Index of Documentation for People Interested in Writing and/or Understanding the Linux Kernel. Juan-Mariano de Goyeneche /* * The latest version of this document may be found at: * http://www.dit.upm.es/~jmseyas/linux/kernel/hackers-docs.html */ The need for a document like this one became apparent in the linux-kernel mailing list as the same questions, asking for pointers to information, appeared again and again. Fortunately, as more and more people get to GNU/Linux, more and more get interested in the Kernel. But reading the sources is not always enough. It is easy to understand the code, but miss the concepts, the philosophy and design decisions behind this code. Unfortunately, not many documents are available for beginners to start. And, even if they exist, there was no "well-known" place which kept track of them. These lines try to cover this lack. All documents available on line known by the author are listed, while some reference books are also mentioned. PLEASE, if you know any paper not listed here or write a new document, send me an e-mail, and I'll include a reference to it here. Any corrections, ideas or comments are also welcomed. The papers that follow are listed in no particular order. All are cataloged with the following fields: the document's "Title", the "Author"/s, the "URL" where they can be found, some "Keywords" helpful when searching for specific topics, and a brief "Description" of the Document. Enjoy! ON-LINE DOCS: * Title: "Linux Device Drivers, Third Edition" Author: Jonathan Corbet, Alessandro Rubini, Greg Kroah-Hartman URL: http://lwn.net/Kernel/LDD3/ Description: A 600-page book covering the (2.6.10) driver programming API and kernel hacking in general. Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license. * Title: "The Linux Kernel" Author: David A. Rusling. URL: http://www.tldp.org/LDP/tlk/tlk.html Keywords: everything!, book. Description: On line, 200 pages book describing most aspects of the Linux Kernel. Probably, the first reference for beginners. Lots of illustrations explaining data structures use and relationships in the purest Richard W. Stevens' style. Contents: "1.-Hardware Basics, 2.-Software Basics, 3.-Memory Management, 4.-Processes, 5.-Interprocess Communication Mechanisms, 6.-PCI, 7.-Interrupts and Interrupt Handling, 8.-Device Drivers, 9.-The File system, 10.-Networks, 11.-Kernel Mechanisms, 12.-Modules, 13.-The Linux Kernel Sources, A.-Linux Data Structures, B.-The Alpha AXP Processor, C.-Useful Web and FTP Sites, D.-The GNU General Public License, Glossary". In short: a must have. * Title: "Linux Device Drivers, 2nd Edition" Author: Alessandro Rubini and Jonathan Corbet. URL: http://www.xml.com/ldd/chapter/book/index.html Keywords: device drivers, modules, debugging, memory, hardware, interrupt handling, char drivers, block drivers, kmod, mmap, DMA, buses. Description: O'Reilly's popular book, now also on-line under the GNU Free Documentation License. Notes: You can also buy it in paper-form from O'Reilly. See below under BOOKS (Not on-line). * Title: "Conceptual Architecture of the Linux Kernel" Author: Ivan T. Bowman. URL: http://plg.uwaterloo.ca/ Keywords: conceptual software architecture, extracted design, reverse engineering, system structure. Description: Conceptual software architecture of the Linux kernel, automatically extracted from the source code. Very detailed. Good figures. Gives good overall kernel understanding. * Title: "Concrete Architecture of the Linux Kernel" Author: Ivan T. Bowman, Saheem Siddiqi, and Meyer C. Tanuan. URL: http://plg.uwaterloo.ca/ Keywords: concrete architecture, extracted design, reverse engineering, system structure, dependencies. Description: Concrete architecture of the Linux kernel, automatically extracted from the source code. Very detailed. Good figures. Gives good overall kernel understanding. This papers focus on lower details than its predecessor (files, variables...). * Title: "Linux as a Case Study: Its Extracted Software Architecture" Author: Ivan T. Bowman, Richard C. Holt and Neil V. Brewster. URL: http://plg.uwaterloo.ca/ Keywords: software architecture, architecture recovery, redocumentation. Description: Paper appeared at ICSE'99, Los Angeles, May 16-22, 1999. A mixture of the previous two documents from the same author. * Title: "Overview of the Virtual File System" Author: Richard Gooch. URL: http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Documentation/filesystems/vfs.txt Keywords: VFS, File System, mounting filesystems, opening files, dentries, dcache. Description: Brief introduction to the Linux Virtual File System. What is it, how it works, operations taken when opening a file or mounting a file system and description of important data structures explaining the purpose of each of their entries. * Title: "The Linux RAID-1, 4, 5 Code" Author: Ingo Molnar, Gadi Oxman and Miguel de Icaza. URL: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=2391 Keywords: RAID, MD driver. Description: Linux Journal Kernel Korner article. Here is its abstract: "A description of the implementation of the RAID-1, RAID-4 and RAID-5 personalities of the MD device driver in the Linux kernel, providing users with high performance and reliable, secondary-storage capability using software". * Title: "Dynamic Kernels: Modularized Device Drivers" Author: Alessandro Rubini. URL: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=1219 Keywords: device driver, module, loading/unloading modules, allocating resources. Description: Linux Journal Kernel Korner article. Here is its abstract: "This is the first of a series of four articles co-authored by Alessandro Rubini and Georg Zezchwitz which present a practical approach to writing Linux device drivers as kernel loadable modules. This installment presents an introduction to the topic, preparing the reader to understand next month's installment". * Title: "Dynamic Kernels: Discovery" Author: Alessandro Rubini. URL: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=1220 Keywords: character driver, init_module, clean_up module, autodetection, mayor number, minor number, file operations, open(), close(). Description: Linux Journal Kernel Korner article. Here is its abstract: "This article, the second of four, introduces part of the actual code to create custom module implementing a character device driver. It describes the code for module initialization and cleanup, as well as the open() and close() system calls". * Title: "The Devil's in the Details" Author: Georg v. Zezschwitz and Alessandro Rubini. URL: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=1221 Keywords: read(), write(), select(), ioctl(), blocking/non blocking mode, interrupt handler. Description: Linux Journal Kernel Korner article. Here is its abstract: "This article, the third of four on writing character device drivers, introduces concepts of reading, writing, and using ioctl-calls". * Title: "Dissecting Interrupts and Browsing DMA" Author: Alessandro Rubini and Georg v. Zezschwitz. URL: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=1222 Keywords: interrupts, irqs, DMA, bottom halves, task queues. Description: Linux Journal Kernel Korner article. Here is its abstract: "This is the fourth in a series of articles about writing character device drivers as loadable kernel modules. This month, we further investigate the field of interrupt handling. Though it is conceptually simple, practical limitations and constraints make this an ``interesting'' part of device driver writing, and several different facilities have been provided for different situations. We also investigate the complex topic of DMA". * Title: "Device Drivers Concluded" Author: Georg v. Zezschwitz. URL: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=1287 Keywords: address spaces, pages, pagination, page management, demand loading, swapping, memory protection, memory mapping, mmap, virtual memory areas (VMAs), vremap, PCI. Description: Finally, the above turned out into a five articles series. This latest one's introduction reads: "This is the last of five articles about character device drivers. In this final section, Georg deals with memory mapping devices, beginning with an overall description of the Linux memory management concepts". * Title: "Network Buffers And Memory Management" Author: Alan Cox. URL: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=1312 Keywords: sk_buffs, network devices, protocol/link layer variables, network devices flags, transmit, receive, configuration, multicast. Description: Linux Journal Kernel Korner. Here is the abstract: "Writing a network device driver for Linux is fundamentally simple---most of the complexity (other than talking to the hardware) involves managing network packets in memory". * Title: "Writing Linux Device Drivers" Author: Michael K. Johnson. URL: http://users.evitech.fi/~tk/rtos/writing_linux_device_d.html Keywords: files, VFS, file operations, kernel interface, character vs block devices, I/O access, hardware interrupts, DMA, access to user memory, memory allocation, timers. Description: Introductory 50-minutes (sic) tutorial on writing device drivers. 12 pages written by the same author of the "Kernel Hackers' Guide" which give a very good overview of the topic. * Title: "The Venus kernel interface" Author: Peter J. Braam. URL: http://www.coda.cs.cmu.edu/doc/html/kernel-venus-protocol.html Keywords: coda, filesystem, venus, cache manager. Description: "This document describes the communication between Venus and kernel level file system code needed for the operation of the Coda filesystem. This version document is meant to describe the current interface (version 1.0) as well as improvements we envisage". * Title: "Programming PCI-Devices under Linux" Author: Claus Schroeter. URL: ftp://ftp.llp.fu-berlin.de/pub/linux/LINUX-LAB/whitepapers/pcip.ps.gz Keywords: PCI, device, busmastering. Description: 6 pages tutorial on PCI programming under Linux. Gives the basic concepts on the architecture of the PCI subsystem, as long as basic functions and macros to read/write the devices and perform busmastering. * Title: "Writing Character Device Driver for Linux" Author: R. Baruch and C. Schroeter. URL: ftp://ftp.llp.fu-berlin.de/pub/linux/LINUX-LAB/whitepapers/drivers.ps.gz Keywords: character device drivers, I/O, signals, DMA, accessing ports in user space, kernel environment. Description: 68 pages paper on writing character drivers. A little bit old (1.993, 1.994) although still useful. * Title: "Design and Implementation of the Second Extended Filesystem" Author: Rémy Card, Theodore Ts'o, Stephen Tweedie. URL: http://web.mit.edu/tytso/www/linux/ext2intro.html Keywords: ext2, linux fs history, inode, directory, link, devices, VFS, physical structure, performance, benchmarks, ext2fs library, ext2fs tools, e2fsck. Description: Paper written by three of the top ext2 hackers. Covers Linux filesystems history, ext2 motivation, ext2 features, design, physical structure on disk, performance, benchmarks, e2fsck's passes description... A must read! Notes: This paper was first published in the Proceedings of the First Dutch International Symposium on Linux, ISBN 90-367-0385-9. * Title: "Analysis of the Ext2fs structure" Author: Louis-Dominique Dubeau. URL: http://www.nondot.org/sabre/os/files/FileSystems/ext2fs/ Keywords: ext2, filesystem, ext2fs. Description: Description of ext2's blocks, directories, inodes, bitmaps, invariants... * Title: "Journaling the Linux ext2fs Filesystem" Author: Stephen C. Tweedie. URL: ftp://ftp.uk.linux.org/pub/linux/sct/fs/jfs/journal-design.ps.gz Keywords: ext3, journaling. Description: Excellent 8-pages paper explaining the journaling capabilities added to ext2 by the author, showing different problems faced and the alternatives chosen. * Title: "Kernel API changes from 2.0 to 2.2" Author: Richard Gooch. URL: http://www.linuxhq.com/guides/LKMPG/node28.html Keywords: 2.2, changes. Description: Kernel functions/structures/variables which changed from 2.0.x to 2.2.x. * Title: "Kernel API changes from 2.2 to 2.4" Author: Richard Gooch. Keywords: 2.4, changes. Description: Kernel functions/structures/variables which changed from 2.2.x to 2.4.x. * Title: "Linux Kernel Module Programming Guide" Author: Ori Pomerantz. URL: http://tldp.org/LDP/lkmpg/2.6/html/index.html Keywords: modules, GPL book, /proc, ioctls, system calls, interrupt handlers . Description: Very nice 92 pages GPL book /* * net/tipc/node.h: Include file for TIPC node management routines * * Copyright (c) 2000-2006, Ericsson AB * Copyright (c) 2005, Wind River Systems * All rights reserved. * * Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without * modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: * * 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright * notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. * 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright * notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the * documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. * 3. Neither the names of the copyright holders nor the names of its * contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from * this software without specific prior written permission. * * Alternatively, this software may be distributed under the terms of the * GNU General Public License ("GPL") version 2 as published by the Free * Software Foundation. * * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" * AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE * IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE * ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE * LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR * CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF * SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS * INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN * CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) * ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE * POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. */ #ifndef _TIPC_NODE_H #define _TIPC_NODE_H #include "node_subscr.h" #include "addr.h" #include "cluster.h" #include "bearer.h" /** * struct tipc_node - TIPC node structure * @addr: network address of node * @lock: spinlock governing access to structure * @owner: pointer to cluster that node belongs to * @next: pointer to next node in sorted list of cluster's nodes * @nsub: list of "node down" subscriptions monitoring node * @active_links: pointers to active links to node * @links: pointers to all links to node * @working_links: number of working links to node (both active and standby) * @cleanup_required: non-zero if cleaning up after a prior loss of contact * @link_cnt: number of links to node * @permit_changeover: non-zero if node has redundant links to this system * @routers: bitmap (used for multicluster communication) * @last_router: (used for multicluster communication) * @bclink: broadcast-related info * @supported: non-zero if node supports TIPC b'cast capability * @acked: sequence # of last outbound b'cast message acknowledged by node * @last_in: sequence # of last in-sequence b'cast message received from node * @gap_after: sequence # of last message not requiring a NAK request * @gap_to: sequence # of last message requiring a NAK request * @nack_sync: counter that determines when NAK requests should be sent * @deferred_head: oldest OOS b'cast message received from node * @deferred_tail: newest OOS b'cast message received from node * @defragm: list of partially reassembled b'cast message fragments from node */ struct tipc_node { u32 addr; spinlock_t lock; struct cluster *owner; struct tipc_node *next; struct list_head nsub; struct link *active_links[2]; struct link *links[MAX_BEARERS]; int link_cnt; int working_links; int cleanup_required; int permit_changeover; u32 routers[512/32]; int last_router; struct { int supported; u32 acked; u32 last_in; u32 gap_after; u32 gap_to; u32 nack_sync; struct sk_buff *deferred_head; struct sk_buff *deferred_tail; struct sk_buff *defragm; } bclink; }; extern u32 tipc_own_tag; struct tipc_node *tipc_node_create(u32 addr); void tipc_node_delete(struct tipc_node *n_ptr); struct tipc_node *tipc_node_attach_link(struct link *l_ptr); void tipc_node_detach_link(struct tipc_node *n_ptr, struct link *l_ptr); void tipc_node_link_down(struct tipc_node *n_ptr, struct link *l_ptr); void tipc_node_link_up(struct tipc_node *n_ptr, struct link *l_ptr); int tipc_node_has_active_links(struct tipc_node *n_ptr); int tipc_node_has_redundant_links(struct tipc_node *n_ptr); u32 tipc_node_select_router(struct tipc_node *n_ptr, u32 ref); struct tipc_node *tipc_node_select_next_hop(u32 addr, u32 selector); int tipc_node_is_up(struct tipc_node *n_ptr); void tipc_node_add_router(struct tipc_node *n_ptr, u32 router); void tipc_node_remove_router(struct tipc_node *n_ptr, u32 router); struct sk_buff *tipc_node_get_links(const void *req_tlv_area, int req_tlv_space); struct sk_buff *tipc_node_get_nodes(const void *req_tlv_area, int req_tlv_space); static inline struct tipc_node *tipc_node_find(u32 addr) { if (likely(in_own_cluster(addr))) return tipc_local_nodes[tipc_node(addr)]; else if (tipc_addr_domain_valid(addr)) { struct cluster *c_ptr = tipc_cltr_find(addr); if (c_ptr) return c_ptr->nodes[tipc_node(addr)]; } return NULL; } static inline struct tipc_node *tipc_node_select(u32 addr, u32 selector) { if (likely(in_own_cluster(addr))) return tipc_local_nodes[tipc_node(addr)]; return tipc_node_select_next_hop(addr, selector); } static inline void tipc_node_lock(struct tipc_node *n_ptr) { spin_lock_bh(&n_ptr->lock); } static inline void tipc_node_unlock(struct tipc_node *n_ptr) { spin_unlock_bh(&n_ptr->lock); } #endif
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ncing Linux" URL: http://lxr.linux.no/source/ Keywords: Browsing source code. Description: Another web-based Linux kernel source code browser. Lots of cross references to variables and functions. You can see where they are defined and where they are used. * Name: "Linux Weekly News" URL: http://lwn.net Keywords: latest kernel news. Description: The title says it all. There's a fixed kernel section summarizing developers' work, bug fixes, new features and versions produced during the week. Published every Thursday. * Name: "Kernel Traffic" URL: http://kt.earth.li/kernel-traffic/index.html Keywords: linux-kernel mailing list, weekly kernel news. Description: Weekly newsletter covering the most relevant discussions of the linux-kernel mailing list. * Name: "CuTTiNG.eDGe.LiNuX" URL: http://edge.kernelnotes.org Keywords: changelist. Description: Site which provides the changelist for every kernel release. What's new, what's better, what's changed. Myrdraal reads the patches and describes them. Pointers to the patches are there, too. * Name: "New linux-kernel Mailing List FAQ" URL: http://www.tux.org/lkml/ Keywords: linux-kernel mailing list FAQ. Description: linux-kernel is a mailing list for developers to communicate. This FAQ builds on the previous linux-kernel mailing list FAQ maintained by Frohwalt Egerer, who no longer maintains it. Read it to see how to join the mailing list. Dozens of interesting questions regarding the list, Linux, developers (who is ...?), terms (what is...?) are answered here too. Just read it. * Name: "Linux Virtual File System" Author: Peter J. Braam. URL: http://www.coda.cs.cmu.edu/doc/talks/linuxvfs/ Keywords: slides, VFS, inode, superblock, dentry, dcache. Description: Set of slides, presumably from a presentation on the Linux VFS layer. Covers version 2.1.x, with dentries and the dcache. * Name: "Gary's Encyclopedia - The Linux Kernel" Author: Gary (I suppose...). URL: http://slencyclopedia.berlios.de/index.html Keywords: linux, community, everything! Description: Gary's Encyclopedia exists to allow the rapid finding of documentation and other information of interest to GNU/Linux users. It has about 4000 links to external pages in 150 major categories. This link is for kernel-specific links, documents, sites... This list is now hosted by developer.Berlios.de, but seems not to have been updated since sometime in 1999. * Name: "The home page of Linux-MM" Author: The Linux-MM team. URL: http://linux-mm.org/ Keywords: memory management, Linux-MM, mm patches, TODO, docs, mailing list. Description: Site devoted to Linux Memory Management development. Memory related patches, HOWTOs, links, mm developers... Don't miss it if you are interested in memory management development! * Name: "Kernel Newbies IRC Channel" URL: http://www.kernelnewbies.org Keywords: IRC, newbies, channel, asking doubts. Description: #kernelnewbies on irc.openprojects.net. From the web page: "#kernelnewbies is an IRC network dedicated to the 'newbie' kernel hacker. The audience mostly consists of people who are learning about the kernel, working on kernel projects or professional kernel hackers that want to help less seasoned kernel people. [...] #kernelnewbies is on the Open Projects IRC Network, try irc.openprojects.net or irc..openprojects.net as your server and then /join #kernelnewbies". It also hosts articles, documents, FAQs... * Name: "linux-kernel mailing list archives and search engines" URL: http://vger.kernel.org/vger-lists.html URL: http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/index.html URL: http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel URL: http://groups.google.com/group/mlist.linux.kernel URL: http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/linux/linux-kernel/ URL: http://www.lib.uaa.alaska.edu/linux-kernel/ Keywords: linux-kernel, archives, search. Description: Some of the linux-kernel mailing list archivers. If you have a better/another one, please let me know. _________________________________________________________________ Document last updated on Sat 2005-NOV-19