Key Features

Acquire insight on Linux system architecture and its programming interfaces

Get to grips with core concepts such as process management, signalling and pthreads

Packed with industry best practices and dozens of code examples

Book Description

The Linux OS and its embedded and server applications are critical components of today's software infrastructure in a decentralized, networked universe. The industry's demand for proficient Linux developers is only rising with time. Hands-On System Programming with Linux gives you a solid theoretical base and practical industry-relevant descriptions, and covers the Linux system programming domain. It delves into the art and science of Linux application programming― system architecture, process memory and management, signaling, timers, pthreads, and file IO.

This book goes beyond the use API X to do Y approach; it explains the concepts and theories required to understand programming interfaces and design decisions, the tradeoffs made by experienced developers when using them, and the rationale behind them. Troubleshooting tips and techniques are included in the concluding chapter.

By the end of this book, you will have gained essential conceptual design knowledge and hands-on experience working with Linux system programming interfaces.

What you will learn

Explore the theoretical underpinnings of Linux system architecture

Understand why modern OSes use virtual memory and dynamic memory APIs

Get to grips with dynamic memory issues and effectively debug them

Learn key concepts and powerful system APIs related to process management

Effectively perform file IO and use signaling and timers

Deeply understand multithreading concepts, pthreads APIs, synchronization and scheduling

Who this book is for

Hands-On System Programming with Linux is for Linux system engineers, programmers, or anyone who wants to go beyond using an API set to understanding the theoretical underpinnings and concepts behind powerful Linux system programming APIs. To get the most out of this book, you should be familiar with Linux at the user-level logging in, using shell via the command line interface, the ability to use tools such as find, grep, and sort. Working knowledge of the C programming language is required. No prior experience with Linux systems programming is assumed.

Table of Contents

Linux System Architecture

Virtual Memory

Resource Limits

Dynamic Memory Allocation

Linux Memory Issues

Debugging Tools for Common Memory Issues

Process Credentials

Process Execution

Process Capabilities

Process Creation

Signalling - Part 1

Signalling - Part 2

Timers

Multithreading with Pthreads Part 1-Essentials

Multithreading with Pthreads Part II - Synchronization

Multithreading with Pthreads Part III

CPU Scheduling on Linux

Advanced File I/O

Troubleshooting and Best Practices

File IO Essentials

Daemon Processes