[ale] recommended advanced linux book?

[Joseph A. Knapka]

My experience has been that books do not help much
beyond a certain point - that point being, "reasonable
knowledge of OS concepts" like virtual memory,
scheduling, and so forth. From there, it's really
necessary to delve into the code and understand
what happens (sometimes) at the machine-code
level. The Linux-kernel-specific books I've
looked at basically skimmed the code and didn't
tell you anything you didn't already know if
you had a good basic knowledge of OS theory.
(One possible exception is the "Linux Core
Kernel Commentary", the author of which slips
my mind at the moment. I don't own a copy of it,
but I read a significant portion of the text
in Barnes&Noble one day and it went into a good
deal of detail. It might be worth a look, though
it's been slammed in many reviews, partly because the
bulk of the book consists of a code listing
of one of the 2.2.x series kernels.)

Of course "The Design of the Unix Operating System"
by Maurice Bach provides an essential background, and you
will need a hardware reference for the platform
you're working on in order to really get a grasp
on issues like memory management and context switching.

Others on this list can make much more authoritative
recommendations than I. I've written a toy OS for
16-bit Intel machines, but a firm, "wholistic"
understanding of the Linux kernel continues to
elude me.

-- Joe

Bighead wrote:
> 
> Guys,
> 
> I'm reasonably experienced in the Linux but lack
> detailed knowledge of the lower level details of the
> os.  I'm now at the point where I would like to move
> to the next level, getting into the down and dirty
> operating system details and into some system
> programming.
> 
> I'm looking for a resource (book, site, extended
> learning, etc.) to help guide me on this quest and
> wanted to hear what the group had to say.
> 
> I will say that I'm fairly advanced when it comes to
> computers in general (have around 3 years of
> professional programming experience) and pick up on
> things very quickly, so I think the "Dummies" or "21
> days" books are not what I'm looking for.  I value a
> detailed explanation much more than a simplistic one.
> In other words, I'd rather buy something I'd have to
> read 3 times to understand if it meant the alternative
> would sacrifice detail for simplicity.
> 
> I would say at this point, I'd lean more towards an
> operating system internals book rather than a system
> programming book because it seems to be the obvious
> sequence.
> 
> Thanks for your help!
> BH
> 
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-- Joe Knapka
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