Sign In Start Free Trial
Account

Add to playlist

Create a Playlist

Modal Close icon
You need to login to use this feature.
  • Linux Kernel Programming
  • Toc
  • feedback
Linux Kernel Programming

Linux Kernel Programming

By : Kaiwan N. Billimoria
4.9 (35)
close
Linux Kernel Programming

Linux Kernel Programming

4.9 (35)
By: Kaiwan N. Billimoria

Overview of this book

The 2nd Edition of Linux Kernel Programming is an updated, comprehensive guide for new programmers to the Linux kernel. This book uses the recent 6.1 Long-Term Support (LTS) Linux kernel series, which will be maintained until Dec 2026, and also delves into its many new features. Further, the Civil Infrastructure Project has pledged to maintain and support this 6.1 Super LTS (SLTS) kernel right until August 2033, keeping this book valid for years to come! You’ll begin this exciting journey by learning how to build the kernel from source. In a step by step manner, you will then learn how to write your first kernel module by leveraging the kernel’s powerful Loadable Kernel Module (LKM) framework. With this foundation, you will delve into key kernel internals topics including Linux kernel architecture, memory management, and CPU (task) scheduling. You’ll finish with understanding the deep issues of concurrency, and gain insight into how they can be addressed with various synchronization/locking technologies (e.g., mutexes, spinlocks, atomic/refcount operators, rw-spinlocks and even lock-free technologies such as per-CPU and RCU). By the end of this book, you’ll have a much better understanding of the fundamentals of writing the Linux kernel and kernel module code that can straight away be used in real-world projects and products.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
close
14
Other Books You May Enjoy
15
Index

Mutex or spinlock? Which to use when

The exact semantics of learning to use the mutex lock and the spinlock are quite simple (with appropriate abstraction within the kernel API set making it even easier for the typical driver developer or module author). The critical question in this situation is a conceptual one: what really is the difference between these two lock types? More to the point, under which circumstances should you use which lock? You will learn the answers to these questions in this section.

Taking our previous driver read method’s pseudocode (Figure 12.6) as a base example, let’s say that three threads – tA, tB, and tC – are running in parallel (on an SMP system) through this code. We shall solve this concurrency issue, while avoiding any data races, by taking (acquiring) a lock prior to the start of the critical section (time t2), and releasing the lock (unlock) just after the end of the critical section code path (time t3). Let’...

bookmark search playlist download font-size

Change the font size

margin-width

Change margin width

day-mode

Change background colour

Close icon Search
Country selected

Close icon Your notes and bookmarks

Delete Bookmark

Modal Close icon
Are you sure you want to delete it?
Cancel
Yes, Delete