Recommended reading to better understand Unix/Linux internals

Question

I've worked on *nix environments for the last four years as a application developer (mostly in C).

Please suggest some books/blogs etc. for improving my *nix internals knowledge.

Solution 1

Here are some suggestions on how to understand the "spirit" of Unix, in addition to the fine recommendations that have been done in the previous posts:

• "The Unix Programming Environment" by Kernighan and Pike: an old book, but it shows the essence of the Unix environment. It will also help you become an effective shell user.

• "Unix for the Impatient" is a useful resource to learn to navigate the Unix environment. One of my favorites.

If you want to become a power user, there is nothing better than O'Reilly's "Unix Power Tools" which consists of the collective tips and tricks from Unix professionals.

Another book that I have not seen mentioned that is a fun light and education reading is the "Operating Systems, Design and Implementation", the book from Andy Tanenbaum that included the source code for a complete Unix operating system in 12k lines of code.

Solution 2

You definitely want to read Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment by Stevens. Don't let the Advanced title scare you away, its very readable.

Solution 3

• The Unix Time-sharing System (10 pages) -- the original UNIX article by UNIX authors Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, published back in 1974
• Design of the Unix operating system -- the classic!
• Lion's Commentary on UNIX Kernel source code and the corresponding source code itself

Solution 4

Books/sites/manuals that I am using frequently:

• The Linux Kernel: This book is published online as a part of TLDP (The Linux Documentation Project). It is not up-to-date and not an internal manual, but provides useful information and introductory materials about principles and mechanisms of the kernel.

• Understanding Linux Kernel: IMHO, it is the best book for beginners who has background about the operating systems' design and concept. It is accepted as up-to-date, covers version 2.6 of the kernel. There is an HTML version of the book on the web, but I think it is most probably warez.

• Some book about virtual memory management

While studying linux kernel internals, you usually need to learn how hardware works and what hardware provides in abstract manner. Intel has great manuals for this.

• Intel 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developer's Manuals: Up-to-date, detailed information.

• Intel 80386 Programmer's Reference Manual: I know this is a little bit old but I've learned so many things from this manual.

If you need to study about operating systems' design and concept, I suggest following book: Operating System Concepts.

Solution 5

O'REILLY Linux Kernel in a Nutshell
and O'REILLY Linux Device Drivers

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Comments

[Admin]

with your experience only reading kernel source would help .)

[Admin]

RTFS is always best, but sometimes a little lite reading makes the source a little easier to understand.

[Admin]

Someone who has editing privileges really ought to edit that title.

[Admin]

I am currently following Matt Might's advice in his article, What Every Computer Science Major Should Know. He recommended The Unix Programming Environment by Kernighan and Pike, Linux Server Hacks, UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook by Nemeth, Synder, Hein and Whaley, Linux Kernel Development by Love, and Unix Network Programming by Stevens, Fenner and Rudoff.

[Admin]

@Anthony, those are excellent resources, but more oriented to the userland/command line. Also, particularly Linux is changing very fast right now, you'd need to keep up to date. Nice resources are LWN and kernelnewbies.

[JJ.]

Linux kernel in a nutshell is about how to build and install the kernel, not really about the internals of Linux/Unix. Not to say it's not a good book, but I'm a bit biased. Oh, both of these books are free online if you want to look at them there.

[Hemant]

+1. book on "virtual memory manager" ?? seems very interesting. thanks :-).

[xenoterracide]

I have 2nd ed which is also very good IMO

[Daniel Näslund]

+1 for the Lions book. MIT's xv6 is modern version of Lions v6 that runs on x86 machines and uses ANSI C. Both source code and associated textbook can be downloaded.

[amphibient]

why is a book with 864 pages called anything "for the impatient"?

[Christopher Poile]

@amphibient I take it you haven't seen the "for the patient" edition.

[islandman346]

This isn't "internals"....