Linux Kernel Programming: A comprehensive and practical guide to kernel internals, writing modules, and kernel synchronization

by Kaiwan Billimoria

Gain a firm practical understanding of the fundamentals of Linux kernel internals, learn to write high-quality kernel module code, and kernel synchronization The 2nd Edition of Linux Kernel Programming is an updated, comprehensive introduction for new programmers to the Linux kernel. This book uses the recent 5.10 Long-Term Support (LTS) Linux kernel series, which will be maintained until 2026, showing 5.X/6.X new features. In this new edition, you’ll start the journey by learning how to build the kernel from source, including doing a kernel build for the popular Raspberry Pi. You’ll then learn, step by step, how to write your first kernel module by leveraging the kernel’s powerful Loadable Kernel Module (LKM) framework. You’ll then get to delve into key kernel internals topics including Linux kernel architecture, memory management, and CPU scheduling. You’ll understand the deep issues of concurrency, and gain insight into how they can be addressed with various locking technologies (mutexes, spinlocks, atomic / refcount operators and even lock-free technologies). By the end of this 2nd Edition book, you’ll have a better understanding of the fundamentals of writing Linux kernel and kernel module code that can be used in real-world projects and products. This book is for beginner Linux programmers and developers looking to get started with Linux kernel, providing a knowledge base to understand required kernel internal topics and overcome frequent and common development issues. A basic understanding of Linux CLI and C programming is assumed

826 pages, Paperback

Published February 29, 2024

Reviews

[Tereza · Rating 2 out of 5]

Could be summed up with this phrase from a chapter in the second half of the book: “It’s completely pointless to simply repeat the details within the kernel docs (…) So, it´s important to learn how to effectively persue the kernel docs (we talked about this briefly in…)” Well, then what’s the point in writing or buying such a book, I guess? Also, there’s too many advanced topics you would assume to be covered in such a book where the author just gives up, saying: “But this is outside of the scope of this book.” Don’t expect anything related to debugging, networking, USB or pretty much any type of driver subsystem in general. The author has just had ads put there for the other books he has written too. Even synchronization mechanisms are to be covered entirely only in his other book on drivers. Not sure I would be into these after this experience, though.

Overall the book tends to stay on the surface and the information put there is very, very much redundant. For each topic you get two paragraphs summing up what was covered when explaining the last one, then an obligatory paragraph reading: “Interested in knowing more? Do read on!” just to arrive to completely useless sentences like: “Not so quickly, though! This is covered on the next page.” You then discover that the piece of information is presented in an info box, repeated later in a normal paragraph and then re-repeated again just so that you’re really made to remember. Oh and not to mention obligatory ending pages where everything what was learned is summed up just like everything what you WILL learn is summed up upfront on the first page of every chapter, right before the repetition of how to set up your VM to try that on your own (that’s actually covered in each chapter over and over).

Without the filling that made the book an almost 800-page bible, this could have pretty well been a 300-page handbook. The topics are interesting and quite well chosen but, well… Reading through it could have been much less frustrating than that.