Unix Internals: The New Frontiers

by Uresh Vahalia

Book Overview

This book offers an exceptionally up-to-date, in-depth, and broad-based exploration of the latest advances in UNIX-based operating systems. Focusing on the design and implementation of the operating... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0131019082
• ISBN13: 9780131019089
• Release Date: November 1996
• Publisher: Pearson
• Length: 640 Pages
• Weight: 2.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 7.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

The best operating systems book in existence

A certain small and select set of books can be found in any serious programmer's library. "UNIX Internals" is one of those books.I originally encountered "UNIX Internals" in my undergraduate operating systems class. At the time, I liked it, but I didn't really appreciate its full beauty until I re-read it with a few years of operating systems experience under my belt. I work as an operating systems programmer for a living, and whenever my knowledge needs brushing up, I go back to this book.Uresh Vahalia does an excellent job of comparing and analyzing the approaches taken by different operating systems, rather than merely describing them. His deep understanding of the topic is what really sets this book apart. In addition, it is well written, conveniently organized, and thoroughly indexed. If you really want to understand operating systems, this is the perfect book for you.As others have noted, this book is not for the beginner. You should probably have a minimum of three years of computer science experience before picking this book up.

Great reference

I found this book to be extremely helpful in studying for my OS PhD prelims. It really lays out the issues and presents solutions taken by SVR4, BSD, Mach, and Solaris in a clear fashion. Excellent detail. The Mach stuff is great, but it looks like it was almost cut and paste from the research papers. This book isnt for novices. I recommend using the BSD4.4 book as well. Both books dont look at Windows at all (for obvious reasons), so a look at the Dinosaur book (Operating System Concepts) is helpful as well for the case studies. You should have aclear understanding of OS after finishing this book.

Worth its weight in gold...

As someone whose occupation is providing support for developers on the UNIX OS, this book is worth it's weight in gold. It explains in sufficient detail all of the major features of a modern UNIX kernel, including kernel threads, user-space threads, signal generation and handling, scheduling, IPC, filesystems, etc. I've read just about every popular book printed on UNIX internals and this is my favorite. It reads easily and the description is great. Importantly, is organized so you can skip around and get the information you need.Congratulations to Dr Vahalia! I think you've written the seminal work for UNIX students for the next few years.

Really deserves 5 stars!!!

If you want to know how the Unix kernel works, and doesn't work, you need this book. Published in 1996 about "The New Frontiers", most of the "new" ideas are in current (1999) production systems. Vahalia is an excellent writer. The book is well organized and clearly written. Covers Sys V, BSD, Mach kernels and design tradeoffs. Threads, multiprocessors, IPC, lightweight processes, etc, it's all here. Excellent bibliography and references.

An excellant book on Unix Intenal, advanced and updated

I am very surprised that this book is largely get overlooked by Unix society. I read this book for over 2 years, I'm still frequently revisit it. The beautities of the book are 1. The information is up-to-date, a lot of information is summarized from latest Usenix proceedings 2. Topics involved are moderate to advanced, assuming you have enough basic knowledge on Unix Internals, such as those from BACH's book. So it focused on SMP, threaded kernel, virtual file system/journal FS. VM/Fs integration. It fillin the gap for those reader who need to know the progress of current Unixes of current Unixes since mid 80's 3. Solutions and comparisions. The author detailed different solutions on flavour of Unixes, including BSD, SVR4, Solaris (although derived from SVR4), OSF, and the legend MACH. This is the gem of the book, it outlined pro and con of each solution that brodened user's mind. 4. Well balanced contents. The author keep well balance between mechanism and implementaion detail, so that it is detail enough for reader to grasp the essence algorithm but not embroil into topic-irrevalant mess that may distract reader's attention.This is a fasinating Unix internal book on market that can take the reader into the Unixes forest, in the meantime, keep readers a clear view about the forest evolution and landscape.The book is not for Unix beginner.