Course Syllabus
Unix/Linux/Posix Systems Programming

This Course is intended for programmers who wish to write programs which interface with the Unix/Linux kernel through the system call interface. Such programs may constitute a turnkey system where Unix or Linux is embedded.  Where differences in system implementation exist, the Posix standard is used.

 

* Introduction	- Facilities and Concepts
	- Posix
* Input and Output	- Low level I/O; read, write, open, close
	- The standard I/O library
	- File status and fcntl
	- File locking; advisory and mandatory
	- Devices and the ioctl call
	- Scatter/gather
	- Memory mapped files
	- File attributes
	- Asynchronous I/O
	- Directory management
* Processes	- Description of a process, creation with fork
	- Running programs with exec
	- Command line arguments and environment variables
	- Waiting for processes
	- Altering process attributes
	- Real and effective users
	- Memory Locking
* Timers	- Getting/setting the time
	- Using Timers
* Signals	- Normal usage, catching, use as a communications method
	- The non- local goto, longjmp
	- Posix Enhanced signal mechanism
* Pipes	- Description, creation, use for process communication
	- Pipes and the standard I/P and O/P, the dup system call
	- FIFO’s
* Posix or System V IPC	- Message passing, Shared memory, Semaphores
* Threads	- Overview, Threads and Processes, implementations
	- Thread creation and termination
	- Thread scheduling
* Thread Synchronisation	- Mutexes
	- Condition Variables

 

Notes