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 3RD EDITION

HOW
LINUX
WORKS
W H A T E V E R Y S U P E R U S E R S H O U L D K N O W

BRIAN WARD
 REVIEWS FOR
HOW LINUX WORKS

“If you are interested in Linux, How Linux Works: What Every Superuser Should
Know is a must-read title.”
—LinuxInsider

“Lots to offer on almost every aspect of the Linux architecture.”

—Everyday Linux User

“You’ll get an essential understanding of what’s going on under the hood with-
out getting bogged down in minutiae—making this a very refreshing (and
wholly recommended) addition to the Linux literature.”
—Phil Bull, co-author of Ubuntu
M ade Easy and member of the
Ubuntu documentation team

“Dives straight into the transparent depths of Linux-based operating systems

and shows us how all the pieces fit together.”
—DistroWatch

“Earns its place on the shelf as an essential reference.”

—The M agPi magazine
HOW LINUX
WORKS
3rd Edition
What Every Superuser
Should Know

b y Br i a n Wa r d

San Francisco
HOW LINUX WORKS, 3RD EDITION. Copyright © 2021 by Brian Ward.

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval
system, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-7185-0040-2 (print)

ISBN-13: 978-1-7185-0041-9 (ebook)

Publisher: William Pollock

Executive Editor: Barbara Yien
Production Editor: Rachel Monaghan
Developmental Editors: Larry Wake and Jill Franklin
Cover and Interior Design: Octopod Studios
Technical Reviewers: Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso and Petros Koutoupis
Copyeditor: Rachel Monaghan
Compositor: Cody Gates, Happenstance Type-O-Rama
Proofreader: James M. Fraleigh

For information on book distributors or translations, please contact No Starch Press, Inc. directly:
No Starch Press, Inc.
245 8th Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
phone: 1-415-863-9900; [email protected]
www.nostarch.com

The Library of Congress has catalogued the first edition as follows:

Ward, Brian.
How Linux works : what every superuser should know / Brian Ward.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 1-59327-035-6
1. Linux. 2. Operating systems (Computers). I. Title.
QA76.76.O63 W3654 2004
005.4’32--dc22
2004002692

No Starch Press and the No Starch Press logo are registered trademarks of No Starch Press, Inc. Other
product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners. Rather
than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, we are using the names only
in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of
the trademark.

The information in this book is distributed on an “As Is” basis, without warranty. While every precaution
has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author nor No Starch Press, Inc. shall have any
liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly
or indirectly by the information contained in it.
About the Author
Brian Ward has been working with Linux since 1993. He is also the
author of The Linux Kernel HOWTO, The Book of VMware (No Starch
Press), and The Linux Problem Solver (No Starch Press).

About the Technical Reviewers

Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso is a GNU/Linux user and developer with
almost two decades of experience, with occasional contributions in vari-
ous circles of the free software communities, such as GNU Octave and
Mercurial. His professional work has allowed him to collaborate with
and learn about diverse topics such as digital cryptographic signatures,
medical imaging, and most recently greenhouse gas accounting and
ecological map data, all built entirely with Linux and other free soft-
ware. When he is not near a computer he enjoys swimming, mathematics,
and knitting.

Petros Koutoupis is currently a senior performance software engineer

at HPE (formerly Cray Inc.) for its Lustre High Performance File System
division. He is also the creator and maintainer of the RapidDisk Project
(www.rapiddisk.org). Petros has worked in the data storage industry
for well over a decade and has helped pioneer the many technologies
unleashed in the wild today.
 BRIEF CONTENTS

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxi

Chapter1: The Big Picture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Chapter 2: Basic Commands and Directory Hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Chapter 3: Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Chapter 4: Disks and Filesystems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Chapter 5: How the Linux Kernel Boots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

Chapter 6: How User Space Starts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

Chapter 7: System Configuration: Logging, System Time, Batch Jobs, and Users . . . . . . . . . 167

Chapter 8: A Closer Look at Processes and Resource Utilization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199

Chapter 9: Understanding Your Network and Its Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

Chapter 10: Network Applications and Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269

Chapter 11: Introduction to Shell Scripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291

Chapter 12: Network File Transfer and Sharing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315

Chapter 13: User Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335

Chapter 14: A Brief Survey of the Linux Desktop and Printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347

Chapter 15: Development Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363

Chapter 16: Introduction to Compiling Software from C Source Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385

Chapter 17: Virtualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
 CO N T E N T S I N D E TA I L

PREFACE XXI
Who Should Read This Book? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxi
Prerequisites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxii
How to Read This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxii
A Hands-on Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxii
How This Book Is Organized . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxiii
What’s New in the Third Edition? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxiii
A Note on Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxiv

1
THE BIG PICTURE 1
1.1 Levels and Layers of Abstraction in a Linux System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Hardware: Understanding Main Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3 The Kernel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3.1 Process Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3.2 Memory Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3.3 Device Drivers and Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3.4 System Calls and Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.4 User Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.5 Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.6 Looking Forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

2
BASIC COMMANDS AND DIRECTORY HIERARCHY 11
2.1 The Bourne Shell: /bin/sh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.2 Using the Shell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.2.1 The Shell Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.2.2 cat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.2.3 Standard Input and Standard Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.3 Basic Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.3.1 ls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.3.2 cp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.3.3 mv . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.3.4 touch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.3.5 rm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.3.6 echo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.4 Navigating Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.4.1 cd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.4.2 mkdir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.4.3 rmdir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.4.4 Shell Globbing (“Wildcards”) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.5 Intermediate Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.5.1 grep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.5.2 less . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.5.3 pwd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.5.4 diff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.5.5 file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.5.6 find and locate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.5.7 head and tail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.5.8 sort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.6 Changing Your Password and Shell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.7 Dot Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.8 Environment and Shell Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.9 The Command Path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.10 Special Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.11 Command-Line Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.12 Text Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.13 Getting Online Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.14 Shell Input and Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.14.1 Standard Error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.14.2 Standard Input Redirection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.15 Understanding Error Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.15.1 Anatomy of a Unix Error Message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.15.2 Common Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.16 Listing and Manipulating Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.16.1 Command Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.16.2 Process Termination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.16.3 Job Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.16.4 Background Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.17 File Modes and Permissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.17.1 Modifying Permissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.17.2 Working with Symbolic Links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
2.18 Archiving and Compressing Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2.18.1 gzip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2.18.2 tar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2.18.3 Compressed Archives (.tar.gz) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.18.4 zcat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.18.5 Other Compression Utilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.19 Linux Directory Hierarchy Essentials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
2.19.1 Other Root Subdirectories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
2.19.2 The /usr Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
2.19.3 Kernel Location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
2.20 Running Commands as the Superuser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
2.20.1 sudo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
2.20.2 /etc/sudoers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
2.20.3 sudo Logs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
2.21 Looking Forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

3
DEVICES 47
3.1 Device Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3.2 The sysfs Device Path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

x Contents in Detail
3.3 dd and Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
3.4 Device Name Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3.4.1 Hard Disks: /dev/sd* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
3.4.2 Virtual Disks: /dev/xvd*, /dev/vd* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.4.3 Non-Volatile Memory Devices: /dev/nvme* . . . . . . . . . . . ..... . . . 53
3.4.4 Device Mapper: /dev/dm-*, /dev/mapper/* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.4.5 CD and DVD Drives: /dev/sr* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.4.6 PATA Hard Disks: /dev/hd* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.4.7 Terminals: /dev/tty*, /dev/pts/*, and /dev/tty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.4.8 Serial Ports: /dev/ttyS*, /dev/ttyUSB*, /dev/ttyACM* . . . . . . . . . . . 55
3.4.9 Parallel Ports: /dev/lp0 and /dev/lp1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
3.4.10 Audio Devices: /dev/snd/*, /dev/dsp, /dev/audio, and More . . . . 55
3.4.11 Device File Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
3.5 udev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
3.5.1 devtmpfs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
3.5.2 udevd Operation and Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
3.5.3 udevadm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
3.5.4 Device Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
3.6 In-Depth: SCSI and the Linux Kernel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..... . . . 62
3.6.1 USB Storage and SCSI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
3.6.2 SCSI and ATA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
3.6.3 Generic SCSI Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
3.6.4 Multiple Access Methods for a Single Device . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

4
DISKS AND FILESYSTEMS 69
4.1 Partitioning Disk Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
4.1.1 Viewing a Partition Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
4.1.2 Modifying Partition Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
4.1.3 Creating a Partition Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
4.1.4 Navigating Disk and Partition Geometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
4.1.5 Reading from Solid-State Disks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
4.2 Filesystems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
4.2.1 Filesystem Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
4.2.2 Creating a Filesystem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
4.2.3 Mounting a Filesystem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
4.2.4 Filesystem UUID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
4.2.5 Disk Buffering, Caching, and Filesystems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
4.2.6 Filesystem Mount Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
4.2.7 Remounting a Filesystem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
4.2.8 The /etc/fstab Filesystem Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
4.2.9 Alternatives to /etc/fstab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
4.2.10 Filesystem Capacity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
4.2.11 Checking and Repairing Filesystems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
4.2.12 Special-Purpose Filesystems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
4.3 Swap Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
4.3.1 Using a Disk Partition as Swap Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
4.3.2 Using a File as Swap Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
4.3.3 Determining How Much Swap You Need . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
4.4 The Logical Volume Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
4.4.2 Working with LVM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
4.4.3 The LVM Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

Contents in Detail  xi
4.5 Looking Forward: Disks and User Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
4.6 Inside a Traditional Filesystem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
4.6.1 Inode Details and the Link Count . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
4.6.2 Block Allocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
4.6.3 Working with Filesystems in User Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

5
HOW THE LINUX KERNEL BOOTS 117
5.1 Startup Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
5.2 Kernel Initialization and Boot Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
5.3 Kernel Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
5.4 Boot Loaders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
5.4.1 Boot Loader Tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
5.4.2 Boot Loader Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
5.5 GRUB Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
5.5.1 Exploring Devices and Partitions with the GRUB Command Line . . . . . 125
5.5.2 GRUB Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
5.5.3 GRUB Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
5.6 UEFI Secure Boot Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
5.7 Chainloading Other Operating Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
5.8 Boot Loader Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
5.8.1 MBR Boot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
5.8.2 UEFI Boot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
5.8.3 How GRUB Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

6
HOW USER SPACE STARTS 137
6.1 Introduction to init . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
6.2 Identifying Your init . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
6.3 systemd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
6.3.1 Units and Unit Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
6.3.2 Booting and Unit Dependency Graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
6.3.3 systemd Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
6.3.4 systemd Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
6.3.5 systemd Process Tracking and Synchronization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
6.3.6 systemd Dependencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
6.3.7 systemd On-Demand and Resource-Parallelized Startup . . . . . . . . . . . 151
6.3.8 systemd Auxiliary Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
6.4 System V Runlevels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
6.5 System V init . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
6.5.1 System V init: Startup Command Sequence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
6.5.2 The System V init Link Farm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
6.5.3 run-parts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
6.5.4 System V init Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
6.5.5 systemd System V Compatibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
6.6 Shutting Down Your System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
6.7 The Initial RAM Filesystem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
6.8 Emergency Booting and Single-User Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
6.9 Looking Forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

xii Contents in Detail

7
SYSTEM CONFIGURATION:
LOGGING, SYSTEM TIME, BATCH JOBS, AND USERS 167
7.1 System Logging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
7.1.1 Checking Your Log Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
7.1.2 Searching and Monitoring Logs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
7.1.3 Logfile Rotation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
7.1.4 Journal Maintenance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
7.1.5 A Closer Look at System Logging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
7.2 The Structure of /etc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
7.3 User Management Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
7.3.1 The /etc/passwd File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
7.3.2 Special Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
7.3.3 The /etc/shadow File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
7.3.4 Manipulating Users and Passwords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
7.3.5 Working with Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
7.4 getty and login . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
7.5 Setting the Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
7.5.1 Kernel Time Representation and Time Zones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
7.5.2 Network Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
7.6 Scheduling Recurring Tasks with cron and Timer Units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
7.6.1 Installing Crontab Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
7.6.2 System Crontab Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
7.6.3 Timer Units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
7.6.4 cron vs. Timer Units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
7.7 Scheduling One-Time Tasks with at . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
7.7.1 Timer Unit Equivalents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
7.8 Timer Units Running as Regular Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
7.9 User Access Topics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
7.9.1 User IDs and User Switching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
7.9.2 Process Ownership, Effective UID, Real UID, and Saved UID . . . . . . . 189
7.9.3 User Identification, Authentication, and Authorization . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
7.9.4 Using Libraries for User Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
7.10 Pluggable Authentication Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
7.10.1 PAM Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
7.10.2 Tips on PAM Configuration Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
7.10.3 PAM and Passwords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
7.11 Looking Forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198

8
A CLOSER LOOK AT PROCESSES AND RESOURCE UTILIZATION 199
8.1 Tracking Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
8.2 Finding Open Files with lsof . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
8.2.1 Reading the lsof Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
8.2.2 Using lsof . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
8.3 Tracing Program Execution and System Calls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
8.3.1 strace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
8.3.2 ltrace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
8.4 Threads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
8.4.1 Single-Threaded and Multithreaded Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
8.4.2 Viewing Threads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205


Contents in Detail xiii
8.5 Introduction to Resource Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
8.5.1 Measuring CPU Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
8.5.2 Adjusting Process Priorities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
8.5.3 Measuring CPU Performance with Load Averages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
8.5.4 Monitoring Memory Status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
8.5.5 Monitoring CPU and Memory Performance with vmstat . . . . . . . . . . . 212
8.5.6 I/O Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
8.5.7 Per-Process Monitoring with pidstat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
8.6 Control Groups (cgroups) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
8.6.1 Differentiating Between cgroup Versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
8.6.2 Viewing cgroups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
8.6.3 Manipulating and Creating cgroups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
8.6.4 Viewing Resource Utilization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
8.7 Further Topics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

9
UNDERSTANDING YOUR NETWORK AND ITS CONFIGURATION 223
9.1 Network Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
9.2 Packets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
9.3 Network Layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
9.4 The Internet Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
9.4.1 Viewing IP Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
9.4.2 Subnets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
9.4.3 Common Subnet Masks and CIDR Notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
9.5 Routes and the Kernel Routing Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
9.6 The Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
9.7 IPv6 Addresses and Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
9.7.1 Viewing IPv6 Configuration on Your System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
9.7.2 Configuring Dual-Stack Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
9.8 Basic ICMP and DNS Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
9.8.1 ping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
9.8.2 DNS and host . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
9.9 The Physical Layer and Ethernet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
9.10 Understanding Kernel Network Interfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
9.11 Introduction to Network Interface Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
9.11.1 Manually Configuring Interfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
9.11.2 Manually Adding and Deleting Routes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
9.12 Boot-Activated Network Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
9.13 Problems with Manual and Boot-Activated Network Configuration . . . . . . . . . . 239
9.14 Network Configuration Managers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
9.14.1 NetworkManager Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
9.14.2 NetworkManager Interaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
9.14.3 NetworkManager Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
9.15 Resolving Hostnames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
9.15.1 /etc/hosts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
9.15.2 resolv.conf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
9.15.3 Caching and Zero-Configuration DNS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
9.15.4 /etc/nsswitch.conf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
9.16 Localhost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
9.17 The Transport Layer: TCP, UDP, and Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
9.17.1 TCP Ports and Connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
9.17.2 UDP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250

xiv Contents in Detail

9.18 Revisiting a Simple Local Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
9.19 Understanding DHCP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
9.19.1 Linux DHCP Clients . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
9.19.2 Linux DHCP Servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
9.20 Automatic IPv6 Network Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
9.21 Configuring Linux as a Router . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
9.22 Private Networks (IPv4) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
9.23 Network Address Translation (IP Masquerading) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
9.24 Routers and Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
9.25 Firewalls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
9.25.1 Linux Firewall Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
9.25.2 Setting Firewall Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
9.25.3 Firewall Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
9.26 Ethernet, IP, ARP, and NDP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
9.27 Wireless Ethernet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
9.27.1 iw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
9.27.2 Wireless Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
9.28 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268

10
NETWORK APPLICATIONS AND SERVICES 269
10.1 The Basics of Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
10.2 A Closer Look . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
10.3 Network Servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
10.3.1 Secure Shell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
10.3.2 The sshd Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
10.3.3 fail2ban . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
10.3.4 The SSH Client . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
10.4 Pre-systemd Network Connection Servers: inetd/xinetd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
10.5 Diagnostic Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
10.5.1 lsof . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
10.5.2 tcpdump . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
10.5.3 netcat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
10.5.4 Port Scanning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
10.6 Remote Procedure Calls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
10.7 Network Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
10.7.1 Typical Vulnerabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
10.7.2 Security Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
10.8 Looking Forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
10.9 Network Sockets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
10.10 Unix Domain Sockets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289

11
INTRODUCTION TO SHELL SCRIPTS 291
11.1 Shell Script Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
11.1.1 Limitations of Shell Scripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
11.2 Quoting and Literals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
11.2.1 Literals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
11.2.2 Single Quotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
11.2.3 Double Quotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
11.2.4 Literal Single Quotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295

Contents in Detail xv
11.3 Special Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
11.3.1 Individual Arguments: $1, $2, and So On . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
11.3.2 Number of Arguments: $# . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
11.3.3 All Arguments: $@ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
11.3.4 Script Name: $0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
11.3.5 Process ID: $$ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
11.3.6 Exit Code: $? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
11.4 Exit Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
11.5 Conditionals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
11.5.1 A Workaround for Empty Parameter Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
11.5.2 Other Commands for Tests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300
11.5.3 elif . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300
11.5.4 Logical Constructs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300
11.5.5 Testing Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
11.5.6 case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
11.6 Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
11.6.1 for Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
11.6.2 while Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
11.7 Command Substitution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
11.8 Temporary File Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
11.9 Here Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
11.10 Important Shell Script Utilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
11.10.1 basename . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
11.10.2 awk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
11.10.3 sed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
11.10.4 xargs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
11.10.5 expr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
11.10.6 exec . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
11.11 Subshells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
11.12 Including Other Files in Scripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
11.13 Reading User Input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
11.14 When (Not) to Use Shell Scripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312

12
NETWORK FILE TRANSFER AND SHARING 315
12.1 Quick Copy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
12.2 rsync . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
12.2.1 Getting Started with rsync . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
12.2.2 Making Exact Copies of a Directory Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
12.2.3 Using the Trailing Slash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
12.2.4 Excluding Files and Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
12.2.5 Checking Transfers, Adding Safeguards,
and Using Verbose Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...... 321
12.2.6 Compressing Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
12.2.7 Limiting Bandwidth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
12.2.8 Transferring Files to Your Computer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
12.2.9 Further rsync Topics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
12.3 Introduction to File Sharing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
12.3.1 File Sharing Usage and Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...... 323
12.3.2 File Sharing Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323

xvi Contents in Detail

12.4 Sharing Files with Samba . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
12.4.1 Server Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
12.4.2 Server Access Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
12.4.3 Passwords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326
12.4.4 Manual Server Startup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
12.4.5 Diagnostics and Logfiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328
12.4.6 File Share Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328
12.4.7 Home Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328
12.4.8 Printer Sharing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
12.4.9 The Samba Client . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
12.5 SSHFS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
12.6 NFS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
12.7 Cloud Storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
12.8 The State of Network File Sharing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333

13
USER ENVIRONMENTS 335
13.1 Guidelines for Creating Startup Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336
13.2 When to Alter Startup Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336
13.3 Shell Startup File Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337
13.3.1 The Command Path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337
13.3.2 The Manual Page Path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338
13.3.3 The Prompt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338
13.3.4 Aliases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
13.3.5 The Permissions Mask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
13.4 Startup File Order and Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340
13.4.1 The bash Shell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340
13.4.2 The tcsh Shell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342
13.5 Default User Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
13.5.1 Shell Defaults . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
13.5.2 Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344
13.5.3 Pager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344
13.6 Startup File Pitfalls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344
13.7 Further Startup Topics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345

14
A BRIEF SURVEY OF THE LINUX DESKTOP AND PRINTING 347
14.1 Desktop Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348
14.1.1 Framebuffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348
14.1.2 The X Window System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348
14.1.3 Wayland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349
14.1.4 Window Managers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349
14.1.5 Toolkits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
14.1.6 Desktop Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
14.1.7 Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
14.2 Are You Running Wayland or X? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
14.3 A Closer Look at Wayland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
14.3.1 The Compositing Window Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
14.3.2 libinput . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352
14.3.3 X Compatibility in Wayland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353


Contents in Detail xvii
14.4 A Closer Look at the X Window System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
14.4.1 Display Managers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355
14.4.2 Network Transparency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355
14.4.3 Ways of Exploring X Clients . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355
14.4.4 X Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356
14.4.5 X Input and Preference Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
14.5 D-Bus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
14.5.1 System and Session Instances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360
14.5.2 D-Bus Message Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360
14.6 Printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360
14.6.1 CUPS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
14.6.2 Format Conversion and Print Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
14.7 Other Desktop Topics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362

15
DEVELOPMENT TOOLS 363
15.1 The C Compiler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364
15.1.1 Compiling Multiple Source Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365
15.1.2 Linking with Libraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366
15.1.3 Working with Shared Libraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367
15.1.4 Working with Header (Include) Files and Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
15.2 make . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
15.2.1 A Sample Makefile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374
15.2.2 Built-in Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374
15.2.3 Final Program Build . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
15.2.4 Dependency Updates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
15.2.5 Command-Line Arguments and Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376
15.2.6 Standard Macros and Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377
15.2.7 Conventional Targets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
15.2.8 Makefile Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
15.3 Lex and Yacc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
15.4 Scripting Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
15.4.1 Python . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
15.4.2 Perl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
15.4.3 Other Scripting Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
15.5 Java . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382
15.6 Looking Forward: Compiling Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383

16
INTRODUCTION TO COMPILING SOFTWARE
FROM C SOURCE CODE 385
16.1 Software Build Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
16.2 Unpacking C Source Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
16.3 GNU Autoconf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
16.3.1 An Autoconf Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389
16.3.2 Installation Using a Packaging Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390
16.3.3 configure Script Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390
16.3.4 Environment Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391
16.3.5 Autoconf Targets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
16.3.6 Autoconf Logfiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
16.3.7 pkg-config . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393

xviii Contents in Detail

16.4 Installation Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394
16.4.1 Where to Install . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395
16.5 Applying a Patch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395
16.6 Troubleshooting Compiles and Installations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 396
16.6.1 Specific Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
16.7 Looking Forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399

17
VIRTUALIZATION 401
17.1 Virtual Machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
17.1.1 Hypervisors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
17.1.2 Hardware in a Virtual Machine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403
17.1.3 Common Uses of Virtual Machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
17.1.4 Drawbacks of Virtual Machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
17.2 Containers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
17.2.1 Docker, Podman, and Privileges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406
17.2.2 A Docker Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
17.2.3 LXC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414
17.2.4 Kubernetes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
17.2.5 Pitfalls of Containers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
17.3 Runtime-Based Virtualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417

BIBLIOGRAPHY 419

INDEX 423


Contents in Detail xix
 ACKNOW LEDGMENT S

Contributions to this book come from not just those who were involved in
the development process, but also those without whom I wouldn’t know
anything about Linux. These include James Duncan, Douglas N. Arnold,
Bill Fenner, Ken Hornstein, Scott Dickson, Dan Ehrlich, Felix Lee, and
Gregory P. Smith. Previous editions included help from Karol Jurado,
Laurel Chun, Serena Yang, Alison Law, Riley Hoffman, Scott Schwartz,
Dan Sully, Dominique Poulain, Donald Karon, and Gina Steele.
This third edition benefits from the excellent work of Barbara Yien,
Rachel Monaghan, Jill Franklin, Larry Wake, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso,
and Petros Koutoupis. As the publisher of No Starch Press, Bill Pollock
has been instrumental in this book since the first edition. And once more,
Hsinju Hsieh has put up with me for another revision.
 PR E FAC E

Your system shouldn’t be a mystery. You should be able to make your soft-
ware do what you want it to do without “magic” incantations or rituals. The
key to attaining this power lies in understanding the fundamentals of what
the software does and how it works, and that’s what this book is all about.
You should never have to fight with a computer.
Linux is a great platform for learning because it doesn’t try to hide
anything from you. In particular, you can find most system configuration
details in easy-to-read plaintext files. The only tricky part is figuring out
which parts are responsible for what and how they all fit together.

Who Should Read This Book?

Your interest in learning how Linux works may have come from any number
of sources. In the professional realm, operations and DevOps folks need to
know nearly everything that you’ll find in this book. Linux software archi-
tects and developers should also know this material in order to make the
best use of the operating system. Researchers and students, often running
their own Linux systems, will also find that this book provides useful expla-
nations for why things are set up the way they are.
Then there are the tinkerers—people who just love to play around with
their computers for fun, profit, or both. Want to know why certain things
work while others don’t? Want to know what happens if you move some-
thing around? You’re probably a tinkerer.
 Prerequisites
Although Linux is beloved by programmers, you don’t need to be a pro-
grammer to read this book; you need only basic computer-user knowledge.
That is, you should be able to bumble around a GUI (especially the installer
and settings interface for a Linux distribution) and know what files and
directories (folders) are. You should also be prepared to check additional
documentation on your system and on the web. The most important thing
you need is to be ready and willing to play around with your computer.

How to Read This Book

Building the requisite knowledge is a challenge in tackling any technical
subject. Explaining how software systems work can get really complicated.
Too much detail can bog down readers and make important concepts dif-
ficult to grasp (the human brain just can’t process so many new ideas at
once), but too little detail can leave readers in the dark and unprepared for
later material.
I’ve designed most chapters to tackle the most important material first:
the basic information that you’ll need in order to progress. In places, I’ve
simplified things in order to keep focus. As a chapter progresses, you’ll see
much more detail, especially in the last few sections. Do you need to know
those bits right away? In most cases, no; I note this where applicable. If your
eyes start to glaze over when you’re faced with a lot of extra details about
concepts you just learned, don’t hesitate to skip ahead to the next chapter
or take a break. The nitty-gritty will still be there waiting for you.

A Hands-on Approach
However you choose to proceed through this book, you should have a Linux
machine in front of you, preferably one that you’re confident abusing with
experiments. You might prefer to play around with a virtual installation—I
used VirtualBox to test much of the material in this book. You also should
have superuser (root) access, but try to use a regular user account most of
the time. You’ll mostly work at the command line, in a terminal window or
a remote session. If you haven’t worked much in that environment, no prob-
lem; Chapter 2 will bring you up to speed.
Commands in this book typically look like this:

$ ls /
[some output]

Enter the text in bold; the nonbolded text that follows is what the
machine spits back. The $ is the prompt for a regular user account. If you
see a # as a prompt, you need to be superuser. (More on that in Chapter 2.)

xxii Preface
How This Book Is Organized
I’ve grouped the book’s chapters into three basic parts. The first is intro-
ductory, giving a bird’s-eye view of the system and then offering hands-on
experience with some tools you’ll need for as long as you run Linux. Next,
you’ll explore each part of the system in more detail, from device manage-
ment to network configuration, following the general order in which the
system starts. Finally, you’ll get a tour of some pieces of a running system,
learn some essential skills, and get some insight into the tools that program-
mers use.
With the exception of Chapter 2, most of the early chapters heavily
involve the Linux kernel, but you’ll work your way into user space as the
book progresses. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about here, don’t
worry; I’ll explain in Chapter 1.)
The material is meant to be as distribution-agnostic as possible. Having
said this, it can be tedious to cover all variations in systems software, so I’ve
tried to cover the two major distribution families: Debian (including Ubuntu)
and RHEL/Fedora/CentOS. I’ve also focused on desktop and server installa-
tions. A significant amount of material carries over into embedded systems,
such as Android and OpenWRT, but it’s up to you to discover the differences
on those platforms.

What’s New in the Third Edition?

The second edition was published during a time of transition for Linux
systems. Several traditional components were in the process of being
replaced, which made handling some subjects tricky, because readers could
encounter a wide variety of configurations. Now, however, those new pieces
(systemd in particular) have near-universal adoption, so I’ve been able to
streamline a fair amount of the discussion.
I’ve retained the emphasis on the kernel’s role in a Linux system. This
material has proven popular, and you probably interact with the kernel
more than you realize.
I’ve added a new chapter introducing virtualization. Although Linux
has always been popular on virtual machines (such as cloud services), that
type of virtualization lies outside the scope of this book, because the way
the system operates on a virtual machine is almost the same as on “bare
metal” hardware. So, the discussion here primarily focuses on decipher-
ing the terminology you’ll encounter. However, containers have gained in
popularity since the second edition was published, and they also fit here,
because they basically consist of a bunch of Linux features like the ones
described throughout the rest of the book. Containers make heavy use of
cgroups, which also get new treatment in this third edition.
Other subjects (not necessarily related to containers) I happily expanded
on are the Logical Volume Manager, the journald logging system, and IPv6
in the networking material.

Preface xxiii
 Though I’ve added a significant amount of content, the book is still a
reasonable size. I want to provide the information you need to get on the
fast track, and that includes explaining certain details along the way that
can be hard to grasp, but I don’t want you to have to become a weightlifter
in order to pick up this book. Once you master the important subjects here,
you should have no trouble seeking out and understanding more details.
The first edition included historical information that I removed later to
improve focus. If you’re interested in Linux and how it relates to the history
of Unix, pick up Peter H. Salus’s The Daemon, the Gnu, and the Penguin (Reed
Media Services, 2008). It does a great job of explaining how the software we
use has evolved over time.

A Note on Terminology
The names of certain operating system elements have caused a fair amount
of debate historically—even the word Linux itself. Should it be “Linux,” or
should it be “GNU/Linux” to reflect that the operating system also contains
pieces from the GNU Project? Throughout this book, I’ve tried to use the
most common, least awkward names possible.

xxiv Preface
 1
THE BIG PICTURE

At first glance, a contemporary operating

system such as Linux is very complicated,
with a dizzying number of pieces simultane-
ously running and communicating. For exam-
ple, a web server can talk to a database server, which
could in turn use a shared library that many other pro-
grams use. How does all of this manage to work, and
how can you make sense of any of it?
The most effective way to understand how an operating system works
is through abstraction—a fancy way of saying that you can ignore most of
the details that make up a piece that you’re trying to understand, and con-
centrate instead on its basic purpose and operation. For example, when
you ride in a car, you normally don’t need to think about details such as the
mounting bolts that hold the motor inside the car or the people who build
and maintain the road upon which the car drives. All you really need to
know is what the car does (transports you somewhere else) and a few basics
about how to use it (how to operate the door and seat belt).
 This level of abstraction might work if you’re just a passenger in the car.
But if you also need to drive it, you have to dig deeper and break up your
abstraction into a few parts. You now expand your knowledge in three areas:
the car itself (such as its size and capabilities), how to operate the controls
(steering wheel, accelerator pedal, and so on), and the features of the road.
Abstraction can be a great help when you’re trying to find and fix prob-
lems. For example, let’s say you’re driving a car and the ride is rough. You
can quickly assess the three basic car-related abstractions just mentioned to
determine the source of the problem. It should be fairly easy to eliminate
the first two abstractions (your car or the way you’re driving) if neither is the
issue, so you can narrow the problem down to the road itself. You’ll probably
find that the road is bumpy. Now, if you want, you can dig deeper into your
abstraction of the road and find out why the road has deteriorated or, if the
road is new, why the construction workers did a lousy job.
Software developers use abstraction as a tool when building an oper-
ating system and its applications. There are many terms for an abstracted
subdivision in computer software—including subsystem, module, and package—
but we’ll use the term component in this chapter because it’s simple. When
building a software component, developers typically don’t think much about
the internal structure of other components, but they do consider other
components they can use (so that they don’t have to write any additional
unnecessary software) and how to use them.
This chapter provides a high-level overview of the components that make
up a Linux system. Although each one has a tremendous number of technical
details in its internal makeup, we’re going to ignore these details and concen-
trate on what the components do in relation to the whole system. We’ll look
at the details in subsequent chapters.

1.1 Levels and Layers of Abstraction in a Linux System

Using abstraction to split computing systems into components makes things
easier to understand, but it doesn’t work without organization. We arrange
components into layers or levels, classifications (or groupings) of compo-
nents according to where the components sit between the user and the
hardware. Web browsers, games, and such sit at the top layer; at the bottom
layer we have the memory in the computer hardware—the 0s and 1s. The
operating system occupies many of the layers in between.
A Linux system has three main levels. Figure 1-1 shows these levels
and some of the components inside each level. The hardware is at the base.
Hardware includes the memory as well as one or more central processing
units (CPUs) to perform computation and to read from and write to memory.
Devices such as disks and network interfaces are also part of the hardware.
The next level up is the kernel, which is the core of the operating system.
The kernel is software residing in memory that tells the CPU where to look
for its next task. Acting as a mediator, the kernel manages the hardware
(especially main memory) and is the primary interface between the hard-
ware and any running program.

2 Chapter 1
 Processes—the running programs that the kernel manages—collectively
make up the system’s upper level, called user space. (A more specific term
for process is user process, regardless of whether a user directly interacts with
the process. For example, all web servers run as user processes.)

User Processes

Graphical User Interface Servers Shell

Linux Kernel

System Calls Process Management Memory Management

Device Drivers

Hardware

Processor (CPU) Main Memory (RAM) Disks Network Ports

Figure 1-1: General Linux system organization

There is a critical difference between how the kernel and the user pro-
cesses run: the kernel runs in kernel mode, and the user processes run in
user mode. Code running in kernel mode has unrestricted access to the pro-
cessor and main memory. This is a powerful but dangerous privilege that
allows the kernel to easily corrupt and crash the entire system. The memory
area that only the kernel can access is called kernel space.
User mode, in comparison, restricts access to a (usually quite small) sub-
set of memory and safe CPU operations. User space refers to the parts of main
memory that the user processes can access. If a process makes a mistake and
crashes, the consequences are limited and can be cleaned up by the kernel.
This means that if your web browser crashes, it probably won’t take down the
scientific computation that has been running in the background for days.
In theory, a user process gone haywire can’t cause serious damage to the
rest of the system. In reality, it depends on what you consider “serious dam-
age,” as well as the particular privileges of the process, because some pro-
cesses are allowed to do more than others. For example, can a user process
completely wreck the data on a disk? With the correct permissions, yes—and
you might consider this to be fairly dangerous. There are safeguards to pre-
vent this, however, and most processes simply aren’t allowed to wreak havoc
in this manner.

The Big Picture 3

 NOTE The Linux kernel can run kernel threads, which look much like processes but have
access to kernel space. Some examples are kthreadd and kblockd.

1.2 Hardware: Understanding Main Memory

Of all of the hardware on a computer system, main memory is perhaps the
most important. In its rawest form, main memory is just a big storage area
for a bunch of 0s and 1s. Each slot for a 0 or 1 is called a bit. This is where the
running kernel and processes reside—they’re just big collections of bits. All
input and output from peripheral devices flows through main memory, also
as a bunch of bits. A CPU is just an operator on memory; it reads its instruc-
tions and data from the memory and writes data back out to the memory.
You’ll often hear the term state in reference to memory, processes, the
kernel, and other parts of a computer system. Strictly speaking, a state is a
particular arrangement of bits. For example, if you have four bits in your
memory, 0110, 0001, and 1011 represent three different states.
When you consider that a single process can easily consist of millions
of bits in memory, it’s often easier to use abstract terms when talking about
states. Instead of describing a state using bits, you describe what something
has done or is doing at the moment. For example, you might say, “The pro-
cess is waiting for input” or, “The process is performing Stage 2 of its startup.”

NOTE Because it’s common to refer to the state in abstract terms rather than to the actual
bits, the term image refers to a particular physical arrangement of bits.

1.3 The Kernel

Why are we talking about main memory and states? Nearly everything that
the kernel does revolves around main memory. One of the kernel’s tasks is to
split memory into many subdivisions, and it must maintain certain state infor-
mation about those subdivisions at all times. Each process gets its own share
of memory, and the kernel must ensure that each process keeps to its share.
The kernel is in charge of managing tasks in four general system areas:
Processes  The kernel is responsible for determining which processes
are allowed to use the CPU.
Memory  The kernel needs to keep track of all memory—what is cur-
rently allocated to a particular process, what might be shared between
processes, and what is free.
Device drivers   The kernel acts as an interface between hardware
(such as a disk) and processes. It’s usually the kernel’s job to operate
the hardware.
System calls and support   Processes normally use system calls to com-
municate with the kernel.
We’ll now briefly explore each of these areas.

4 Chapter 1
NOTE If you’re interested in the detailed workings of a kernel, two good textbooks are
Operating System Concepts, 10th edition, by Abraham Silberschatz, Peter B.
Galvin, and Greg Gagne (Wiley, 2018), and Modern Operating Systems, 4th
edition, by Andrew S. Tanenbaum and Herbert Bos (Prentice Hall, 2014).

1.3.1 Process Management

Process management describes the starting, pausing, resuming, scheduling,
and terminating of processes. The concepts behind starting and terminat-
ing processes are fairly straightforward, but describing how a process uses
the CPU in its normal course of operation is a bit more complex.
On any modern operating system, many processes run “simultane-
ously.” For example, you might have a web browser and a spreadsheet open
on a desktop computer at the same time. However, things are not as they
appear: the processes behind these applications typically do not run at
exactly the same time.
Consider a system with a one-core CPU. Many processes may be able to
use the CPU, but only one process can actually use the CPU at any given
time. In practice, each process uses the CPU for a small fraction of a second,
then pauses; then another process uses the CPU for another small fraction
of a second; then another process takes a turn, and so on. The act of one pro-
cess giving up control of the CPU to another process is called a context switch.
Each piece of time—called a time slice—gives a process enough time for
significant computation (and indeed, a process often finishes its current
task during a single slice). However, because the slices are so small, humans
can’t perceive them, and the system appears to be running multiple pro-
cesses at the same time (a capability known as multitasking).
The kernel is responsible for context switching. To understand how this
works, let’s think about a situation in which a process is running in user
mode but its time slice is up. Here’s what happens:

1. The CPU (the actual hardware) interrupts the current process based on
an internal timer, switches into kernel mode, and hands control back to
the kernel.
2. The kernel records the current state of the CPU and memory, which
will be essential to resuming the process that was just interrupted.
3. The kernel performs any tasks that might have come up during the
preceding time slice (such as collecting data from input and output, or
I/O, operations).
4. The kernel is now ready to let another process run. The kernel analyzes
the list of processes that are ready to run and chooses one.
5. The kernel prepares the memory for this new process and then pre-
pares the CPU.
6. The kernel tells the CPU how long the time slice for the new process
will last.
7. The kernel switches the CPU into user mode and hands control of the
CPU to the process.

The Big Picture 5

Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 112. At this time peas were issued whole. Split peas were not issued till about
1856—after the Russian war.
113. Rear-Admiral Trogoff, with his flag in the Commerce de Marseille, left
Toulon in company, with the English but he died within a few months.—Chevalier,
op. cit. pp. 90, 91.
114. A recognised form of encouragement. In the court martial on the officers
of the Ambuscade, captured by the French on the 14th December, 1798 (James, ii.
273 seq.), the boatswain was asked, ‘Did you hear Lieut. Briggs call to the people to
encourage them to come aft and fight?’ and the answer was, ‘He called down to the
waist to come up and assist. I believe it was “Damn your eyes, come up.”‘—Minutes
of the Court Martial. Cf. Byron’s Don Juan, xi. 12.
115. It is only by the aid of such occasional and incidental notices that we can
now realise what a very real thing the Test Act of 1673 was, and continued to be, till
its repeal in 1828. It required ‘all persons holding any office of profit or trust, civil
or military, under the crown, to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, receive
the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper according to the rites of the Church of England,
and subscribe the declaration against transubstantiation.’
116. As was the case in January, 1855.
117. Richard Poulden. Died, a rear-admiral, 1845.
118. Mr. Marriott, Assistant Secretary of the Royal Meteorological Society, has
kindly supplied the following note:—The frost began about the middle of December
1794, was excessively severe in January, and continued till the end of March. There
were large falls of snow, and the consequent floods were so great that nearly all the
bridges in England were injured. The greatest cold recorded was at Maidstone on
January 25, when a thermometer laid on the snow showed –14° F., and another,
five feet above the surface, –10° F. There was a thaw on January 26–7, but on the
28th the frost returned and continued. Mr. A. Rollin, secretary to the captain
superintendent at Sheerness, has also been so good as to send the following note,
at the instance of Rear-Admiral C. H. Adair: ‘In January 1795 King’s Ferry was
frozen and also Sheerness Harbour. People walked from ships in the harbour and
from the Little Nore to Sheerness on the ice for provisions.’ Mr. Rollin mentions
similar frosts in January 1776, and January 1789; but has no record of the frost of
January 1855, when the harbour, and seaward as far as the eye could reach, was
frozen over, forcibly recalling Arctic memories.
119. Two very well-known singers. There are probably many still with us who
have heard Braham—he did not retire finally till 1852—if only in ‘The Bay of
Biscay.’ Incledon, who died in 1826, served, when a very young man, as an
ordinary seaman on board the Formidable, Rodney’s flagship in the West Indies.
According to the tradition still living 50 or 60 years ago, his talent was found out,
and he used to be sent for, first to the ward room and afterwards to the admiral’s
cabin, to sing after dinner; and when the ship paid off, he came on shore provided
with letters of introduction which made the rest of his way easy. The details of his
service in the navy, as given in the D.N.B., are certainly erroneous. The Formidable
did not go to the West Indies till 1782; and Cleland did not then command her.
120. Rear-admiral Sir Hugh Cloberry Christian. See D.N.B.
121. So in MS., evidently a slip for ‘hawse.’
122. The tack hauled out only two thirds of the length of the jib-boom. Cf.
D’Arcy Lever’s Young Sea Officer’s Sheet Anchor (1808), p. 84 and fig. 450. Setting
the jib in this way seems to have gone out of use in the navy with the introduction
of flying jibs.
123. Sc. had the swell on the bow.
124. This was evidently written with very imperfect knowledge of the facts in
either case. From the naval point of view, the only good account of this expedition
to Bantry Bay is that contributed by Admiral Colomb to the Journal of the R.U.S.
Institution, xxxvi. 17 (Jan. 1892).
125. Possibly; but on joining the Hind, his name was entered John Timothy
Coghlan in the pay-book.
126. Captain Fanshawe commanded the Monmouth in Byron’s action at
Grenada, July 6, 1779, and the Namur on April 12, 1782. He was for many years
resident commissioner at Plymouth. Cf. N.R.S. vols. xii., xix. and xxiv.
127. This power of committing for contempt belongs inherently to a court
martial, as a court of record, though it is now seldom, if ever, called on to exercise
it (Thring’s Criminal Law of the Navy, 2nd edit., p. 103).
128. This has no meaning, unless we can suppose ‘Apollo’ to have been written
inadvertently for ‘Favorite.’
129. On the part of the French this was a very old contention; sometimes, as
here, with a view to obtaining better treatment as prisoners; at other times, with a
view to being exchanged on more favourable terms. Cf. Laughton’s Studies in
Naval History, pp. 258–9.
130. One of the Dutch ships taken at the Cape of Good Hope in August 1796.
131. Joseph Peyton; admiral, June 1, 1795.
132. Taken possession of in Cork Harbour, Aug. 22, 1795.
133. James Hardy, of the Dictator.
134. A similar method of beautifying a ship fitting out was the rule rather than
the exception till long after Gardner’s time.
135. In 1852 the crew of a whaler in Baffin’s Bay mutinied and struck work, till
a pan of burning sulphur ‘cleared lower deck.’
136. Taken at Camperdown.
137. Taken at the Cape.
 138. September 28.
139. October 9. Cf. D.N.B.
140. Castlereagh was at this time lieutenant-colonel of the Londonderry
militia and acting chief secretary for Ireland. The reference would seem to be to the
discreditable conduct of the militia in ‘the race of Castlebar,’ in the previous year.
Castlereagh, of course, had nothing directly to do with it.
141. Gardner’s memory is here in fault. The court martial on Brice (for ‘having
at different times uttered words of sedition and mutiny ... and for behaving in a
scandalous manner unbecoming the character of an officer and a gentleman’) was
held on board the Blonde on 12, 13 June 1798; that on Tripp, on 6–11 Dec. 1799,
was held on board the Pallas.
142. October 14, 1799.
143. Sir John Fielding, brother of the better-known Henry Fielding the
novelist, was blind from his birth. It was said that he knew 3,000 thieves by their
voice.
144. Nag.
145. Milk-pails.
146. The word is ‘piseachbuidhe,’ porridge made of Indian meal. A hundred
years ago, possibly peas pudding.
147. Potatoes stewed in butter, with cabbage or onions.
148. Are we to understand that Huish also was well up in his Virgil, if only in
Dryden’s version? Perhaps rather the writer thought this was what he ought to
have said.
149. Attention is called by Ralfe (Naval Biography, ii. 286) to the remarkable
fact that a fleet of 28 ships of the line should be under the command of a rear-
admiral.
150. The captains’ names, left blank in the MS., are filled in from Schomberg;
but it should be noted that when rapid changes are being made, it is frequently
difficult to say who commanded a ship at a particular time. Some of the names
given by Gardner do not agree with Schomberg’s lists.
151. Bonetta sloop, 25th October, 1801.—James, iii. 482.
152. A temperature so stated has no meaning. 112° is far above the shade
temperature of Jamaica, and below the temperature in the sun. But it seems that
these parties were working during the heat of the day.
153. Off Monte Christo, 20–21 March 1780. See Beatson, v. 96; Chevalier, i.
193.
154. When writing this, Gardner seems to have forgotten that eight years
before she had carried her 74 guns with some credit in the fleet under Lord Howe.
 155. Rear-Admiral Robert Montagu.
156. 15th September, 1825. See Times of 16th September and following days.
157. It is easy to believe that the Goliath’s officers did not consider this man of
‘many vices’ a desirable passenger, even in the gun room; but as he had not been
found out by a court martial, it cannot but seem curious now, that he was not
ordered a passage in the mess of his rank.
158. 1831. Cf. Marshall, ii. 848, 882.
159. Captain, 1781; first commissioner of transport, 1796; knighted, 1804;
baronet, 1809; died, 1823.
160. See Appendix, p. 265.
161. Gardner’s memory must here have been playing him false. The distance
from Fairlight to Boulogne and the adjacent coast is fully 35 miles: the camp had
been broken up in the previous September, and the soldiers that had formed it
were far away, at Vienna or its neighbourhood; as Gardner, at the time, must have
known.
162. We are so accustomed to talk of ‘Arry as a product of the late nineteenth
century, railways and cheap return tickets, that it is neither uninteresting nor
socially unimportant to note that he existed in 1806. Increase of population and
excursion tickets have merely swelled his numbers.
163. There is some confusion here. Wadeson and Parr were both assistant
masters when Sumner died suddenly in September, 1771. Wadeson was certainly
not offered the succession, and his name does not seem to have been officially
mentioned in connection with it. On the other hand, Parr’s claims were strongly
urged, and the refusal of the Governors to appoint him caused a violent ‘meeting’
among the boys. It is a very strange story, told at length in Johnstone, Works of
Samuel Parr, i. 55 seq.; Thornton, Harrow School and its Surroundings, Chap.
viii.; Report on the MSS. of Lady Du Cane (Hist. MSS. Comm.), 229 seq.
164. At this time this was still the usual form of subscription from a superior,
whether social—as a son of the king—or official, as the navy board (collectively)—to
an inferior. Naval officers, at any rate, will scarcely need to be reminded of the
story of the eccentric Sir John Phillimore (cf. D.N.B.) who signed a letter to the
navy board in the same way; and on being censured for so doing, signed his reply
‘No longer your affectionate friend.’
The Navy Records Society, which has been established for the
purpose of printing rare or unpublished works of naval interest, aims
at rendering accessible the sources of our naval history, and at
elucidating questions of naval archæology, construction,
administration, organisation and social life.

The Society has already issued:—

In 1894: Vols. I. and II. State Papers relating to the Defeat of
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Edited by the Hon. T. A. Brassey. (12s. 6d.)
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 Vol. XIV. Papers relating to the Blockade of Brest, 1803–5 (Vol.
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Edited by Sir T. S. Jackson. (Two vols. 25s.)
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In 1901: Vol. XX. The Naval Miscellany (Vol. I.). Edited by the
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II.). Edited by Mr. John Leyland. (Two vols. 25s.)
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Vol. XXVI. A Descriptive Catalogue of the Naval MSS. in the
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in the Pepysian Library (Vol. II.). Edited by Mr. J. R. Tanner. (12s.
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Vol. XXVIII. The Correspondence of Admiral John Markham,
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(Vol. III.). Edited by the late Dr. S. R. Gardiner and Mr. C. T.
Atkinson. (12s. 6d.)
In 1906: Vol. XXXI. The Recollections of Commander James
Anthony Gardner, 1775–1814. Edited by Sir R. Vesey Hamilton and
Professor J. K. Laughton.

To follow:
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Other works in preparation, in addition to further volumes of
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of The First Dutch War, which will be edited by Mr. C. T. Atkinson,
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(afterwards Sir John) Narbrough, 1672–73, to be edited by Professor
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 TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

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