kernel-docs.txt 35 KB

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  1. Index of Documentation for People Interested in Writing and/or
  2. Understanding the Linux Kernel.
  3. Juan-Mariano de Goyeneche <jmseyas@dit.upm.es>
  4. /*
  5. * The latest version of this document may be found at:
  6. * http://www.dit.upm.es/~jmseyas/linux/kernel/hackers-docs.html
  7. */
  8. The need for a document like this one became apparent in the
  9. linux-kernel mailing list as the same questions, asking for pointers
  10. to information, appeared again and again.
  11. Fortunately, as more and more people get to GNU/Linux, more and more
  12. get interested in the Kernel. But reading the sources is not always
  13. enough. It is easy to understand the code, but miss the concepts, the
  14. philosophy and design decisions behind this code.
  15. Unfortunately, not many documents are available for beginners to
  16. start. And, even if they exist, there was no "well-known" place which
  17. kept track of them. These lines try to cover this lack. All documents
  18. available on line known by the author are listed, while some reference
  19. books are also mentioned.
  20. PLEASE, if you know any paper not listed here or write a new document,
  21. send me an e-mail, and I'll include a reference to it here. Any
  22. corrections, ideas or comments are also welcomed.
  23. The papers that follow are listed in no particular order. All are
  24. cataloged with the following fields: the document's "Title", the
  25. "Author"/s, the "URL" where they can be found, some "Keywords" helpful
  26. when searching for specific topics, and a brief "Description" of the
  27. Document.
  28. Enjoy!
  29. ON-LINE DOCS:
  30. * Title: "Linux Device Drivers, Third Edition"
  31. Author: Jonathan Corbet, Alessandro Rubini, Greg Kroah-Hartman
  32. URL: http://lwn.net/Kernel/LDD3/
  33. Description: A 600-page book covering the (2.6.10) driver
  34. programming API and kernel hacking in general. Available under the
  35. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.
  36. * Title: "The Linux Kernel"
  37. Author: David A. Rusling.
  38. URL: http://www.tldp.org/LDP/tlk/tlk.html
  39. Keywords: everything!, book.
  40. Description: On line, 200 pages book describing most aspects of
  41. the Linux Kernel. Probably, the first reference for beginners.
  42. Lots of illustrations explaining data structures use and
  43. relationships in the purest Richard W. Stevens' style. Contents:
  44. "1.-Hardware Basics, 2.-Software Basics, 3.-Memory Management,
  45. 4.-Processes, 5.-Interprocess Communication Mechanisms, 6.-PCI,
  46. 7.-Interrupts and Interrupt Handling, 8.-Device Drivers, 9.-The
  47. File system, 10.-Networks, 11.-Kernel Mechanisms, 12.-Modules,
  48. 13.-The Linux Kernel Sources, A.-Linux Data Structures, B.-The
  49. Alpha AXP Processor, C.-Useful Web and FTP Sites, D.-The GNU
  50. General Public License, Glossary". In short: a must have.
  51. * Title: "Linux Device Drivers, 2nd Edition"
  52. Author: Alessandro Rubini and Jonathan Corbet.
  53. URL: http://www.xml.com/ldd/chapter/book/index.html
  54. Keywords: device drivers, modules, debugging, memory, hardware,
  55. interrupt handling, char drivers, block drivers, kmod, mmap, DMA,
  56. buses.
  57. Description: O'Reilly's popular book, now also on-line under the
  58. GNU Free Documentation License.
  59. Notes: You can also buy it in paper-form from O'Reilly. See below
  60. under BOOKS (Not on-line).
  61. * Title: "Conceptual Architecture of the Linux Kernel"
  62. Author: Ivan T. Bowman.
  63. URL: http://plg.uwaterloo.ca/~itbowman/papers/CS746G-a1.html
  64. Keywords: conceptual software arquitecture, extracted design,
  65. reverse engineering, system structure.
  66. Description: Conceptual software arquitecture of the Linux kernel,
  67. automatically extracted from the source code. Very detailed. Good
  68. figures. Gives good overall kernel understanding.
  69. * Title: "Concrete Architecture of the Linux Kernel"
  70. Author: Ivan T. Bowman, Saheem Siddiqi, and Meyer C. Tanuan.
  71. URL: http://plg.uwaterloo.ca/~itbowman/papers/CS746G-a2.html
  72. Keywords: concrete architecture, extracted design, reverse
  73. engineering, system structure, dependencies.
  74. Description: Concrete architecture of the Linux kernel,
  75. automatically extracted from the source code. Very detailed. Good
  76. figures. Gives good overall kernel understanding. This papers
  77. focus on lower details than its predecessor (files, variables...).
  78. * Title: "Linux as a Case Study: Its Extracted Software
  79. Architecture"
  80. Author: Ivan T. Bowman, Richard C. Holt and Neil V. Brewster.
  81. URL: http://plg.uwaterloo.ca/~itbowman/papers/linuxcase.html
  82. Keywords: software architecture, architecture recovery,
  83. redocumentation.
  84. Description: Paper appeared at ICSE'99, Los Angeles, May 16-22,
  85. 1999. A mixture of the previous two documents from the same
  86. author.
  87. * Title: "Overview of the Virtual File System"
  88. Author: Richard Gooch.
  89. URL: http://www.atnf.csiro.au/~rgooch/linux/vfs.txt
  90. Keywords: VFS, File System, mounting filesystems, opening files,
  91. dentries, dcache.
  92. Description: Brief introduction to the Linux Virtual File System.
  93. What is it, how it works, operations taken when opening a file or
  94. mounting a file system and description of important data
  95. structures explaining the purpose of each of their entries.
  96. * Title: "The Linux RAID-1, 4, 5 Code"
  97. Author: Ingo Molnar, Gadi Oxman and Miguel de Icaza.
  98. URL: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=2391
  99. Keywords: RAID, MD driver.
  100. Description: Linux Journal Kernel Korner article. Here is it's
  101. abstract: "A description of the implementation of the RAID-1,
  102. RAID-4 and RAID-5 personalities of the MD device driver in the
  103. Linux kernel, providing users with high performance and reliable,
  104. secondary-storage capability using software".
  105. * Title: "Dynamic Kernels: Modularized Device Drivers"
  106. Author: Alessandro Rubini.
  107. URL: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=1219
  108. Keywords: device driver, module, loading/unloading modules,
  109. allocating resources.
  110. Description: Linux Journal Kernel Korner article. Here is it's
  111. abstract: "This is the first of a series of four articles
  112. co-authored by Alessandro Rubini and Georg Zezchwitz which present
  113. a practical approach to writing Linux device drivers as kernel
  114. loadable modules. This installment presents an introduction to the
  115. topic, preparing the reader to understand next month's
  116. installment".
  117. * Title: "Dynamic Kernels: Discovery"
  118. Author: Alessandro Rubini.
  119. URL: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=1220
  120. Keywords: character driver, init_module, clean_up module,
  121. autodetection, mayor number, minor number, file operations,
  122. open(), close().
  123. Description: Linux Journal Kernel Korner article. Here is it's
  124. abstract: "This article, the second of four, introduces part of
  125. the actual code to create custom module implementing a character
  126. device driver. It describes the code for module initialization and
  127. cleanup, as well as the open() and close() system calls".
  128. * Title: "The Devil's in the Details"
  129. Author: Georg v. Zezschwitz and Alessandro Rubini.
  130. URL: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=1221
  131. Keywords: read(), write(), select(), ioctl(), blocking/non
  132. blocking mode, interrupt handler.
  133. Description: Linux Journal Kernel Korner article. Here is it's
  134. abstract: "This article, the third of four on writing character
  135. device drivers, introduces concepts of reading, writing, and using
  136. ioctl-calls".
  137. * Title: "Dissecting Interrupts and Browsing DMA"
  138. Author: Alessandro Rubini and Georg v. Zezschwitz.
  139. URL: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=1222
  140. Keywords: interrupts, irqs, DMA, bottom halves, task queues.
  141. Description: Linux Journal Kernel Korner article. Here is it's
  142. abstract: "This is the fourth in a series of articles about
  143. writing character device drivers as loadable kernel modules. This
  144. month, we further investigate the field of interrupt handling.
  145. Though it is conceptually simple, practical limitations and
  146. constraints make this an ``interesting'' part of device driver
  147. writing, and several different facilities have been provided for
  148. different situations. We also investigate the complex topic of
  149. DMA".
  150. * Title: "Device Drivers Concluded"
  151. Author: Georg v. Zezschwitz.
  152. URL: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=1287
  153. Keywords: address spaces, pages, pagination, page management,
  154. demand loading, swapping, memory protection, memory mapping, mmap,
  155. virtual memory areas (VMAs), vremap, PCI.
  156. Description: Finally, the above turned out into a five articles
  157. series. This latest one's introduction reads: "This is the last of
  158. five articles about character device drivers. In this final
  159. section, Georg deals with memory mapping devices, beginning with
  160. an overall description of the Linux memory management concepts".
  161. * Title: "Network Buffers And Memory Management"
  162. Author: Alan Cox.
  163. URL: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=1312
  164. Keywords: sk_buffs, network devices, protocol/link layer
  165. variables, network devices flags, transmit, receive,
  166. configuration, multicast.
  167. Description: Linux Journal Kernel Korner. Here is the abstract:
  168. "Writing a network device driver for Linux is fundamentally
  169. simple---most of the complexity (other than talking to the
  170. hardware) involves managing network packets in memory".
  171. * Title: "Writing Linux Device Drivers"
  172. Author: Michael K. Johnson.
  173. URL: http://users.evitech.fi/~tk/rtos/writing_linux_device_d.html
  174. Keywords: files, VFS, file operations, kernel interface, character
  175. vs block devices, I/O access, hardware interrupts, DMA, access to
  176. user memory, memory allocation, timers.
  177. Description: Introductory 50-minutes (sic) tutorial on writing
  178. device drivers. 12 pages written by the same author of the "Kernel
  179. Hackers' Guide" which give a very good overview of the topic.
  180. * Title: "The Venus kernel interface"
  181. Author: Peter J. Braam.
  182. URL:
  183. http://www.coda.cs.cmu.edu/doc/html/kernel-venus-protocol.html
  184. Keywords: coda, filesystem, venus, cache manager.
  185. Description: "This document describes the communication between
  186. Venus and kernel level file system code needed for the operation
  187. of the Coda filesystem. This version document is meant to describe
  188. the current interface (version 1.0) as well as improvements we
  189. envisage".
  190. * Title: "Programming PCI-Devices under Linux"
  191. Author: Claus Schroeter.
  192. URL:
  193. ftp://ftp.llp.fu-berlin.de/pub/linux/LINUX-LAB/whitepapers/pcip.ps.gz
  194. Keywords: PCI, device, busmastering.
  195. Description: 6 pages tutorial on PCI programming under Linux.
  196. Gives the basic concepts on the architecture of the PCI subsystem,
  197. as long as basic functions and macros to read/write the devices
  198. and perform busmastering.
  199. * Title: "Writing Character Device Driver for Linux"
  200. Author: R. Baruch and C. Schroeter.
  201. URL:
  202. ftp://ftp.llp.fu-berlin.de/pub/linux/LINUX-LAB/whitepapers/drivers.ps.gz
  203. Keywords: character device drivers, I/O, signals, DMA, accessing
  204. ports in user space, kernel environment.
  205. Description: 68 pages paper on writing character drivers. A little
  206. bit old (1.993, 1.994) although still useful.
  207. * Title: "Design and Implementation of the Second Extended
  208. Filesystem"
  209. Author: Rémy Card, Theodore Ts'o, Stephen Tweedie.
  210. URL: http://web.mit.edu/tytso/www/linux/ext2intro.html
  211. Keywords: ext2, linux fs history, inode, directory, link, devices,
  212. VFS, physical structure, performance, benchmarks, ext2fs library,
  213. ext2fs tools, e2fsck.
  214. Description: Paper written by three of the top ext2 hackers.
  215. Covers Linux filesystems history, ext2 motivation, ext2 features,
  216. design, physical structure on disk, performance, benchmarks,
  217. e2fsck's passes description... A must read!
  218. Notes: This paper was first published in the Proceedings of the
  219. First Dutch International Symposium on Linux, ISBN 90-367-0385-9.
  220. * Title: "Analysis of the Ext2fs structure"
  221. Author: Louis-Dominique Dubeau.
  222. URL: http://www.nondot.org/sabre/os/files/FileSystems/ext2fs/
  223. Keywords: ext2, filesystem, ext2fs.
  224. Description: Description of ext2's blocks, directories, inodes,
  225. bitmaps, invariants...
  226. * Title: "Journaling the Linux ext2fs Filesystem"
  227. Author: Stephen C. Tweedie.
  228. URL:
  229. ftp://ftp.uk.linux.org/pub/linux/sct/fs/jfs/journal-design.ps.gz
  230. Keywords: ext3, journaling.
  231. Description: Excellent 8-pages paper explaining the journaling
  232. capabilities added to ext2 by the author, showing different
  233. problems faced and the alternatives chosen.
  234. * Title: "Kernel API changes from 2.0 to 2.2"
  235. Author: Richard Gooch.
  236. URL:
  237. http://www.atnf.csiro.au/~rgooch/linux/docs/porting-to-2.2.html
  238. Keywords: 2.2, changes.
  239. Description: Kernel functions/structures/variables which changed
  240. from 2.0.x to 2.2.x.
  241. * Title: "Kernel API changes from 2.2 to 2.4"
  242. Author: Richard Gooch.
  243. URL:
  244. http://www.atnf.csiro.au/~rgooch/linux/docs/porting-to-2.4.html
  245. Keywords: 2.4, changes.
  246. Description: Kernel functions/structures/variables which changed
  247. from 2.2.x to 2.4.x.
  248. * Title: "Linux Kernel Module Programming Guide"
  249. Author: Ori Pomerantz.
  250. URL: http://tldp.org/LDP/lkmpg/2.6/html/index.html
  251. Keywords: modules, GPL book, /proc, ioctls, system calls,
  252. interrupt handlers .
  253. Description: Very nice 92 pages GPL book on the topic of modules
  254. programming. Lots of examples.
  255. * Title: "I/O Event Handling Under Linux"
  256. Author: Richard Gooch.
  257. URL: http://www.atnf.csiro.au/~rgooch/linux/docs/io-events.html
  258. Keywords: IO, I/O, select(2), poll(2), FDs, aio_read(2), readiness
  259. event queues.
  260. Description: From the Introduction: "I/O Event handling is about
  261. how your Operating System allows you to manage a large number of
  262. open files (file descriptors in UNIX/POSIX, or FDs) in your
  263. application. You want the OS to notify you when FDs become active
  264. (have data ready to be read or are ready for writing). Ideally you
  265. want a mechanism that is scalable. This means a large number of
  266. inactive FDs cost very little in memory and CPU time to manage".
  267. * Title: "The Kernel Hacking HOWTO"
  268. Author: Various Talented People, and Rusty.
  269. Location: in kernel tree, Documentation/DocBook/kernel-hacking/
  270. (must be built as "make {htmldocs | psdocs | pdfdocs})
  271. Keywords: HOWTO, kernel contexts, deadlock, locking, modules,
  272. symbols, return conventions.
  273. Description: From the Introduction: "Please understand that I
  274. never wanted to write this document, being grossly underqualified,
  275. but I always wanted to read it, and this was the only way. I
  276. simply explain some best practices, and give reading entry-points
  277. into the kernel sources. I avoid implementation details: that's
  278. what the code is for, and I ignore whole tracts of useful
  279. routines. This document assumes familiarity with C, and an
  280. understanding of what the kernel is, and how it is used. It was
  281. originally written for the 2.3 kernels, but nearly all of it
  282. applies to 2.2 too; 2.0 is slightly different".
  283. * Title: "Writing an ALSA Driver"
  284. Author: Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de>
  285. URL: http://www.alsa-project.org/~iwai/writing-an-alsa-driver/index.html
  286. Keywords: ALSA, sound, soundcard, driver, lowlevel, hardware.
  287. Description: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture for developers,
  288. both at kernel and user-level sides. ALSA is the Linux kernel
  289. sound architecture in the 2.6 kernel version.
  290. * Title: "Programming Guide for Linux USB Device Drivers"
  291. Author: Detlef Fliegl.
  292. URL: http://usb.in.tum.de/usbdoc/
  293. Keywords: USB, universal serial bus.
  294. Description: A must-read. From the Preface: "This document should
  295. give detailed information about the current state of the USB
  296. subsystem and its API for USB device drivers. The first section
  297. will deal with the basics of USB devices. You will learn about
  298. different types of devices and their properties. Going into detail
  299. you will see how USB devices communicate on the bus. The second
  300. section gives an overview of the Linux USB subsystem [2] and the
  301. device driver framework. Then the API and its data structures will
  302. be explained step by step. The last section of this document
  303. contains a reference of all API calls and their return codes".
  304. Notes: Beware: the main page states: "This document may not be
  305. published, printed or used in excerpts without explicit permission
  306. of the author". Fortunately, it may still be read...
  307. * Title: "Linux Kernel Mailing List Glossary"
  308. Author: various
  309. URL: http://kernelnewbies.org/glossary/
  310. Keywords: glossary, terms, linux-kernel.
  311. Description: From the introduction: "This glossary is intended as
  312. a brief description of some of the acronyms and terms you may hear
  313. during discussion of the Linux kernel".
  314. * Title: "Linux Kernel Locking HOWTO"
  315. Author: Various Talented People, and Rusty.
  316. Location: in kernel tree, Documentation/DocBook/kernel-locking/
  317. (must be built as "make {htmldocs | psdocs | pdfdocs})
  318. Keywords: locks, locking, spinlock, semaphore, atomic, race
  319. condition, bottom halves, tasklets, softirqs.
  320. Description: The title says it all: document describing the
  321. locking system in the Linux Kernel either in uniprocessor or SMP
  322. systems.
  323. Notes: "It was originally written for the later (>2.3.47) 2.3
  324. kernels, but most of it applies to 2.2 too; 2.0 is slightly
  325. different". Freely redistributable under the conditions of the GNU
  326. General Public License.
  327. * Title: "Global spinlock list and usage"
  328. Author: Rick Lindsley.
  329. URL: http://lse.sourceforge.net/lockhier/global-spin-lock
  330. Keywords: spinlock.
  331. Description: This is an attempt to document both the existence and
  332. usage of the spinlocks in the Linux 2.4.5 kernel. Comprehensive
  333. list of spinlocks showing when they are used, which functions
  334. access them, how each lock is acquired, under what conditions it
  335. is held, whether interrupts can occur or not while it is held...
  336. * Title: "Porting Linux 2.0 Drivers To Linux 2.2: Changes and New
  337. Features "
  338. Author: Alan Cox.
  339. URL: http://www.linux-mag.com/1999-05/gear_01.html
  340. Keywords: ports, porting.
  341. Description: Article from Linux Magazine on porting from 2.0 to
  342. 2.2 kernels.
  343. * Title: "Porting Device Drivers To Linux 2.2: part II"
  344. Author: Alan Cox.
  345. URL: http://www.linux-mag.com/1999-06/gear_01.html
  346. Keywords: ports, porting.
  347. Description: Second part on porting from 2.0 to 2.2 kernels.
  348. * Title: "How To Make Sure Your Driver Will Work On The Power
  349. Macintosh"
  350. Author: Paul Mackerras.
  351. URL: http://www.linux-mag.com/1999-07/gear_01.html
  352. Keywords: Mac, Power Macintosh, porting, drivers, compatibility.
  353. Description: The title says it all.
  354. * Title: "An Introduction to SCSI Drivers"
  355. Author: Alan Cox.
  356. URL: http://www.linux-mag.com/1999-08/gear_01.html
  357. Keywords: SCSI, device, driver.
  358. Description: The title says it all.
  359. * Title: "Advanced SCSI Drivers And Other Tales"
  360. Author: Alan Cox.
  361. URL: http://www.linux-mag.com/1999-09/gear_01.html
  362. Keywords: SCSI, device, driver, advanced.
  363. Description: The title says it all.
  364. * Title: "Writing Linux Mouse Drivers"
  365. Author: Alan Cox.
  366. URL: http://www.linux-mag.com/1999-10/gear_01.html
  367. Keywords: mouse, driver, gpm.
  368. Description: The title says it all.
  369. * Title: "More on Mouse Drivers"
  370. Author: Alan Cox.
  371. URL: http://www.linux-mag.com/1999-11/gear_01.html
  372. Keywords: mouse, driver, gpm, races, asynchronous I/O.
  373. Description: The title still says it all.
  374. * Title: "Writing Video4linux Radio Driver"
  375. Author: Alan Cox.
  376. URL: http://www.linux-mag.com/1999-12/gear_01.html
  377. Keywords: video4linux, driver, radio, radio devices.
  378. Description: The title says it all.
  379. * Title: "Video4linux Drivers, Part 1: Video-Capture Device"
  380. Author: Alan Cox.
  381. URL: http://www.linux-mag.com/2000-01/gear_01.html
  382. Keywords: video4linux, driver, video capture, capture devices,
  383. camera driver.
  384. Description: The title says it all.
  385. * Title: "Video4linux Drivers, Part 2: Video-capture Devices"
  386. Author: Alan Cox.
  387. URL: http://www.linux-mag.com/2000-02/gear_01.html
  388. Keywords: video4linux, driver, video capture, capture devices,
  389. camera driver, control, query capabilities, capability, facility.
  390. Description: The title says it all.
  391. * Title: "PCI Management in Linux 2.2"
  392. Author: Alan Cox.
  393. URL: http://www.linux-mag.com/2000-03/gear_01.html
  394. Keywords: PCI, bus, bus-mastering.
  395. Description: The title says it all.
  396. * Title: "Linux 2.4 Kernel Internals"
  397. Author: Tigran Aivazian and Christoph Hellwig.
  398. URL: http://www.moses.uklinux.net/patches/lki.html
  399. Keywords: Linux, kernel, booting, SMB boot, VFS, page cache.
  400. Description: A little book used for a short training course.
  401. Covers building the kernel image, booting (including SMP bootup),
  402. process management, VFS and more.
  403. * Title: "Linux IP Networking. A Guide to the Implementation and
  404. Modification of the Linux Protocol Stack."
  405. Author: Glenn Herrin.
  406. URL: http://www.cs.unh.edu/cnrg/gherrin
  407. Keywords: network, networking, protocol, IP, UDP, TCP, connection,
  408. socket, receiving, transmitting, forwarding, routing, packets,
  409. modules, /proc, sk_buff, FIB, tags.
  410. Description: Excellent paper devoted to the Linux IP Networking,
  411. explaining anything from the kernel's to the user space
  412. configuration tools' code. Very good to get a general overview of
  413. the kernel networking implementation and understand all steps
  414. packets follow from the time they are received at the network
  415. device till they are delivered to applications. The studied kernel
  416. code is from 2.2.14 version. Provides code for a working packet
  417. dropper example.
  418. * Title: "Get those boards talking under Linux."
  419. Author: Alex Ivchenko.
  420. URL: http://www.edn.com/article/CA46968.html
  421. Keywords: data-acquisition boards, drivers, modules, interrupts,
  422. memory allocation.
  423. Description: Article written for people wishing to make their data
  424. acquisition boards work on their GNU/Linux machines. Gives a basic
  425. overview on writing drivers, from the naming of functions to
  426. interrupt handling.
  427. Notes: Two-parts article. Part II is at
  428. URL: http://www.edn.com/article/CA46998.html
  429. * Title: "Linux PCMCIA Programmer's Guide"
  430. Author: David Hinds.
  431. URL: http://pcmcia-cs.sourceforge.net/ftp/doc/PCMCIA-PROG.html
  432. Keywords: PCMCIA.
  433. Description: "This document describes how to write kernel device
  434. drivers for the Linux PCMCIA Card Services interface. It also
  435. describes how to write user-mode utilities for communicating with
  436. Card Services.
  437. * Title: "The Linux Kernel NFSD Implementation"
  438. Author: Neil Brown.
  439. URL:
  440. http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~neilb/oss/linux-commentary/nfsd.html
  441. Keywords: knfsd, nfsd, NFS, RPC, lockd, mountd, statd.
  442. Description: The title says it all.
  443. Notes: Covers knfsd's version 1.4.7 (patch against 2.2.7 kernel).
  444. * Title: "A Linux vm README"
  445. Author: Kanoj Sarcar.
  446. URL: http://reality.sgi.com/kanoj_engr/vm229.html
  447. Keywords: virtual memory, mm, pgd, vma, page, page flags, page
  448. cache, swap cache, kswapd.
  449. Description: Telegraphic, short descriptions and definitions
  450. relating the Linux virtual memory implementation.
  451. * Title: "(nearly) Complete Linux Loadable Kernel Modules. The
  452. definitive guide for hackers, virus coders and system
  453. administrators."
  454. Author: pragmatic/THC.
  455. URL: http://packetstormsecurity.org/docs/hack/LKM_HACKING.html
  456. Keywords: syscalls, intercept, hide, abuse, symbol table.
  457. Description: Interesting paper on how to abuse the Linux kernel in
  458. order to intercept and modify syscalls, make
  459. files/directories/processes invisible, become root, hijack ttys,
  460. write kernel modules based virus... and solutions for admins to
  461. avoid all those abuses.
  462. Notes: For 2.0.x kernels. Gives guidances to port it to 2.2.x
  463. kernels.
  464. BOOKS: (Not on-line)
  465. * Title: "Linux Device Drivers"
  466. Author: Alessandro Rubini.
  467. Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates.
  468. Date: 1998.
  469. Pages: 439.
  470. ISBN: 1-56592-292-1
  471. * Title: "Linux Device Drivers, 2nd Edition"
  472. Author: Alessandro Rubini and Jonathan Corbet.
  473. Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates.
  474. Date: 2001.
  475. Pages: 586.
  476. ISBN: 0-59600-008-1
  477. Notes: Further information in
  478. http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/linuxdrive2/
  479. * Title: "Linux Device Drivers, 3nd Edition"
  480. Authors: Jonathan Corbet, Alessandro Rubini, and Greg Kroah-Hartman
  481. Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates.
  482. Date: 2005.
  483. Pages: 636.
  484. ISBN: 0-596-00590-3
  485. Notes: Further information in
  486. http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/linuxdrive3/
  487. PDF format, URL: http://lwn.net/Kernel/LDD3/
  488. * Title: "Linux Kernel Internals"
  489. Author: Michael Beck.
  490. Publisher: Addison-Wesley.
  491. Date: 1997.
  492. ISBN: 0-201-33143-8 (second edition)
  493. * Title: "The Design of the UNIX Operating System"
  494. Author: Maurice J. Bach.
  495. Publisher: Prentice Hall.
  496. Date: 1986.
  497. Pages: 471.
  498. ISBN: 0-13-201757-1
  499. * Title: "The Design and Implementation of the 4.3 BSD UNIX
  500. Operating System"
  501. Author: Samuel J. Leffler, Marshall Kirk McKusick, Michael J.
  502. Karels, John S. Quarterman.
  503. Publisher: Addison-Wesley.
  504. Date: 1989 (reprinted with corrections on October, 1990).
  505. ISBN: 0-201-06196-1
  506. * Title: "The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD UNIX
  507. Operating System"
  508. Author: Marshall Kirk McKusick, Keith Bostic, Michael J. Karels,
  509. John S. Quarterman.
  510. Publisher: Addison-Wesley.
  511. Date: 1996.
  512. ISBN: 0-201-54979-4
  513. * Title: "Programmation Linux 2.0 API systeme et fonctionnement du
  514. noyau"
  515. Author: Remy Card, Eric Dumas, Franck Mevel.
  516. Publisher: Eyrolles.
  517. Date: 1997.
  518. Pages: 520.
  519. ISBN: 2-212-08932-5
  520. Notes: French.
  521. * Title: "Unix internals -- the new frontiers"
  522. Author: Uresh Vahalia.
  523. Publisher: Prentice Hall.
  524. Date: 1996.
  525. Pages: 600.
  526. ISBN: 0-13-101908-2
  527. * Title: "The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD UNIX
  528. Operating System"
  529. Author: Marshall Kirk McKusick, Keith Bostic, Michael J. Karels,
  530. John S. Quarterman.
  531. Publisher: Addison-Wesley.
  532. Date: 1996.
  533. ISBN: 0-201-54979-4
  534. * Title: "Programming for the real world - POSIX.4"
  535. Author: Bill O. Gallmeister.
  536. Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates, Inc..
  537. Date: 1995.
  538. Pages: ???.
  539. ISBN: I-56592-074-0
  540. Notes: Though not being directly about Linux, Linux aims to be
  541. POSIX. Good reference.
  542. * Title: "UNIX Systems for Modern Architectures: Symmetric
  543. Multiprocesssing and Caching for Kernel Programmers"
  544. Author: Curt Schimmel.
  545. Publisher: Addison Wesley.
  546. Date: June, 1994.
  547. Pages: 432.
  548. ISBN: 0-201-63338-8
  549. * Title: "The Design and Implementation of the 4.3 BSD UNIX
  550. Operating System"
  551. Author: Samuel J. Leffler, Marshall Kirk McKusick, Michael J.
  552. Karels, John S. Quarterman.
  553. Publisher: Addison-Wesley.
  554. Date: 1989 (reprinted with corrections on October, 1990).
  555. ISBN: 0-201-06196-1
  556. * Title: "The Design of the UNIX Operating System"
  557. Author: Maurice J. Bach.
  558. Publisher: Prentice Hall.
  559. Date: 1986.
  560. Pages: 471.
  561. ISBN: 0-13-201757-1
  562. MISCELLANEOUS:
  563. * Name: linux/Documentation
  564. Author: Many.
  565. URL: Just look inside your kernel sources.
  566. Keywords: anything, DocBook.
  567. Description: Documentation that comes with the kernel sources,
  568. inside the Documentation directory. Some pages from this document
  569. (including this document itself) have been moved there, and might
  570. be more up to date than the web version.
  571. * Name: "Linux Source Driver"
  572. URL: http://lsd.linux.cz
  573. Keywords: Browsing source code.
  574. Description: "Linux Source Driver (LSD) is an application, which
  575. can make browsing source codes of Linux kernel easier than you can
  576. imagine. You can select between multiple versions of kernel (e.g.
  577. 0.01, 1.0.0, 2.0.33, 2.0.34pre13, 2.0.0, 2.1.101 etc.). With LSD
  578. you can search Linux kernel (fulltext, macros, types, functions
  579. and variables) and LSD can generate patches for you on the fly
  580. (files, directories or kernel)".
  581. * Name: "Linux Kernel Source Reference"
  582. Author: Thomas Graichen.
  583. URL: http://innominate.org/~graichen/projects/lksr/
  584. Keywords: CVS, web, cvsweb, browsing source code.
  585. Description: Web interface to a CVS server with the kernel
  586. sources. "Here you can have a look at any file of the Linux kernel
  587. sources of any version starting from 1.0 up to the (daily updated)
  588. current version available. Also you can check the differences
  589. between two versions of a file".
  590. * Name: "Cross-Referencing Linux"
  591. URL: http://lxr.linux.no/source/
  592. Keywords: Browsing source code.
  593. Description: Another web-based Linux kernel source code browser.
  594. Lots of cross references to variables and functions. You can see
  595. where they are defined and where they are used.
  596. * Name: "Linux Weekly News"
  597. URL: http://lwn.net
  598. Keywords: latest kernel news.
  599. Description: The title says it all. There's a fixed kernel section
  600. summarizing developers' work, bug fixes, new features and versions
  601. produced during the week. Published every Thursday.
  602. * Name: "Kernel Traffic"
  603. URL: http://kt.zork.net/kernel-traffic/
  604. Keywords: linux-kernel mailing list, weekly kernel news.
  605. Description: Weekly newsletter covering the most relevant
  606. discussions of the linux-kernel mailing list.
  607. * Name: "CuTTiNG.eDGe.LiNuX"
  608. URL: http://edge.kernelnotes.org
  609. Keywords: changelist.
  610. Description: Site which provides the changelist for every kernel
  611. release. What's new, what's better, what's changed. Myrdraal reads
  612. the patches and describes them. Pointers to the patches are there,
  613. too.
  614. * Name: "New linux-kernel Mailing List FAQ"
  615. URL: http://www.tux.org/lkml/
  616. Keywords: linux-kernel mailing list FAQ.
  617. Description: linux-kernel is a mailing list for developers to
  618. communicate. This FAQ builds on the previous linux-kernel mailing
  619. list FAQ maintained by Frohwalt Egerer, who no longer maintains
  620. it. Read it to see how to join the mailing list. Dozens of
  621. interesting questions regarding the list, Linux, developers (who
  622. is ...?), terms (what is...?) are answered here too. Just read it.
  623. * Name: "Linux Virtual File System"
  624. Author: Peter J. Braam.
  625. URL: http://www.coda.cs.cmu.edu/doc/talks/linuxvfs/
  626. Keywords: slides, VFS, inode, superblock, dentry, dcache.
  627. Description: Set of slides, presumably from a presentation on the
  628. Linux VFS layer. Covers version 2.1.x, with dentries and the
  629. dcache.
  630. * Name: "Gary's Encyclopedia - The Linux Kernel"
  631. Author: Gary (I suppose...).
  632. URL: http://www.lisoleg.net/cgi-bin/lisoleg.pl?view=kernel.htm
  633. Keywords: links, not found here?.
  634. Description: Gary's Encyclopedia exists to allow the rapid finding
  635. of documentation and other information of interest to GNU/Linux
  636. users. It has about 4000 links to external pages in 150 major
  637. categories. This link is for kernel-specific links, documents,
  638. sites... Look there if you could not find here what you were
  639. looking for.
  640. * Name: "The home page of Linux-MM"
  641. Author: The Linux-MM team.
  642. URL: http://linux-mm.org/
  643. Keywords: memory management, Linux-MM, mm patches, TODO, docs,
  644. mailing list.
  645. Description: Site devoted to Linux Memory Management development.
  646. Memory related patches, HOWTOs, links, mm developers... Don't miss
  647. it if you are interested in memory management development!
  648. * Name: "Kernel Newbies IRC Channel"
  649. URL: http://www.kernelnewbies.org
  650. Keywords: IRC, newbies, channel, asking doubts.
  651. Description: #kernelnewbies on irc.openprojects.net. From the web
  652. page: "#kernelnewbies is an IRC network dedicated to the 'newbie'
  653. kernel hacker. The audience mostly consists of people who are
  654. learning about the kernel, working on kernel projects or
  655. professional kernel hackers that want to help less seasoned kernel
  656. people. [...] #kernelnewbies is on the Open Projects IRC Network,
  657. try irc.openprojects.net or irc.<country>.openprojects.net as your
  658. server and then /join #kernelnewbies". It also hosts articles,
  659. documents, FAQs...
  660. * Name: "linux-kernel mailing list archives and search engines"
  661. URL: http://vger.kernel.org/vger-lists.html
  662. URL: http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/index.html
  663. URL: http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel
  664. URL: http://groups.google.com/group/mlist.linux.kernel
  665. URL: http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/linux/linux-kernel/
  666. URL: http://www.lib.uaa.alaska.edu/linux-kernel/
  667. Keywords: linux-kernel, archives, search.
  668. Description: Some of the linux-kernel mailing list archivers. If
  669. you have a better/another one, please let me know.
  670. _________________________________________________________________
  671. Document last updated on Sat 2005-NOV-19