The Linux Programming Interface

A Linux and UNIX System Programming Handbook

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A Linux and UNIX System Programming Handbook

By Michael Kerrisk

Publisher: No Starch Press

Released: October 2010

Pages: 1552

The Linux Programming Interface is the definitive guide to the Linux and UNIX programming interface—the interface employed by nearly every application that runs on a Linux or UNIX system.

In this authoritative work, Linux programming expert Michael Kerrisk provides detailed descriptions of the system calls and library functions that you need in order to master the craft of system programming, and accompanies his explanations with clear, complete example programs.

You'll find descriptions of over 500 system calls and library functions, and more than 200 example programs, 88 tables, and 115 diagrams. You'll learn how to:

Read and write files efficiently
Use signals, clocks, and timers
Create processes and execute programs
Write secure programs
Write multithreaded programs using POSIX threads
Build and use shared libraries
Perform interprocess communication using pipes, message queues, shared memory, and semaphores
Write network applications with the sockets API

While The Linux Programming Interface covers a wealth of Linux-specific features, including epoll, inotify, and the /proc file system, its emphasis on UNIX standards (POSIX.1-2001/SUSv3 and POSIX.1-2008/SUSv4) makes it equally valuable to programmers working on other UNIX platforms.

The Linux Programming Interface is the most comprehensive single-volume work on the Linux and UNIX programming interface, and a book that's destined to become a new classic.

Praise for The Linux Programming Interface

"If I had to choose a single book to sit next to my machine when writing software for Linux, this would be it."Martin Landers, Software Engineer, Google

"This book, with its detailed descriptions and examples, contains everything you need to understand the details and nuances of the low-level programming APIs in Linux . . . no matter what the level of reader, there will be something to be learnt from this book."Mel Gorman, Author of Understanding the Linux Virtual Memory Manager

"Michael Kerrisk has not only written a great book about Linux programming and how it relates to various standards, but has also taken care that bugs he noticed got fixed and the man pages were (greatly) improved. In all three ways, he has made Linux programming easier. The in-depth treatment of topics in The Linux Programming Interface . . . makes it a must-have reference for both new and experienced Linux programmers."Andreas Jaeger, Program Manager, openSUSE, Novell

"Michael's inexhaustible determination to get his information right, and to express it clearly and concisely, has resulted in a strong reference source for programmers. While this work is targeted at Linux programmers, it will be of value to any programmer working in the UNIX/POSIX ecosystem."David Butenhof, Author of Programming with POSIX Threads and Contributor to the POSIX and UNIX Standards

". . . a very thorough—yet easy to read—explanation of UNIX system and network programming, with an emphasis on Linux systems. It's certainly a book I'd recommend to anybody wanting to get into UNIX programming (in general) or to experienced UNIX programmers wanting to know 'what's new' in the popular GNU/Linux system."Fernando Gont, Network Security Researcher, IETF Participant, and RFC Author

". . . encyclopedic in the breadth and depth of its coverage, and textbook-like in its wealth of worked examples and exercises. Each topic is clearly and comprehensively covered, from theory to hands-on working code. Professionals, students, educators, this is the Linux/UNIX reference that you have been waiting for."Anthony Robins, Associate Professor of Computer Science, The University of Otago

"I've been very impressed by the precision, the quality and the level of detail Michael Kerrisk put in his book. He is a great expert of Linux system calls and lets us share his knowledge and understanding of the Linux APIs."Christophe Blaess, Author of Programmation systeme en C sous Linux

". . . an essential resource for the serious or professional Linux and UNIX systems programmer. Michael Kerrisk covers the use of all the key APIs across both the Linux and UNIX system interfaces with clear descriptions and tutorial examples and stresses the importance and benefits of following standards such as the Single UNIX Specification and POSIX 1003.1."Andrew Josey, Director, Standards, The Open Group, and Chair of the POSIX 1003.1 Working Group

"What could be better than an encyclopedic reference to the Linux system, from the standpoint of the system programmer, written by none other than the maintainer of the man pages himself? The Linux Programming Interface is comprehensive and detailed. I firmly expect it to become an indispensable addition to my programming bookshelf."Bill Gallmeister, Author of POSIX.4 Programmer's Guide: Programming for the Real World

". . . the most complete and up-to-date book about Linux and UNIX system programming. If you're new to Linux system programming, if you're a UNIX veteran focused on portability while interested in learning the Linux way, or if you're simply looking for an excellent reference about the Linux programming interface, then Michael Kerrisk's book is definitely the companion you want on your bookshelf."Loic Domaigne, Chief Software Architect (Embedded), Corpuls.com

Chapter 1 History and Standards
1. A Brief History of UNIX and C
2. A Brief History of Linux
3. Standardization
4. Summary
Chapter 2 Fundamental Concepts
1. The Core Operating System: The Kernel
2. The Shell
3. Users and Groups
4. Single Directory Hierarchy, Directories, Links, and Files
5. File I/O Model
6. Programs
7. Processes
8. Memory Mappings
9. Static and Shared Libraries
10. Interprocess Communication and Synchronization
11. Signals
12. Threads
13. Process Groups and Shell Job Control
14. Sessions, Controlling Terminals, and Controlling Processes
15. Pseudoterminals
16. Date and Time
17. Client-Server Architecture
18. Realtime
19. The /proc File System
20. Summary
Chapter 3 System Programming Concepts
1. System Calls
2. Library Functions
3. The Standard C Library; The GNU C Library (glibc)
4. Handling Errors from System Calls and Library Functions
5. Notes on the Example Programs in This Book
6. Portability Issues
7. Summary
8. Exercise
Chapter 4 File I/O: The Universal I/O Model
1. Overview
2. Universality of I/O
3. Opening a File: open()
4. Reading from a File: read()
5. Writing to a File: write()
6. Closing a File: close()
7. Changing the File Offset: lseek()
8. Operations Outside the Universal I/O Model: ioctl()
9. Summary
10. Exercises
Chapter 5 File I/O: Further Details
1. Atomicity and Race Conditions
2. File Control Operations: fcntl()
3. Open File Status Flags
4. Relationship Between File Descriptors and Open Files
5. Duplicating File Descriptors
6. File I/O at a Specified Offset: pread() and pwrite()
7. Scatter-Gather I/O: readv() and writev()
8. Truncating a File: truncate() and ftruncate()
9. Nonblocking I/O
10. I/O on Large Files
11. The /dev/fd Directory
12. Creating Temporary Files
13. Summary
14. Exercises
Chapter 6 Processes
1. Processes and Programs
2. Process ID and Parent Process ID
3. Memory Layout of a Process
4. Virtual Memory Management
5. The Stack and Stack Frames
6. Command-Line Arguments (argc, argv)
7. Environment List
8. Performing a Nonlocal Goto: setjmp() and long jmp()
9. Summary
10. Exercises
Chapter 7 Memory Allocation
1. Allocating Memory on the Heap
2. Allocating Memory on the Stack: alloca()
3. Summary
4. Exercises
Chapter 8 Users and Groups
1. The Password File: /etc/passwd
2. The Shadow Password File: /etc/shadow
3. The Group File: /etc/group
4. Retrieving User and Group Information
5. Password Encryption and User Authentication
6. Summary
7. Exercises
Chapter 9 Process Credentials
1. Real User ID and Real Group ID
2. Effective User ID and Effective Group ID
3. Set-User-ID and Set-Group-ID Programs
4. Saved Set-User-ID and Saved Set-Group-ID
5. File-System User ID and File-System Group ID
6. Supplementary Group IDs
7. Retrieving and Modifying Process Credentials
8. Summary
9. Exercises
Chapter 10 Time
1. Calendar Time
2. Time-Conversion Functions
3. Timezones
4. Locales
5. Updating the System Clock
6. The Software Clock (Jiffies)
7. Process Time
8. Summary
9. Exercise
Chapter 11 System Limits and Options
1. System Limits
2. Retrieving System Limits (and Options) at Run Time
3. Retrieving File-Related Limits (and Options) at Run Time
4. Indeterminate Limits
5. System Options
6. Summary
7. Exercises
Chapter 12 System and Process Information
1. The /proc File System
2. System Identification: uname()
3. Summary
4. Exercises
Chapter 13 File I/O Buffering
1. Kernel Buffering of File I/O: The Buffer Cache
2. Buffering in the stdio Library
3. Controlling Kernel Buffering of File I/O
4. Summary of I/O Buffering
5. Advising the Kernel About I/O Patterns
6. Bypassing the Buffer Cache: Direct I/O
7. Mixing Library Functions and System Calls for File I/O
8. Summary
9. Exercises
Chapter 14 File Systems
1. Device Special Files (Devices)
2. Disks and Partitions
3. File Systems
4. I-nodes
5. The Virtual File System (VFS)
6. Journaling File Systems
7. Single Directory Hierarchy and Mount Points
8. Mounting and Unmounting File Systems
9. Advanced Mount Features
10. A Virtual Memory File System: tmpfs
11. Obtaining Information About a File System: statvfs()
12. Summary
13. Exercise
Chapter 15 File Attributes
1. Retrieving File Information: stat()
2. File Timestamps
3. File Ownership
4. File Permissions
5. I-node Flags (ext2 Extended File Attributes)
6. Summary
7. Exercises
Chapter 16 Extended Attributes
1. Overview
2. Extended Attribute Implementation Details
3. System Calls for Manipulating Extended Attributes
4. Summary
5. Exercise
Chapter 17 Access Control Lists
1. Overview
2. ACL Permission-Checking Algorithm
3. Long and Short Text Forms for ACLs
4. The ACL_MASK Entry and the ACL Group Class
5. The getfacl and setfacl Commands
6. Default ACLs and File Creation
7. ACL Implementation Limits
8. The ACL API
9. Summary
10. Exercise
Chapter 18 Directories and Links
1. Directories and (Hard) Links
2. Symbolic (Soft) Links
3. Creating and Removing (Hard) Links: link() and unlink()
4. Changing the Name of a File: rename()
5. Working with Symbolic Links: symlink() and readlink()
6. Creating and Removing Directories: mkdir() and rmdir()
7. Removing a File or Directory: remove()
8. Reading Directories: opendir() and readdir()
9. File Tree Walking: nftw()
10. The Current Working Directory of a Process
11. Operating Relative to a Directory File Descriptor
12. Changing the Root Directory of a Process: chroot()
13. Resolving a Pathname: realpath()
14. Parsing Pathname Strings: dirname() and basename()
15. Summary
16. Exercises
Chapter 19 Monitoring File Events
1. Overview
2. The inotify API
3. inotify Events
4. Reading inotify Events
5. Queue Limits and /proc Files
6. An Older System for Monitoring File Events: dnotify
7. Summary
8. Exercise
Chapter 20 Signals: Fundamental Concepts
1. Concepts and Overview
2. Signal Types and Default Actions
3. Changing Signal Dispositions: signal()
4. Introduction to Signal Handlers
5. Sending Signals: kill()
6. Checking for the Existence of a Process
7. Other Ways of Sending Signals: raise() and killpg()
8. Displaying Signal Descriptions
9. Signal Sets
10. The Signal Mask (Blocking Signal Delivery)
11. Pending Signals
12. Signals Are Not Queued
13. Changing Signal Dispositions: sigaction()
14. Waiting for a Signal: pause()
15. Summary
16. Exercises
Chapter 21 Signals: Signal Handlers
1. Designing Signal Handlers
2. Other Methods of Terminating a Signal Handler
3. Handling a Signal on an Alternate Stack: sigaltstack()
4. The SA_SIGINFO Flag
5. Interruption and Restarting of System Calls
6. Summary
7. Exercise
Chapter 22 Signals: Advanced Features
1. Core Dump Files
2. Special Cases for Delivery, Disposition, and Handling
3. Interruptible and Uninterruptible Process Sleep States
4. Hardware-Generated Signals
5. Synchronous and Asynchronous Signal Generation
6. Timing and Order of Signal Delivery
7. Implementation and Portability of signal()
8. Realtime Signals
9. Waiting for a Signal Using a Mask: sigsuspend()
10. Synchronously Waiting for a Signal
11. Fetching Signals via a File Descriptor
12. Interprocess Communication with Signals
13. Earlier Signal APIs (System V and BSD)
14. Summary
15. Exercises
Chapter 23 Timers and Sleeping
1. Interval Timers
2. Scheduling and Accuracy of Timers
3. Setting Timeouts on Blocking Operations
4. Suspending Execution for a Fixed Interval (Sleeping)
5. POSIX Clocks
6. POSIX Interval Timers
7. Timers That Notify via File Descriptors: The timerfd API
8. Summary
9. Exercises
Chapter 24 Process Creation
1. Overview of fork(), exit(), wait(), and execve()
2. Creating a New Process: fork()
3. The vfork() System Call
4. Race Conditions After fork()
5. Avoiding Race Conditions by Synchronizing with Signals
6. Summary
7. Exercises
Chapter 25 Process Termination
1. Terminating a Process: _exit() and exit()
2. Details of Process Termination
3. Exit Handlers
4. Interactions Between fork(), stdio Buffers, and _exit()
5. Summary
6. Exercise
Chapter 26 Monitoring Child Processes
1. Waiting on a Child Process
2. Orphans and Zombies
3. The SIGCHLD Signal
4. Summary
5. Exercises
Chapter 27 Program Execution
1. Executing a New Program: execve()
2. The exec() Library Functions
3. Interpreter Scripts
4. File Descriptors and exec()
5. Signals and exec()
6. Executing a Shell Command: system()
7. Implementing system()
8. Summary
9. Exercises
Chapter 28 Process Creation and Program Execution in More Detail
1. Process Accounting
2. The clone() System Call
3. Speed of Process Creation
4. Effect of exec() and fork() on Process Attributes
5. Summary
6. Exercise
Chapter 29 Threads: Introduction
1. Overview
2. Background Details of the Pthreads API
3. Thread Creation
4. Thread Termination
5. Thread IDs
6. Joining with a Terminated Thread
7. Detaching a Thread
8. Thread Attributes
9. Threads Versus Processes
10. Summary
11. Exercises
Chapter 30 Threads: Thread Synchronization
1. Protecting Accesses to Shared Variables: Mutexes
2. Signaling Changes of State: Condition Variables
3. Summary
4. Exercises
Chapter 31 Threads: Thread Safety and Per-Thread Storage
1. Thread Safety (and Reentrancy Revisited)
2. One-Time Initialization
3. Thread-Specific Data
4. Thread-Local Storage
5. Summary
6. Exercises
Chapter 32 Threads: Thread Cancellation
1. Canceling a Thread
2. Cancellation State and Type
3. Cancellation Points
4. Testing for Thread Cancellation
5. Cleanup Handlers
6. Asynchronous Cancelability
7. Summary
Chapter 33 Threads: Further Details
1. Thread Stacks
2. Threads and Signals
3. Threads and Process Control
4. Thread Implementation Models
5. Linux Implementations of POSIX Threads
6. Advanced Features of the Pthreads API
7. Summary
8. Exercises
Chapter 34 Process Groups, Sessions, and Job Control
1. Overview
2. Process Groups
3. Sessions
4. Controlling Terminals and Controlling Processes
5. Foreground and Background Process Groups
6. The SIGHUP Signal
7. Job Control
8. Summary
9. Exercises
Chapter 35 Process Priorities and Scheduling
1. Process Priorities (Nice Values)
2. Overview of Realtime Process Scheduling
3. Realtime Process Scheduling API
4. CPU Affinity
5. Summary
6. Exercises
Chapter 36 Process Resources
1. Process Resource Usage
2. Process Resource Limits
3. Details of Specific Resource Limits
4. Summary
5. Exercises
Chapter 37 Daemons
1. Overview
2. Creating a Daemon
3. Guidelines for Writing Daemons
4. Using SIGHUP to Reinitialize a Daemon
5. Logging Messages and Errors Using syslog
6. Summary
7. Exercise
Chapter 38 Writing Secure Privileged Programs
1. Is a Set-User-ID or Set-Group-ID Program Required?
2. Operate with Least Privilege
3. Be Careful When Executing a Program
4. Avoid Exposing Sensitive Information
5. Confine the Process
6. Beware of Signals and Race Conditions
7. Pitfalls When Performing File Operations and File I/O
8. Don't Trust Inputs or the Environment
9. Beware of Buffer Overruns
10. Beware of Denial-of-Service Attacks
11. Check Return Statuses and Fail Safely
12. Summary
13. Exercises
Chapter 39 Capabilities
1. Rationale for Capabilities
2. The Linux Capabilities
3. Process and File Capabilities
4. The Modern Capabilities Implementation
5. Transformation of Process Capabilities During exec()
6. Effect on Process Capabilities of Changing User IDs
7. Changing Process Capabilities Programmatically
8. Creating Capabilities-Only Environments
9. Discovering the Capabilities Required by a Program
10. Older Kernels and Systems Without File Capabilities
11. Summary
12. Exercise
Chapter 40 Login Accounting
1. Overview of the utmp and wtmp Files
2. The utmpx API
3. The utmpx Structure
4. Retrieving Information from the utmp and wtmp Files
5. Retrieving the Login Name: getlogin()
6. Updating the utmp and wtmp Files for a Login Session
7. The lastlog File
8. Summary
9. Exercises
Chapter 41 Fundamentals of Shared Libraries
1. Object Libraries
2. Static Libraries
3. Overview of Shared Libraries
4. Creating and Using Shared Libraries—A First Pass
5. Useful Tools for Working with Shared Libraries
6. Shared Library Versions and Naming Conventions
7. Installing Shared Libraries
8. Compatible Versus Incompatible Libraries
9. Upgrading Shared Libraries
10. Specifying Library Search Directories in an Object File
11. Finding Shared Libraries at Run Time
12. Run-Time Symbol Resolution
13. Using a Static Library Instead of a Shared Library
14. Summary
15. Exercise
Chapter 42 Advanced Features of Shared Libraries
1. Dynamically Loaded Libraries
2. Controlling Symbol Visibility
3. Linker Version Scripts
4. Initialization and Finalization Functions
5. Preloading Shared Libraries
6. Monitoring the Dynamic Linker: LD_DEBUG
7. Summary
8. Exercises
Chapter 43 Interprocess Communication Overview
1. A Taxonomy of IPC Facilities
2. Communication Facilities
3. Synchronization Facilities
4. Comparing IPC Facilities
5. Summary
6. Exercises
Chapter 44 Pipes and FIFOs
1. Overview
2. Creating and Using Pipes
3. Pipes as a Method of Process Synchronization
4. Using Pipes to Connect Filters
5. Talking to a Shell Command via a Pipe: popen()
6. Pipes and stdio Buffering
7. FIFOs
8. A Client-Server Application Using FIFOs
9. Nonblocking I/O
10. Semantics of read() and write() on Pipes and FIFOs
11. Summary
12. Exercises
Chapter 45 Introduction to System V IPC
1. API Overview
2. IPC Keys
3. Associated Data Structure and Object Permissions
4. IPC Identifiers and Client-Server Applications
5. Algorithm Employed by System V IPC get Calls
6. The ipcs and ipcrm Commands
7. Obtaining a List of All IPC Objects
8. IPC Limits
9. Summary
10. Exercises
Chapter 46 System V Message Queues
1. Creating or Opening a Message Queue
2. Exchanging Messages
3. Message Queue Control Operations
4. Message Queue Associated Data Structure
5. Message Queue Limits
6. Displaying All Message Queues on the System
7. Client-Server Programming with Message Queues
8. A File-Server Application Using Message Queues
9. Disadvantages of System V Message Queues
10. Summary
11. Exercises
Chapter 47 System V Semaphores
1. Overview
2. Creating or Opening a Semaphore Set
3. Semaphore Control Operations
4. Semaphore Associated Data Structure
5. Semaphore Initialization
6. Semaphore Operations
7. Handling of Multiple Blocked Semaphore Operations
8. Semaphore Undo Values
9. Implementing a Binary Semaphores Protocol
10. Semaphore Limits
11. Disadvantages of System V Semaphores
12. Summary
13. Exercises
Chapter 48 System V Shared Memory
1. Overview
2. Creating or Opening a Shared Memory Segment
3. Using Shared Memory
4. Example: Transferring Data via Shared Memory
5. Location of Shared Memory in Virtual Memory
6. Storing Pointers in Shared Memory
7. Shared Memory Control Operations
8. Shared Memory Associated Data Structure
9. Shared Memory Limits
10. Summary
11. Exercises
Chapter 49 Memory Mappings
1. Overview
2. Creating a Mapping: mmap()
3. Unmapping a Mapped Region: munmap()
4. File Mappings
5. Synchronizing a Mapped Region: msync()
6. Additional mmap() Flags
7. Anonymous Mappings
8. Remapping a Mapped Region: mremap()
9. MAP_NORESERVE and Swap Space Overcommitting
10. The MAP_FIXED Flag
11. Nonlinear Mappings: remap_file_pages()
12. Summary
13. Exercises
Chapter 50 Virtual Memory Operations
1. Changing Memory Protection: mprotect()
2. Memory Locking: mlock() and mlockall()
3. Determining Memory Residence: mincore()
4. Advising Future Memory Usage Patterns: madvise()
5. Summary
6. Exercises
Chapter 51 Introduction to POSIX IPC
1. API Overview
2. Comparison of System V IPC and POSIX IPC
3. Summary
Chapter 52 POSIX Message Queues
1. Overview
2. Opening, Closing, and Unlinking a Message Queue
3. Relationship Between Descriptors and Message Queues
4. Message Queue Attributes
5. Exchanging Messages
6. Message Notification
7. Linux-Specific Features
8. Message Queue Limits
9. Comparison of POSIX and System V Message Queues
10. Summary
11. Exercises
Chapter 53 POSIX Semaphores
1. Overview
2. Named Semaphores
3. Semaphore Operations
4. Unnamed Semaphores
5. Comparisons with Other Synchronization Techniques
6. Semaphore Limits
7. Summary
8. Exercises
Chapter 54 POSIX Shared Memory
1. Overview
2. Creating Shared Memory Objects
3. Using Shared Memory Objects
4. Removing Shared Memory Objects
5. Comparisons Between Shared Memory APIs
6. Summary
7. Exercise
Chapter 55 File Locking
1. Overview
2. File Locking with flock()
3. Record Locking with fcntl()
4. Mandatory Locking
5. The /proc/locks File
6. Running Just One Instance of a Program
7. Older Locking Techniques
8. Summary
9. Exercises
Chapter 56 Sockets: Introduction
1. Overview
2. Creating a Socket: socket()
3. Binding a Socket to an Address: bind()
4. Generic Socket Address Structures: struct sockaddr
5. Stream Sockets
6. Datagram Sockets
7. Summary
Chapter 57 Sockets: UNIX Domain
1. UNIX Domain Socket Addresses: struct sockaddr_un
2. Stream Sockets in the UNIX Domain
3. Datagram Sockets in the UNIX Domain
4. UNIX Domain Socket Permissions
5. Creating a Connected Socket Pair: socketpair()
6. The Linux Abstract Socket Namespace
7. Summary
8. Exercises
Chapter 58 Sockets: Fundamentals of TCP/IP Networks
1. Internets
2. Networking Protocols and Layers
3. The Data-Link Layer
4. The Network Layer: IP
5. IP Addresses
6. The Transport Layer
7. Requests for Comments (RFCs)
8. Summary
Chapter 59 Sockets: Internet Domains
1. Internet Domain Sockets
2. Network Byte Order
3. Data Representation
4. Internet Socket Addresses
5. Overview of Host and Service Conversion Functions
6. The inet_pton() and inet_ntop() Functions
7. Client-Server Example (Datagram Sockets)
8. Domain Name System (DNS)
9. The /etc/services File
10. Protocol-Independent Host and Service Conversion
11. Client-Server Example (Stream Sockets)
12. An Internet Domain Sockets Library
13. Obsolete APIs for Host and Service Conversions
14. UNIX Versus Internet Domain Sockets
15. Further Information
16. Summary
17. Exercises
Chapter 60 Sockets: Server Design
1. Iterative and Concurrent Servers
2. An Iterative UDP echo Server
3. A Concurrent TCP echo Server
4. Other Concurrent Server Designs
5. The inetd (Internet Superserver) Daemon
6. Summary
7. Exercises
Chapter 61 Sockets: Advanced Topics
1. Partial Reads and Writes on Stream Sockets
2. The shutdown() System Call
3. Socket-Specific I/O System Calls: recv() and send()
4. The sendfile() System Call
5. Retrieving Socket Addresses
6. A Closer Look at TCP
7. Monitoring Sockets: netstat
8. Using tcpdump to Monitor TCP Traffic
9. Socket Options
10. The SO_REUSEADDR Socket Option
11. Inheritance of Flags and Options Across accept()
12. TCP Versus UDP
13. Advanced Features
14. Summary
15. Exercises
Chapter 62 Terminals
1. Overview
2. Retrieving and Modifying Terminal Attributes
3. The stty Command
4. Terminal Special Characters
5. Terminal Flags
6. Terminal I/O Modes
7. Terminal Line Speed (Bit Rate)
8. Terminal Line Control
9. Terminal Window Size
10. Terminal Identification
11. Summary
12. Exercises
Chapter 63 Alternative I/O Models
1. Overview
2. I/O Multiplexing
3. Signal-Driven I/O
4. The epoll API
5. Waiting on Signals and File Descriptors
6. Summary
7. Exercises
Chapter 64 Pseudoterminals
1. Overview
2. UNIX 98 Pseudoterminals
3. Opening a Master: ptyMasterOpen()
4. Connecting Processes with a Pseudoterminal: ptyFork()
5. Pseudoterminal I/O
6. Implementing script(1)
7. Terminal Attributes and Window Size
8. BSD Pseudoterminals
9. Summary
10. Exercises

Appendix Tracing System Calls
Appendix Parsing Command-Line Options
1. Example program
2. GNU-specific behavior
3. GNU extensions
Appendix Casting the NULL Pointer
Appendix Kernel Configuration
Appendix Further Sources of Information
1. Manual pages
2. GNU info documents
3. The GNU C library (glibc) manual
4. Books
5. Source code of existing applications
6. The Linux Documentation Project
7. The GNU project
8. Newsgroups
9. Linux kernel mailing list
10. Web sites
11. The kernel source code
Appendix Solutions to Selected Exercises
Bibliography
Appendix Updates
Colophon

Title:

The Linux Programming Interface

By:

Michael Kerrisk

Publisher:

No Starch Press

Formats:

Print
Ebook
Safari Books Online

Print:

October 2010

Ebook:

February 2011

Pages:

1552

Print ISBN:

978-1-59327-220-3

| ISBN 10:

1-59327-220-0

Ebook ISBN:

978-1-59327-291-3

| ISBN 10:

1-59327-291-X

Description

Table of Contents

Product Details

About the Author

Recommended for You

Chapter 1 History and Standards

A Brief History of UNIX and C

A Brief History of Linux

Standardization

Summary

Chapter 2 Fundamental Concepts

The Core Operating System: The Kernel

The Shell

Users and Groups

Single Directory Hierarchy, Directories, Links, and Files

File I/O Model

Programs

Processes

Memory Mappings

Static and Shared Libraries

Interprocess Communication and Synchronization

Signals

Threads

Process Groups and Shell Job Control

Sessions, Controlling Terminals, and Controlling Processes

Pseudoterminals

Date and Time

Client-Server Architecture

Realtime

The /proc File System

Summary

Chapter 3 System Programming Concepts

System Calls

Library Functions

The Standard C Library; The GNU C Library (glibc)

Handling Errors from System Calls and Library Functions

Notes on the Example Programs in This Book

Portability Issues

Summary

Exercise

Chapter 4 File I/O: The Universal I/O Model

Overview

Universality of I/O

Opening a File: open()

Reading from a File: read()

Writing to a File: write()

Closing a File: close()

Changing the File Offset: lseek()

Operations Outside the Universal I/O Model: ioctl()

Summary

Exercises

Chapter 5 File I/O: Further Details

Atomicity and Race Conditions

File Control Operations: fcntl()

Open File Status Flags

Relationship Between File Descriptors and Open Files

Duplicating File Descriptors

File I/O at a Specified Offset: pread() and pwrite()

Scatter-Gather I/O: readv() and writev()

Truncating a File: truncate() and ftruncate()

Nonblocking I/O

I/O on Large Files

The /dev/fd Directory

Creating Temporary Files

Summary

Exercises

Chapter 6 Processes

Processes and Programs

Process ID and Parent Process ID

Memory Layout of a Process

Virtual Memory Management

The Stack and Stack Frames

Command-Line Arguments (argc, argv)

Environment List

Performing a Nonlocal Goto: setjmp() and long jmp()

Summary

Exercises

Chapter 7 Memory Allocation

Allocating Memory on the Heap

Allocating Memory on the Stack: alloca()

Summary

Exercises

Chapter 8 Users and Groups

The Password File: /etc/passwd

The Shadow Password File: /etc/shadow