
Author: Ori Pomerantz.
URL: http://www.linuxdoc.org/LDP/lkmpg/mpg.html
Keywords: modules, GPL book, /proc, ioctls, system calls,
interrupt handlers .
Description: Very nice 92 pages GPL book on the topic of modules
programming. Lots of examples.
* Title: "Device File System (devfs) Overview"
Author: Richard Gooch.
URL: http://www.atnf.csiro.au/~rgooch/linux/docs/devfs.txt
Keywords: filesystem, /dev, devfs, dynamic devices, major/minor
allocation, device management.
Description: Document describing Richard Gooch's controversial
devfs, which allows for dynamic devices, only shows present
devices in /dev, gets rid of major/minor numbers allocation
problems, and allows for hundreds of identical devices (which some
USB systems might demand soon).
* Title: "I/O Event Handling Under Linux"
Author: Richard Gooch.
URL: http://www.atnf.csiro.au/~rgooch/linux/docs/io-events.html
Keywords: IO, I/O, select(2), poll(2), FDs, aio_read(2), readiness
event queues.
Description: From the Introduction: "I/O Event handling is about
how your Operating System allows you to manage a large number of
open files (file descriptors in UNIX/POSIX, or FDs) in your
application. You want the OS to notify you when FDs become active
(have data ready to be read or are ready for writing). Ideally you
want a mechanism that is scalable. This means a large number of
inactive FDs cost very little in memory and CPU time to manage".
BOOKS: (Not on-line)
* Title: "Linux Device Drivers"
Author: Alessandro Rubini.
Publisher: O'Reilly &Associates.
Date: 1998.
ISBN: 1-56592-292-1
* Title: "Linux Kernel Internals"
Author: Michael Beck.
Publisher: Addison-Wesley.
Date: 1997.
ISBN: 0-201-33143-8 (second edition)
* Title: "The Design of the UNIX Operating System"
Author: Maurice J. Bach.
Publisher: Prentice Hall.
Date: 1986.
Pages: 471.
ISBN: 0-13-201757-1
* Title: "The Design and Implementation of the 4.3 BSD UNIX
Operating System"
Author: Samuel J. Leffler, Marshall Kirk McKusick, Michael J.
Karels, John S. Quarterman.
Publisher: Addison-Wesley.
Date: 1989 (reprinted with corrections on October, 1990).
ISBN: 0-201-06196-1
* Title: "The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD UNIX
Operating System"
Author: Marshall Kirk McKusick, Keith Bostic, Michael J. Karels,
John S. Quarterman.
Publisher: Addison-Wesley.
Date: 1996.
ISBN: 0-201-54979-4
* Title: "Programmation Linux 2.0 API systeme et fonctionnement du
noyau"
Author: Remy Card, Eric Dumas, Franck Mevel.
Publisher: Eyrolles.
Date: 1997.
Pages: 520.
ISBN: 2-212-08932-5
Notes: French.
* Title: "The Linux Kernel Book"
Author: Remy Card, Eric Dumas, Franck Mevel.
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons.
Date: 1998.
ISBN: 0-471-98141-9
Notes: English translation.
* Title: "Linux 2.0"
Author: Remy Card, Eric Dumas, Franck Mevel.
Publisher: Gestión 2000.
Date: 1997.
Pages: 501.
ISBN: 8-480-88208-5
Notes: Spanish translation.
* Title: "Unix internals -- the new frontiers"
Author: Uresh Vahalia.
Publisher: Prentice Hall.
Date: 1996.
Pages: 600.
ISBN: 0-13-101908-2
* Title: "Linux Core Kernel Commentary. Guide to Insider's Knowledge
on the Core Kernel od the Linux Code"
Author: Scott Maxwell.
Publisher: ???.
Date: 1999.
Pages: 592.
ISBN: 1-57610-469-9
Notes: CD-ROM included.
MISCELLANEOUS:
* Name: Linux Source Driver.
URL: http://lsd.linux.cz
Keywords: Browsing source code.
Description: "Linux Source Driver (LSD) is an application, which
can make browsing source codes of Linux kernel easier than you can
imagine. You can select between multiple versions of kernel (e.g.
0.01, 1.0.0, 2.0.33, 2.0.34pre13, 2.0.0, 2.1.101 etc.). With LSD
you can search Linux kernel (fulltext, macros, types, functions
and variables) and LSD can generate patches for you on the fly
(files, directories or kernel)".
* Name: Cross-Referencing Linux.
URL: http://lxr.linux.no/source/
Keywords: Browsing source code.
Description: Another web-based Linux kernel source code browser.
Lots of cross references to variables and functions. You can see
where they are defined and where they are used.
* Name: Linux Weekly News.
URL: http://lwn.net
Keywords: latest kernel news.
Description: The title says it all. There's a fixed kernel section
summarizing developers' work, bug fixes, new features and versions
produced during the week. Published every Thursday.
* Name: Kernel Traffic.
URL: http://kt.linuxcare.com
Keywords: linux-kernel mailing list, weekly kernel news.
Description: Weekly newsletter covering the most relevant
discussions of the linux-kernel mailing list.
* Name: CuTTiNG.eDGe.LiNuX.
URL: http://edge.kernelnotes.org
Keywords: changelist.
Description: Site which provides the changelist for every kernel
release. What's new, what's better, what's changed. Myrdraal reads
the patches and describes them. Pointers to the patches are there,
too.
* Name: New linux-kernel Mailing List FAQ.
URL: Original site:
http://www.altern.org/andrebalsa/doc/lkml-faq.html
URL: U.S. mirror site:
http://www.ececs.uc.edu/~rreilova/linux/lkml-faq.html
Keywords: linux-kernel mailing list FAQ.
Description: linux-kernel is a mailing list for developers to
communicate. This FAQ builds on the previous linux-kernel mailing
list FAQ maintained by Frohwalt Egerer, who no longer maintains
it. Read it to see how to join the mailing list. Dozens of
interesting questions regarding the list, Linux, developers (who
is ...?), terms (what is...?) are answered here too. Just read it.
* Name: "Linux Virtual File System"
Author: Peter J. Braam.
URL: http://www.coda.cs.cmu.edu/doc/talks/linuxvfs
Keywords: slides, VFS, inode, superblock, dentry, dcache.
Description: Set of slides, presumably from a presentation on the
Linux VFS layer. Covers version 2.1.x, with dentries and the
dcache.
_________________________________________________________________
Document last updated on Tue Nov 30 11:20:00 CET 1999
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