The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD Operating System (Hardcover)

~ Marshall Kirk McKusick (Author), (Author), (Author), John S. Quarterman (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This book describes the design and implementation of the BSD operating system--previously known as the Berkeley version of UNIX. Today, BSD is found in nearly every variant of UNIX, and is widely used for Internet services and firewalls, timesharing, and multiprocessing systems. Readers involved in technical and sales support can learn the capabilities and limitations of the system; applications developers can learn effectively and efficiently how to interface to the system; systems programmers can learn how to maintain, tune, and extend the system.

Highlights:

• Details major changes in process and memory management
• Describes the new extensible and stackable file system interface
• Includes an invaluable chapter on the new network file system
• Updates information on networking and interprocess communication

Written from the unique perspective of the system's architects, this book delivers the most comprehensive, up-to-date, and authoritative technical information on the internal structure of the latest BSD system.

Product Description

An authoritative, in-depth description of the contemporary 4.4BSD operating syste, the latest release of what previously was know as the Berkeley version of UNIX. This "insider's look" presents both philosophical and design issues as well as details of actual implementation of 4.4BSD. Covers virtual-memory system used in 4.4BSD including a key section on the functions needed to port it to a new architecture.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 608 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 2 edition (May 10, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201549794
• ISBN-13: 978-0201549799
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #473,410 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very good book but too theoretical, April 16, 2000

By	Felix Matathias (Manhattan, NY, USA) - See all my reviews

The book is good, no doubt about it. And it covers a big gap in the Unix world. It helped me numerous times to understand how things work in the kernel of FreeBSD. But, and there is a big but here, the book does not contain even a single line of code. Strange for a book that is supposed to describe a kernel. There are a few instances of pseudo-code here and there but nothing more. The book gives you the big picture, describes the various parts of the kernel like virtual memory, scheduling, filesystems but it is too descriptive in my opinion. I would like to see instead of long descriptions some real kernel code. Ofcourse you may argue that you can find all the source code in the world in FreeBSD, but thats different. Its not a book for beginners, you should already have read some other Operating System book first before you dig in this one as the authors themselves agree. Bottomline: good book but too theoretical for my taste. I recommend it only to the serious reader. Its not a bed time book. You need to work your brain to make the connection.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rigorous, but worth the effort, December 31, 2000

By	none (Goleta, CA United States) - See all my reviews

Okay, I'll be the first to admit that I am not a kernel hacker by any means. I can't even program my way out of a wet paper bag (a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea). However, as a sysadmin, I firmly believe that you should have a solid understanding of whatever OS platform that you are working on. For me, that would be Solaris and Linux. So why am I recommending a BSD book? Well, BSD has a rich heritage in UNIX. It was the first UNIX to incorporate TCP/IP and it gave us sockets, FFS, and a rich set of tools (csh). FreeBSD, the most well-known of the *BSD family, powers some of the largest sites in the world (e.g., yahoo). It is an extremely robust and stable Operating System. It is also much more elegant than Linux.

This book is the ultimate BSD bible. It is written by some of the Gods of BSD and is extremely rigorous. I've made my way through this book twice and I've learned something new each time. If you put the effort into this book, you will come out with a greater understanding of UNIX in general. If you are a BSD hacker, then you should already have this book. This is a hard read, but it is really worth your time and effort to read this book at least once.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Invaluable documentation of an important Unix implementation, January 17, 1999

By A Customer

I'm shocked that no one has reviewed this book yet. This is it, one of the top books ever written documenting a version of the Unix kernel. If you are interested in kernel design, you probably already have this book on your shelf. If you haven't worked through it yet, you have a real treat ahead of you. One thing that makes this book more exciting than some of the other books on unix kernel design, such as Bach's venerable tome or _Magic Garden Explained_ , is that the source code is available for closely related, modern systems -- FreeeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD.