Some (a lot!) time ago, I volunteer to write and maintain a document which
collected as many pointers as possible to information useful for developers
of the Linux kernel. Thanks to my exams it got a little bit delayed, but it
is finally here.
Hope it is helpful.
Linus, my idea was to include it in the kernel sources tree, under the
Documentation directory. If not, people will still ask for information
to the list and they will have to be redirected to this file, which
makes little difference from now...
I plan to place it also in my Web page... when I finally decide to write
it... (in the following one or two weeks, sure...)
If you know more papers not listed here or have any corrections/suggestions,
please, e-mail me. THANKS go to the people who sent me their papers so I could
include them here when I asked for them in my previous post!
Regards,
Juan-Mariano.
==============================================================================
Index of Documentation for People Interested in Writing and/or
Understanding the Linux Kernel.
Juan-Mariano de Goyeneche <jmseyas@dit.upm.es>
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 correc-
tions, ideas or comments are also welcomed.
The papers that follow are listed in no particular order. All are catalo-
gued 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.-Me-
mory 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://www.redhat.com:8080/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: "Tour Of the Linux Kernel Source"
Author: Vijo Cherian.
URL: http://www.svrec.ernet.in/~vijo/tolks/tolks.html
Keywords:
Description: The name says it all. A tour of the sources, describing directo-
ries, files, variables, data structures... It covers general stuff, device
drivers, filesystems, IPC and Network Code.
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:
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 persona-
lities 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".
* 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: ???
**** There's a book out there written by Re'my Card, the author of the ext2
**** filesystem. Someone???
Title: "The Design of the UNIX Operating System"
Author: Maurice J. Bach.
Publisher: Prentice Hall.
Date: 1986.
ISBN: ???
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
* MISCELLANEOUS:
Name: Linux Source Driver.
URL: http://lsd.linux.cz
Keywords: Browsing.
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)".
-
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