
   
 INDEX OF DOCUMENTATION FOR PEOPLE INTERESTED IN WRITING AND/OR UNDERSTANDING
                               THE LINUX KERNEL.
                                       
		Juan-Mariano de Goyeneche <jmseyas@dit.upm.es>
   
   
   /*
    * 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
   catalogued 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: "The Linux Kernel"
            Author: David A. Rusling.
            URL: http://sunsite.unc.edu/linux/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: "The Linux Kernel Hackers' Guide"
            Author: Michael K.Johnson and others.
            URL: http://www.redhat.com:8080/HyperNews/get/khg.html
            Keywords: everything!
            Description: No more Postscript book-like version. Only
            HTML now. Many people have contributed. The interface is
            similar to web available mailing lists archives. You can find
            some articles and then some mails asking questions about them
            and/or complementing previous contributions. A little bit
            anarchic in this aspect, but with some valuable information
            in some cases.
       
          + Title: "Tour Of the Linux Kernel Source"
            Author: Vijo Cherian.
            URL: http://www.svrec.ernet.in/~vijo/tolks/tolks.html
            Keywords:
            Description: The name says it all. A tour of the sources,
            describing directories, files, variables, data structures...
            It covers general stuff, device drivers, filesystems, IPC and
            Network Code.
       
          + Title: "Overview of the Virtual File System"
            Author: Richard Gooch.
            URL: http://www.atnf.csiro.au/~rgooch/linux/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.ssc.com/lj/issue44/2391.html
            Keywords: RAID, MD driver.
            Description: Linux Journal Kernel Korner article. Here is
            it's 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.ssc.com/lj/issue23/1219.html
            Keywords: device driver, module, loading/unloading modules,
            allocating
            resources. Description: Linux Journal Kernel Korner
            article. Here is it's 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.ssc.com/lj/issue24/kk24.html
            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
            it's 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.ssc.com/lj/issue25/kk25.html
            Keywords: read(), write(), select(), ioctl(), blocking/non
            blocking mode,
            interrupt handler. Description: Linux Journal Kernel Korner
            article. Here is it's 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.ssc.com/lj/issue26/interrupt.html
            Keywords: interrupts, irqs, DMA, bottom halves, task
            queues.
            Description: Linux Journal Kernel Korner article. Here is
            it's 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: "Network Buffers And Memory Management"
            Author: Alan Cox.
            URL: http://www.ssc.com/lj/issue30/kk30.html
            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: "An Introduction to the Linux 1.3.x Networking Code"
            Author: Vipul Gupta.
            URL:
            http://anchor.cs.binghamton.edu/courses/cs628/linux-net.html
            Keywords: files, sk_buffs.
            Description: A short description of files under the net/
            directory. Each file has a one- or two-line paragraph to
            describe it. Also, sk_buffs is explained with some
            beautiful pictures. A little bit outdated.
   
          + Title: "Linux ioctl() Primer"
            Author: Vipul Gupta.
            URL:
            http://anchor.cs.binghamton.edu/courses/cs628/ioctl.html
            Keywords: ioctl, socket.
            Description: Little description and examples on the use and
            implementation of the ioctl() system call. A little bit
            biased towards sockets.
       
          + Title: "Writing Linux Device Drivers"
            Author: Michael K. Johnson.
            URL: http://www.redhat.com/~johnsonm/devices.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/pc
            ip.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/dr
            ivers.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.
       
       
       
     * BOOKS: (Not on-line)
       
          + Title: "Linux Device Drivers"
            Author: Alessandro Rubini.
            Publisher: O'Reilly &Associates.
            Date: 1998.
            ISBN: 1-56592-292-1
       
          + Title: "Linux Kernel Internals"
            Author: Michael Beck.
            Publisher: Addison-Wesley.
            Date: 1997.
            ISBN: 0-201-33143-8 (second edition)
       
          + Title: "The Design of the UNIX Operating System"
            Author: Maurice J. Bach.
            Publisher: Prentice Hall.
            Date: 1986.
            ISBN: ???
   
          + Title: "The Design and Implementation of the 4.3 BSD UNIX
            Operating System"
            Author: Samuel J. Leffler, Marshall Kirk McKusick, Michael
            J. Karels, John S. Quarterman.
            Publisher: Addison-Wesley.
            Date: 1989 (reprinted with corrections on October, 1990).
            ISBN: 0-201-06196-1
       
          + Title: "The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD UNIX
            Operating System"
            Author: Marshall Kirk McKusick, Keith Bostic, Michael J.
            Karels, John S. Quarterman.
            Publisher: Addison-Wesley.
            Date: 1996.
            ISBN: 0-201-54979-4
   
          + Title: "Programmation Linux 2.0 API systeme et
            fonctionnement du noyau"
            Author: Remy Card, Eric Dumas, Franck Mevel.
            Publisher: Eyrolles.
            Date: 1997.
            Pages: 520. ISBN: 2-212-08932-5
       
          + Title: "Unix internals -- the new frontiers"
            Author: Uresh Vahalia.
            Publisher: Prentice Hall.
            Date: 1996.
            Pages: 600. ISBN: 0-13-101908-2
   
       
     * MISCELLANEOUS:
       
          + Name: Linux Source Driver.
            URL: http://lsd.linux.cz
            Keywords: Browsing.
            Description: "Linux Source Driver (LSD) is an application,
            which can make browsing source codes of Linux kernel easier
            than you can imagine. You can select between multiple
            versions of kernel (e.g. 0.01, 1.0.0, 2.0.33, 2.0.34pre13,
            2.0.0, 2.1.101 etc.). With LSD you can search Linux kernel
            (fulltext, macros, types, functions and variables) and LSD
            can generate patches for you on the fly (files, directories
            or kernel)".
       
          + Name: Linux Weekly News.
            URL: http://lwn.net
            Keywords: last 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: CuTTiNG.eDGe.LiNuX.
            URL: http://edge.linuxhq.com
            Keywords: changelist.
            Description: Site which provides the changelist for every
            kernel release. What's new, what's better, what's changed.
            Myrdraal reads the patchs and describes them. Pointers to the
            patches are there, too.
   
          + Name: New linux-kernel Mailing List FAQ.
            URL: Original site:
            http://www.altern.org/andrebalsa/doc/lkml-faq.html
            URL: U.S. mirror site:
            http://www.ececs.uc.edu/~rreilova/linux/lkml-faq.html
            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.
