KernelAnalysis-HOWTO

Roberto Arcomano berto at bertolinux.com

1. Introduction

• 1.1 Introduction
• 1.2 Copyright
• 1.3 Translations
• 1.4 Credits

2. Syntax used

• 2.1 Function Syntax
• 2.2 Indentation
• 2.3 InterCallings Analysis

3. Fundamentals

• 3.1 What is the kernel?
• 3.2 What is the difference between User Mode and Kernel Mode?
• 3.3 Switching from User Mode to Kernel Mode
• 3.4 Multitasking
• 3.5 Microkernel vs Monolithic OS
• 3.6 Networking
• 3.7 Virtual Memory

4. Linux Startup

5. Linux Peculiarities

• 5.1 Overview
• 5.2 Pagination only
• 5.3 Softirq
• 5.4 Kernel Threads
• 5.5 Kernel Modules
• 5.6 Proc directory

6. Linux Multitasking

• 6.1 Overview
• 6.2 Timeslice
• 6.3 Scheduler
• 6.4 Bottom Half, Task Queues. and Tasklets
• 6.5 Very low level routines
• 6.6 Task Switching
• 6.7 Fork

7. Linux Memory Management

• 7.1 Overview
• 7.2 Specific i386 implementation
• 7.3 Memory Mapping
• 7.4 Low level memory allocation
• 7.5 Swap

8. Linux Networking

• 8.1 How Linux networking is managed?
• 8.2 TCP example

9. Linux File System

10. Useful Tips

• 10.1 Stack and Heap
• 10.2 Application vs Process
• 10.3 Locks
• 10.4 Copy_on_write

11. 80386 specific details

• 11.1 Boot procedure
• 11.2 80386 (and more) Descriptors

12. IRQ

• 12.1 Overview
• 12.2 Interaction schema

13. Utility functions

• 13.1 list_entry [include/linux/list.h]
• 13.2 Sleep

14. Static variables

• 14.1 Overview
• 14.2 Main variables

15. Glossary

16. Links