Newbie help

[Manavendra Nath Manav]

On Tue, 4 Aug 2015 at 13:51 Bjørn Mork <bjorn at mork.no> wrote:

> Rishabh Chakrabarti <bassdeveloper at gmail.com> writes:
>
> > Hello all,
> >
> > Where can I search the archives and other resources for answering the
> > following questions:
> >
> > 1. How to dive into the code? i.e. entry points
>
> > 2. What are the pre-requisites for understanding the whole code?
>
> > 3. Best books and resource material
>
>
You can refer this answer from Stackoverflow:

http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/1003/linux-kernel-good-beginners-tutorial/177539#177539
It basically provides a bird's eye view of the Linux kernel along with it's
broader subsystems with links to related books/resources. I am reproducing
parts of the answer below:

**TODO** +editPic: Linux Kernel Developer -> (Ring Layer 0) +addSection:
Kernel Virtualization Engine KERN_WARN_CODING_STYLE: Do not Loop unless you
absolutely have to.

Recommended Books for the Uninitialized void *i: "Men do not understand
books until they have a certain amount of life, or at any rate no man
understands a deep book, until he has seen and lived at least part of its
contents". –Ezra Pound. A journey of a thousand code-miles must begin with
a single step. If you are in confusion about which of the following books
to start with, don't worry, pick any one of your choice. Not all those who
wander are lost. As all roads ultimately connect to highway, you will
explore new things in your kernel journey as the pages progress without
meeting any dead ends, and ultimately connect to the code-set. Read with
alert mind and remember: Code is not Literature.

What is left is not a thing or an emotion or an image or a mental picture
or a memory or even an idea. It is a function. A process of some sort. An
aspect of Life that could be described as a function of something "larger".
And therefore, it appears that it is not really "separate" from that
something else. Like the function of a knife - cutting something - is not,
in fact, separate from the knife itself. The function may or may not be in
use at the moment, but it is potentially NEVER separate.

Solovay Strassen Derandomized Algorithm for Primality Test: Read not to
contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find
talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted,
others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is,
some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not
curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and
attention.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Core Linux ( 5 -> 1 -> 3 -> 2 -> 7 -> 4 -> 6 ) “Nature has neither kernel
nor shell; she is everything at once” -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Reader
should be well versed with operating system concepts; a fair understanding
of long running processes and its differences with processes with short
bursts of execution; fault tolerance while meeting soft and hard real time
constraints. While reading, it's important to understand and n/ack the
design choices made by the linux kernel source in the core subsystems.
Threads [and] signals [are] a platform-dependent trail of misery, despair,
horror and madness (~Anthony Baxte). That being said you should be a
self-evaluating C expert, before diving into the kernel. You should also
have good experience with Linked Lists, Stacks, Queues, Red Blacks Trees,
Hash Functions, et al. volatile int i; int main(void) { int c; for (i=0;
i<3; i++) { c = i&&&i; printf("%d\n", c); /* find c */ } return 0; } The
beauty and art of the Linux Kernel source lies in the deliberate code
obfuscation used along. This is often necessitated as to convey the
computational meaning involving two or more operations in a clean and
elegant way. This is especially true when writing code for multi-core
architecture.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Device Drivers ( 1 -> 2 -> 4 -> 3 -> 8 -> ... ) "Music does not carry you
along. You have to carry it along strictly by your ability to really just
focus on that little small kernel of emotion or story". -- Debbie Harry
Your task is basically to establish a high speed communication interface
between the hardware device and the software kernel. You should read the
hardware reference datasheet/manual to understand the behavior of the
device and it's control and data states and provided physical channels.
Knowledge of Assembly for your particular architecture and a fair knowledge
of VLSI Hardware Description Languages like VHDL or Verilog will help you
in the long run. Intel® 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developer’s
Manual ARM Architecture Reference Manual ARM System Developer's Guide Q:
But, why do I have to read the hardware specs? A: Because, "There is a
chasm of carbon and silicon the software can't bridge" - Rahul Sonnad
However, the above doesn't poses a problem for Computational Algorithms
(Driver code - bottom-half processing), as it can be fully simulated on a
Universal Turing Machine. If the computed result holds true in the
mathematical domain, it's a certainty that it is also true in the physical
domain.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kernel Networking ( 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> ... ) “Call it a clan, call it a
network, call it a tribe, call it a family: Whatever you call it, whoever
you are, you need one.” - Jane Howard Understanding a packet walk-through
in the kernel is a key to understanding kernel networking. Understanding it
is a must if we want to understand Netfilter or IPSec internals, and more.
The two most important structures of linux kernel network layer are: struct
sk_buff and struct net_device static inline int sk_hashed(const struct sock
*sk) { return !sk_unhashed(sk); }
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kernel Debugging ( 1 -> 4 -> 9 -> ... ) Unless in communicating with it one
says exactly what one means, trouble is bound to result. ~Alan Turing,
about computers Brian W. Kernighan, in the paper Unix for Beginners (1979)
said, "The most effective debugging tool is still careful thought, coupled
with judiciously placed print statements". Knowing what to collect will
help you to get the right data quickly for a fast diagnosis. The great
computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra once said that testing can demonstrate
the presence of bugs but not their absence. Good investigation practices
should balance the need to solve problems quickly, the need to build your
skills, and the effective use of subject matter experts. There are times
when you hit rock-bottom, nothing seems to work and you run out of all your
options. Its then that the real debugging begins. A bug may provide the
break you need to disengage from a fixation on the ineffective solution.
“When debugging, novices insert corrective code; experts remove defective
code.” * – Richard Pattis #if DEBUG printk("The above can be considered as
Development and Review in Industrial Practises"); #endif */
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
File Systems ( 1 -> 2 -> 6 -> ... ) "I wanted to have virtual memory, at
least as it's coupled with file systems". -- Ken Thompson On a UNIX system,
everything is a file; if something is not a file, it is a process, except
for named pipes and sockets. In a file system, a file is represented by an
inode, a kind of serial number containing information about the actual data
that makes up the file. The Linux Virtual File System VFS caches
information in memory from each file system as it is mounted and used. A
lot of care must be taken to update the file system correctly as data
within these caches is modified as files and directories are created,
written to and deleted. The most important of these caches is the Buffer
Cache, which is integrated into the way that the individual file systems
access their underlying block storage devices.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Security ( 1 -> 2 -> 8 -> 4 -> 3 -> ... ) "UNIX was not designed to stop
its users from doing stupid things, as that would also stop them from doing
clever things". — Doug Gwyn No technique works if it isn't used. Ethics
change with technology. "F × S = k" the product of freedom and security is
a constant. - Niven's Laws Cryptography forms the basis of trust online.
Hacking is exploiting security controls either in a technical, physical or
a human-based element. Protecting the kernel from other running programs is
a first step toward a secure and stable system, but this is obviously not
enough: some degree of protection must exist between different user-land
applications as well. Exploits can target local or remote services. “You
can't hack your destiny, brute force...you need a back door, a side channel
into Life." ― Clyde Dsouza Computers do not solve problems, they execute
solutions. Behind every non-deterministic algorithmic code, there is a
determined mind. env x='() { :;}; echo vulnerable' bash -c "echo this is a
test for Shellsock"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kernel Source ( 0.11 -> 2.4 -> 2.6 -> 3.18 ) "Like wine, the mastery of
kernel programming matures with time. But, unlike wine, it gets sweeter in
the process". --Lawrence Mucheka You might not think that programmers are
artists, but programming is an extremely creative profession. It's
logic-based creativity. Computer science education cannot make anybody an
expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make
somebody an expert painter. As you already know, there is a difference
between knowing the path and walking the path; it is of utmost importance
to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty with kernel source code.
Finally, with your thus gained kernel knowledge, wherever you go, you will
shine. Immature coders imitate; mature coders steal; bad coders deface what
they take, and good coders make it into something better, or at least
something different. The good coder welds his theft into a whole of feeling
which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn. Video
Lectures on Kernel Recipes linux-0.11 ├── boot │ ├── bootsect.s head.s
setup.s ├── fs │ ├── bitmap.c block_dev.c buffer.c char_dev.c exec.c │ ├──
fcntl.c file_dev.c file_table.c inode.c ioctl.c │ ├── namei.c open.c pipe.c
read_write.c │ ├── stat.c super.c truncate.c ├── include │ ├── a.out.h
const.h ctype.h errno.h fcntl.h │ ├── signal.h stdarg.h stddef.h string.h
termios.h │ ├── time.h unistd.h utime.h │ ├── asm │ │ ├── io.h memory.h
segment.h system.h │ ├── linux │ │ ├── config.h fdreg.h fs.h hdreg.h head.h
│ │ ├── kernel.h mm.h sched.h sys.h tty.h │ ├── sys │ │ ├── stat.h times.h
types.h utsname.h wait.h ├── init │ └── main.c ├── kernel │ ├── asm.s
exit.c fork.c mktime.c panic.c │ ├── printk.c sched.c signal.c sys.c
system_calls.s │ ├── traps.c vsprintf.c │ ├── blk_drv │ │ ├── blk.h
floppy.c hd.c ll_rw_blk.c ramdisk.c │ ├── chr_drv │ │ ├── console.c
keyboard.S rs_io.s │ │ ├── serial.c tty_io.c tty_ioctl.c │ ├── math │ │ ├──
math_emulate.c ├── lib │ ├── close.c ctype.c dup.c errno.c execve.c _exit.c
│ ├── malloc.c open.c setsid.c string.c wait.c write.c ├── Makefile ├── mm
│ ├── memory.c page.s └── tools └── build.c Beginner's start with Linux
0.11 source (less than 20,000 lines of source code). After 20 years of
development, compared with Linux 0.11, Linux has become very huge, complex,
and difficult to learn. But the design concept and main structure have no
fundamental changes. Learning Linux 0.11 still has important practical
significance. Mandatory Reading for Kernel Hackers =>
Linux_source_dir/Documentation/* You should be subscribed and active on
at-least one kernel mailing list. Start with kernel newbies. You do not
need to read the full source code. Once you are familiar with the kernel
API's and its usage, directly start with the source code of the sub-system
you are interested in. You can also start with writing your own plug-n-play
modules to experiment with the kernel. Device Driver writers would benefit
by having their own dedicated hardware. Start with Raspberry Pi.
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