Another great quality of this dependable Linux distro for developers is its software delivery method. By contrast, most software carries fine print that denies users these basic rights, leaving them susceptible to the whims of its owners and vulnerable to surveillance. Advocating Linux is rarely an easy task. The saved …

After submitting a contribution using the process described in the documentation, you will need to be available to respond to feedback. The entire Linux kernel was written from scratch, without employing any code from proprietary sources. Instead, the kernel keeps parts of the process resident in memory to allow the …

The history of Unix begins at AT&T Bell Labs in the late 1960s with a small team of programmers looking to write a multi-tasking, multi-user operating system for the PDP-7. GNU/Linux increases personal computing freedom. Synchronous jobs started by bash have signals set to the values inherited by …

They come in multiple varieties, including the Unix domain socket, which is the form of socket used for communication within the local machine. The GNU C library provides more than its name suggests. The bss section was conceived solely as an optimization for this purpose. Unix systems, however, are dynamic …

If the command name contains no slashes, the shell attempts to locate it. The most precious resource in the system is the CPU, usually there is only one. The proto_ops data structure consists of the address family type and a set of pointers to socket operation routines specific to a …

Aliases are expanded when a command is read, not when it is executed. Commands run as a result of command substitu- tion ignore the keyboard-generated job control signals SIGTTIN, SIGTTOU, and SIGTSTP. People who are completely new to open source software often wonder how a group of random people can …

This, in turn, allows for the use of the pathnames with which all Unix users are familiar-for example, /home/blackbeard/concorde.png. Figure 5.1 shows that each file data structure contains pointers to different file operation routine vectors; one for writing to the pipe, the other for reading from …

Time enough for a soapbox. It could be argued that its smaller number of vulnerabilities is because of its rarer deployment, but the simplest explanation is that OpenBSD has focused strongly on security - and achieved it better than the rest. The BSD socket layer calls the INET layer socket support …

Othertimes, simply booting the machine can be a chore. The entire Linux kernel was written from scratch, without employing any code from proprietary sources. A process that has terminated, but has not yet been waited upon, is called a zombie. Linux allows you to include device drivers at kernel build …

If it does not exist, it will allocate a physical page and create a page table entry for it. This means that, when the next module is loaded, it has access to the services of the already loaded modules. The shell executes the specified interpreter on operating systems that do …

Developing the core is pretty serious business, involving pretty serious computer science. But the existence and popularity of the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), as well as more recently announced capabilities like the Windows port of Docker, including LCOW (Linux containers on Windows) support, are evidence of the impact that …

This is used by gateways, which respond to ARP requests on behalf of IP addresses that are in the remote network. Many, if not most, PCI modems available on store shelves these days are WinModems. This means that subsequent INET socket calls can easily retrieve the sock data structure. Figure …

It also helps to know how to access the Internet and be able to do basic web searches with a search engine such as Yahoo or Google. Of course, we knew that all along. This means that subsequent INET socket calls can easily retrieve the sock data structure. For example …

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 …

The Watergate scandal leaked to the press through one of US President Nixon's most trusted colleagues. Device drivers have to be careful when using DMA. By the time I was done, I had actually forgotten how to use my old piece of proprietary garbageware. Linux is open-source.

How much do …