Linux System Calls for Production Engineers: Debugging, Performance & Kernel Boundaries Explained

By Ethan K. Morray

When production breaks, Linux system calls decide the outcome.

Most engineers use Linux every day.
Very few understand what truly happens at the user-kernel boundary - and even fewer can debug failures when that boundary collapses under load.

You've probably experienced it:

A backend service hangs without a clear stack trace

A container crashes under memory pressure

EPERM, EINVAL, or EMFILE errors appear without explanation

Latency spikes persist even after code-level optimization

You don't need another generic Linux overview.
You need deep syscall literacy rooted in real production systems.

Linux System Calls for Production Engineers is a production-first guide to understanding and mastering Linux system calls, bridging the gap between backend development and serious Linux kernel programming insight.

This book teaches you how to think at the boundary where:

Syscalls meet scheduler enforcement

Containers meet isolation policies

Performance meets kernel cost

Security meets capability control

Inside This Book, You'll Learn How To:

- Perform real-world production debugging in Linux using practical, incident-driven methods
- Use strace, perf, and eBPF for deep syscall tracing and performance analysis
- Engineer scalable services with optimized epoll performance
- Understand Linux container internals, namespaces, and isolation boundaries
- Master cgroups v2 and resource governance under load
- Diagnose memory crashes through accurate Linux memory management reasoning
- Harden services with seccomp security and capability enforcement
- Apply systematic Linux performance tuning at the syscall layer

Instead of listing APIs, this book builds a layered mental model:

Entry → Validation → Execution → Return

Resource governance and scheduler interaction

Isolation across containers and pods

Failure propagation across kernel subsystems

Each chapter ends with:

- Production-grade troubleshooting frameworks
- Real incident case studies
- Diagnostic playbooks

This is not a beginner tutorial.
It is a field manual for engineers who operate Linux at scale.

If you build, deploy, or troubleshoot backend systems in production, this book will permanently upgrade how you reason about Linux.

Master the boundary. Become the engineer others escalate to.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GPCZPR97
• ISBN13: 9798249078713
• Release Date: February 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 482 Pages
• Weight: 2.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 8.5" x 11.0"