Kernel Projects for Linux [Paperback]

Gary Nutt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 29, 2000 | ISBN-10: 0201612437 | ISBN-13: 978-0201612431

With Kernel Projects for Linux, Professor Gary Nutt provides a series of 12 lab exercises that illustrate how to implement core operating system concepts in the increasingly popular Linux environment. The makeup of the manual allows readers to learn concepts on a modern operating system—Linux—while at the same time viewing the source code. This hands-on manual complements any core OS book by demonstrating how theoretical concepts are realized in Linux. Part I presents an overview of the Linux design, offering some insight into such topics as runtime organization and process, file, and device management. Part II consists of a graduated set of exercises where readers move from inspecting various aspects of the operating systems's internals to developing their own functions and data structures for the Linux kernel. This book is designed for programmers who need to learn the fundamentals of operating systems on a modern OS. The progressively harder exercises allow them to learn concepts in a hands-on setting.

Editorial Reviews

From the Author

I have written Kernel Projects for Linux as a textbook to be used in the classroom (it is NOT a self-help reference book). Linux is an exciting OS because of its open source policy, resulting rapid development, and importance in the commercial world. This book is intended to introduce the Version 2.2.12 kernel to undergraduate students who may have only a year of programming experience, and who have not previously seen kernel code. The book begins with a 50-page overview of the kernel. The second part of the book is a dozen programming problems with graduated difficulty. Choosing problems in the Linux environment is especially difficult since most desirable additions or modifications have already been done. Each problem has an explanation of relevant concepts the student will need to solve the problem, and some hints about how to solve the problem. As an applied software book, the explanations and examples are bound to meet the disapproval of some readers ! -- have you ever seen a program or documentation that everyone thought was wonderful? Even so, the reviewers (instructors at very well-respected universities) and my students have found the book to be accurate and useful. Since it is a textbook rather than a technical reference book, its value would be greatly diluted by publishing the solutions to the dozen exercises, therefore (as is traditional in the textbook market) the publisher and I agreed to only distribute solutions to instructors -- sorry. Gary Nutt

From the Back Cover

This is a lab manual that provides a dozen specific lab exercises on Linux internals, illustrating how theoretical Operating System concepts are implemented in Linux. Part I presents an overview of the Linux kernel and how it handles key OS concepts such as: runtime organization and process, file, and device management. Part II presents a series of twelve progressively more difficult exercises that can be completed in a lab environment. This book can be used in conjunction with any core operating systems textbook, and is also available in a special academic package with Nutt: Operating Systems: A Modern Approach that includes a free copy of Red Hat Linux.

0201612437B04062001

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Product Details

• Paperback: 239 pages
• Publisher: Addison Wesley (July 29, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201612437
• ISBN-13: 978-0201612431
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 7.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,260,535 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Book kept its promise, February 21, 2001

By 

TraderJay "joynisha" (St Louis, MO United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Kernel Projects for Linux (Paperback)

I must full agree with the author's review. This book is by no means a self help reference book and hence, need to be bought by people who has the time and initiative to diligently dig through Linux literature, theory, pertinent to each excercise group.

I have given 5 stars to this book because this book is what it claims to be. There are a group of projects with very nicely graded difficulty level. Each group contains very good pointers as to how to attack the problem and where to look for, in order to solve them. The absence of a full fledged solution is what I like best about this book. The author has very wisely kept back the solutions, because there is no better way to learn Linux then to look into relevant parts of the source code. But without this book the word "Relevant Parts" doesnt makes sense, because the Linux kernel is a huge chunk of code, and for any beginner its absolutely overwhelming. Its even hard to decide, that where to start reading the source code.

Thats where this book is very very helpful. Each excercise exposes the reader to a very well defined part of the kernel, and the reader gets a thorough understanding after she has successfully solved that part. I feel that this book is one of its kind in the market. However the book couldve done without the fundamentals, because cramming linux or any UNIX like OS fundamentals in 49 pages is a sheer compromise. Instead the book couldve had some more problems, to span the entire width of Linux.

23 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Poor implementation, September 27, 2000

By 

Geoffrey Kong (Mountain View, CA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kernel Projects for Linux (Paperback)

The idea of this book is good. However the implementation is very poor. There are obviously errors and inaccuracies in guidelines and hand-on tips provided for linux in the exercises. And author can not even provide solutions to the exercises in the book on public website. It give up half of its value.

It's an immature book, which is surprised to get published by accredited Addison Wesley.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the best for kernel novices, December 3, 2000

By 

Christos Karayiannis (Karditsa, Greece) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kernel Projects for Linux (Paperback)

This title is the best introduction to Linux kernel. Most of the Linux kernel books consider that readers are experts to operating systems concepts or maybe that they belong to the Linux code maintainers "ring". This certainly is not the case with "Linux Kernel Projects" where before each exercise every theme is explained well to the averange reader.