Re: understanding the kernel
Damian Wiest <dwiest <at> vailsys.com>
2006-11-01 02:10:41 GMT
On Sun, Oct 29, 2006 at 11:18:28PM -0700, George Mihai IACOB wrote:
> Jonathan Gray wrote:
> >On Sun, Oct 29, 2006 at 08:24:16PM -0700, George Mihai IACOB wrote:
> >>Hello!
> >>
> >>I am a not-so-experienced programmer and I started a personal project
> >>which requires a deep understanding of the OpenBSD kernel - no, I am not
> >>going to fork another BSD style operating system. I wonder if there is
> >>documentation describing the kernel, other that the comments in the
> >>source. For a start, I am reading Andrew Tanenbaum's "Modern Operating
> >>Systems", 2nd edition and trying to follow the code in the kernel
> >>source, starting with sys/kern/init_main.c
> >>Is this a wrong approach? Do you have other suggestions? I know there's
> >>no easy way and I am not looking for one, all I want is a starting point.
> >>Regards,
> >>George
> >
> >You don't mention what you had in mind so it is hard to point at anything.
> >"The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD Operating System" by
> >McKusick and friends is likely to be more relevant for implementation
> >details, Tanebaum's book is more high level theory.
> >
>
> Well, I want to be able to write software which should run in kernel
> mode and/or modify the kernel. Basically, I'm just like a college
> student taking an operating systems course and using OpenBSD as an example.
"Operating System Concepts" by Silbershatz, Galvin and Gagne:
http://codex.cs.yale.edu/avi/os-book/os7/
(Continue reading)