Named pipes (often called FIFOs, short for "first in, first out") are an interprocess communication (IPC) mechanism that provides a communication channel over a file descriptor, accessed via a special file. I say somewhat, because the use of sed in conjunction with pipes is somewhat more comfortable (at least to …

Whereas pwd is just run by itself with no arguments, ls is a little more powerful. If this execution fails because the file is not in executable format, and the file is not a directory, it is assumed to be a shell script, a file containing shell commands. They are …

A keyboard is an example of a character device. Not only you earn more capabilities as a developer, you also learn (sometimes the hard way) how to solve issues, monitor your machine for potential problems, configure different components and more. However, free software itself is not. The takeover of software …

Internal commands are, as you might expect, built into the shell program. In contrast, the source code for closed source operating systems is not released to the public for scrutiny, which means customers must rely on the vendor of that closed source operating system to provide secu- rity. Frequent emails …

The UEFI boot manager boots the mini-bootloader, then, in turn, it boots the standard Linux bootloader image. The exact wording of a recipe as it is written by its author is protected under copyright law, but the information itself (i.e., the names of the ingredients, their quantities and the …

By opening the code to widespread examination, more people take part in finding its bugs and security flaws, in testing for broad compatibility across platforms, and in providing new ideas. This means that when the next process that attempts to access this memory gets a page fault, the shared memory …

In this way, the Internet acts as the glue that binds together Linux developers in particular and OSS developers in general. Built in to the structure of the command-line environment are dozens of commands and several text-based help systems. Now, imagine that the execution of all the above commands is …

Why make it easier for them. However, in most cases it is closed source (i.e., the source code is kept secret), and there are often restrictions on the use of the executable version. If all of the semaphore operations would have succeeded and the current process does not need …

To make sure that even in a dual boot scenario office staff do not cling to their past desktop but acclimate quickly to the new desktop simply requires a "conversion plan." All of the employees know they will have a dual boot system that is fully functional for the first …

However, this is no less "programming" than anything else. On these foundationless grounds, what would be the problem with using Skype and locking not only yourself, but also all of your friends, into one company's software and protocol? It uses YUM for package management. A host wishing to know the …

Many developers believe this open-source model makes Linux inherently more secure than a proprietary operating system. You can find good software out there for processing your access file. Each type of device has its own special device file. A block is usually a power-of-two multiple of the sector size.

Old …

In a multiprocessing system many processes are kept in memory at the same time. The kernel does not impose any restrictions on concurrent file access. This software universe had been going on behind my back for years. Just maybe that crash you reported will save some people from a major …

Linux is a popular platform for everything from middleware to embedded computing and clusters, to parallel supercomputers and gadgets. Anyone who knows what they are doing is welcome to develop for the core, and submit patches. All controllers are different, but they usually have registers which control them. A block …

With Linux, you can throw out the entire concept of organized development, source control systems, structured bug reporting, or statistical analysis. Processes are always making system calls and so may often need to wait. Behavior changes and features are added. Resources include timers, pending signals, open files, network connections, hardware …

It will recognize a multiline header if the last character on each line but the last is a left parenthesis or comma. In general, failing to agree with the standards is considered a bug. So, be prepared. The key to success with studying at home is strong motivation.

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Interestingly, the ability of bash scripting is also one of the most compelling reasons why programmers prefer using Linux OS. Linux has two types of system timers, both queue routines to be called at some system time but they are slightly different in their implementations. Most open source Internet tools …

Perhaps the most confusing thing about installing Linux for new users is the large number of options that are available to choose from. The early popularity of distributions like Slackware and then Red Hat gave the "common PC user" of the 1990s access to the Linux operating system and, with …

Getting involved with kernel development is, paradoxically, both easier than it seems like it should be, and also ridiculously difficult. Advocates of these extremely short and simple licenses contend that they provide even greater freedom than the GPL because they grant the freedom for source code to be incorporated into …

The job of cache coherency is done partially by the hardware and partially by the operating system. One side note is that the popularity of the macOS hardware and operating system as a platform for development that mainly targets Linux may be attributed to the BSD-like macOS operating system. There …

Of course, most system calls have only a couple of parameters. So now you are probably starting to see that we can refer to a location in a variety of different ways. The saved uid stores the original effective uid; its value is used in deciding what effective uid values …

Processes that are started at boot time usually run as root or nobody. As a Linux user today you have all the means of getting to know your system inside out, but it is no longer necessary to have that knowledge in order to make the system comply to your …

Whenever we refer to a file or directory we are using one of these paths. Popular distributions include Debian, Fedora, Mint, and Ubuntu, but there are many others. The CPU can access both the system space memory and the I/O space memory, whereas the controllers themselves can only access …

The first data written into the pipe is the first data read from the pipe. Like the rest of the kernel, device drivers use data structures to keep track of the device that it is controlling. These controllers are connected to the CPU and to each other by a variety …

The access file logs every visit to your web site. For example, a processor could execute an instruction every clock pulse. A way to prevent that is regular updates and only download software, themes and plugns form reliable sources. It looks at each member of the operations pending queue (sem_pending …

Because Linux has such a large number of contributors from across multiple decades of development, contacting each individual author and getting them to agree to a new license is virtually impossible, so that Linux remaining licensed under the GPLv2 in perpetuity is all but assured. Linux tracks the usage of …

In this case, Direct Memory Access (DMA) controllers are used to allow hardware peripherals to directly access system memory but this access is under strict control and supervision of the CPU. This creates a new vm_area_struct data structure describing the shared memory for this process. The thrust behind Linux development …

Modules that have other modules dependent on them must maintain a list of references at the end of their symbol table and pointed at by their module data structure. For example, software that can be freely modified but that does not have the same strict requirements for redistribution as the …

Whereas MINIX is based on a microkernel that contains the bare minimum amount of code necessary to run an operating system, Linux has a monolithic kernel, which means that functions like the file system, virtual memory, and various system calls all take place in privileged kernel space. Built in to …

Finally there is the main memory which relative to the external cache memory is very slow. Yes, it behaved slightly differently, but I found I could be much more efficient - while using Free Software! There are various other techniques how to define shell interpreter, but this is a solid start …

Because of the diversity of the Linux community and the many needs which the software is attempting to meet, not eveything can be taken care of for you all of the time. Quite the contrary, the artisans and artists who craft software which can be shared, improved, and shared again …

The issues with the Diebold [2] voting systems in the US is testament [3] to the need for transparent systems that are trustworthy. In the above example, the vfat and msdos modules are both dependent on the fat module and so it has a count of 2. For Linux, a …

Figure 11.3 shows both mechanisms. For example, %ce refers to a stopped ce job. The partitions of a hard disk are described by a partition table; each entry describing where the partition starts and ends in terms of heads, sectors and cylinder numbers. If something is in the public …

The IP protocol is a transport layer that is used by other protocols to carry their data. As the cliche goes, "If we both have an apple, and we exchange apples, we each still have one apple. It provides the interfaces documented in SUSv4 and POSIX 2008, including real-time (POSIX …

All of the read/write heads are attached together, they all move across the surfaces of the platters together. A common sector size is 512 bytes and the sector size was set when the disk was formatted, usually when the disk is manufactured. There is yet one other weakness: if …

If you do this, or try to exit again immediately, you are not warned again, and the stopped jobs are terminated. Once a Linux module has been loaded it is as much a part of the kernel as any normal kernel code. This value is called the inode number, often …

As you can see, long hand command line options begin with two dashes ( -- ) and short hand options begin with a single dash ( - ). Use man command to display manual page of any desired command. There are several good reasons for becoming familiar with Linux. Where do you think Microsoft gets its …

For those companies, Linux supports most UNIX commands and standards, which makes transitioning to Linux very easy because the company likely would not need to pur- chase additional software or retrain staff. Also, the kernel compilation process is not as verbose in the 2.6 kernel series. A question that …

Therefore, an alias definition appearing on the same line as another command does not take effect until the next line of input is read. Let's face it; Windows OS is vulnerable to different types of attacks (or hacks). Grep will take the output for that command, which is the name …

Where does the bash fit in? The keyboard, mouse and serial ports are controlled by a SuperIO chip, the IDE disks by an IDE controller, SCSI disks by a SCSI controller and so on. Linux is believed to comply with POSIX.1 and SUSv3, but as no official POSIX or …

Proficiency with the proprietary Unixes has always been considered valuable, and it is well rewarded in the job market. The results of such concurrent accesses rely on the ordering of the individual operations, and are generally unpredictable. But I don't see the need for a true Linux Advocate to spotlight …