The Linux Kernel

Blueprints for World Domination

The Linux Kernel is released under the pure Open Publication Licence (OPL) with no optional clauses.

NOTE: This is just the Table of Contents; if there are any links in this they go nowhere so don't even try it. A review edition of the book will be posted on this site when it is available. If you really want to see what's in it so far, visit the CVS archive on the Kernelbook Project Page

Table of Contents

Preface

The Pioneers had it Easy
Who is it?
Styles and Conventions
About the Authors
Acknowledgements

I. The Linux Kernel

1. Linux is not Unix (20)

A Brief History of Linux
The Holy Grail of Portability
Open Sources, Open Minds
Unix Foundations
New Features in Linux
Tour of the Kernelbook

2. The Reasonable CPU (15)

Portability and Reasonable Assumptions
From Altair to Pentium
The CPU
Memory Address Spaces
Interrupts and Interrupt Controllers
Timers
Busses, Controllers and Peripherals

3. Tour of the Linux Kernel (15)

Torvalds' Design Goals
Overview of the Kernel Subsystems
Initialization
Interprocess Communications
Memory Management
File Systems
Resource Management
Networking Layer
Kernel Library

4. The Kernel Sources (25) glm

Kernel Sources Structure
Obtaining the Kernel Sources
Configuring Linux Kernel
Building and Installing the Kernel
Recovering from Faulty Kernels

5. Tools for Kernel Programmers

GCC, EGCS and GNU Assembler
Navigational Aids
Development Tools
Useful Utilities
Kernel Profiling

6. Contributing to the Kernel Project (10)

Participating in Linux Development
Joining the Inner Circle
Programming Style
Preparing a Patch
Bug Reporting

II. Kernel Subsystems

7. Speaking Kernel: Global Structures and Methods (25)

Kernel DEFINEs
Common Data Structures
Library Services
/proc Filesystem

8. Kernel Initialization

Boot Loader Sequence
Subsystem Initializations

9. Process Scheduler (30)

Bottom-Half Handler
Task Queues
Timers
Wait Queues
Spin Locks

10. Interprocess Communications (IPC) (20)

Signals
Pipes
Sockets
SysV IPC
Message Queues
Semaphores
Shared Memory

11. Memory Management (20) Thomas Strohm

Hardware Support
Page Table Abstraction
System Initialization
The Page Allocator
Kernel Memory Allocation
Memory Allocation in Userland
The C Library Interface

12. Resource Management

Resource Allocation
Reporting
PCI Card support
APM and ACPI support (here?)
ISA PnP
I²O

13. Linux File Systems (30) Manuel J. Petit de Gabriel

Ext2fs
Virtual File Systems
Device Special Files
The Venus Interface
Executable Files
Raw Disk Access (here or own chapter?)

14. Networking Layer(35) Alolita Sharma, Bob Adkins, Nilayan Sharma

TCP/IP Networking Layers
BSD Sockets
Packet Socket MMAP
INET Socket Layers
Creating a Connection
Listening on an INET BSD Socket
Data Fragmentation
Address Resolution (ARP)
IP Layer
IP Routing
Forwarding via FIB
IPv6
DECNet
Kernel HTTP Support
Driver Status Codes

III. Kernel Services

15. Designing Linux Modules (15) Juan-Mariano de Goyeneche

The Generic Module
Loadable Modules
Using Boot Parameters and conf.modules
Module Debugging

16. Device Drivers (35) Armin Kuster

Common Characteristics
Dynamic Configuration
Sybsystems
Driver flow
Extending Makefiles and Config.in

17. Character Devices (20)

Registering Character Devices
ioctl Message Handling
Blocking I/O
Asynchronous I/O
IRQ Sharing in PCI I/O
USB Devices (here or own chapter?)
New Character Devices (here or own chapter?)

18. Block Devices (20)

Registering Block Devices
ioctl Message Handling
Request Handling
Interrupt Handling
Block Device Partitions
Logical Volumn Manager (here or in FS?)
Removable Media

19. Network Devices (20) Alolita Sharma, Bob Adkins, Nilayan Sharma

Telecommunications Links
Wired networking
Wireless Networking

20. PCI (20)

PCI Addressing
PCI/ISA Bridging
I/O and Memory Windows
Configuration Cycles
Initializing PCI
PCI Data Structures
Pseudo-Device Sequence
PCI Bios
PCI Fixup

21. SCSI Devices (20) Kurt Garloff

Overview of the SCSI subsystem

22. Video Systems (30)

Linux and X11R6
Memory-Mapped Video IO
SVGA video modes
Unicode Font Mapping

23. Sound Systems (20)

Sound Cards
Audio Devices
OSS-Free
ALSA

24. SMP (20) Alolita Sharma, Bob Adkins, Nilayan Sharma

SMP and Linux
SMP in 2.4
Inter Processor Communications
Managing the SpinLocks

25. Plug'n'Play (15) Tom Lees

PnP Hardware Implementations
Kernel ISA support
List of standard PnP device IDs

IV. Advanced Topics

26. Porting Linux to Other Platforms (35)

Overview of Porting Issues
Subsystems Issues

27. Embedded Linux (30) Donald Jeff Dionne and Michael Durrant

28. Real-Time Linux (30) Richard West and Christian Poellabauer

Real Time Requirements
Linux in Real Time
Implementing a Custom Scheduler
Alternative Scheduling Algorithms
RT-Linux on Intel
Related Projects

A. Overview of Linux Processors (20)

Intel Processessors

Intel x86
Itanium (ia64)

Strong-ARM

MIPS

HP Alpha AXP

Linux/VAX

Motorola 68k

HP9000/300
NeXT Workstations
Motorola Q40 Single-board Computer
PowerPC

Sparc/Sparc64

IBM S/390

SuperH

Crusoe

B. Kernel Programming Resources (10)

Linux Documentation
Online Kernel Resources
LDP Kernel Guides
linux-kernel Mailing List
Further Reading

Bibliography

Index