Linux Systems Programming: Introduction#

This introductory course gives an overview of the OS, the interconnections between its concepts, and how to program it.

Course Outline#

  • The Shell. Being UNIX’s first user interface, it is intimately tied to the system and a good instrument to get insight into it. The course gets you started in shell usage.

  • OS concepts, and system calls. Exploring the system, still using the shell.

    • Processes (and the /proc filesystem), filesystems, IO-redirection, …

    • strace: introspecting the system call interface

    • Several examples of Everything is a File - probably UNIX’s strongest concept, and how Linux extends it

  • The toolchain. Learn how to build your programs.

    • Compiler, Linker

    • Debugger

    • Static and shared libraries

    • Executables

    • GNU Make

  • Programming. Many small exercises bring you through the course content.

    • Processes: fork/exec/wait, signal handling

    • Filesystem: open/read/write/close

    • Filedescriptors, and associated system calls

Prerequisites#

A solid understanding of the C programming language is helpful. Fun with low-level hacking is required.