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From: bonwick@cathy.eng.sun.com (Jeff Bonwick)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.internals,comp.unix.sys5.r4,comp.unix.solaris,comp.unix.osf.osf1,comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.unix.programmer,misc.books.technical,alt.books.technical
Subject: Re: New Book on Unix Internals
Date: 21 Nov 1995 08:46:00 GMT
Organization: Sun
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Distribution: inet
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> "UNIX Internals: The New Frontiers"
>         Uresh Vahalia
>         Prentice Hall
>         ISBN 0-13-101908-2

Someone mentioned that this book describes the Solaris 2.4 kernel
memory allocator.  That's my baby, so naturally I was curious to
see if he got it right.  So I picked up a copy of the book this
weekend.  Man, I am impressed.  He covered all the major points
in quite a bit of detail (6 pages), and it's all spot-on accurate.
The writing is uncommonly clear -- in some places I think he does
a better job than my own Usenix paper! -- and it's evident from
various comments and diagrams that the author truly *gets it*.

The rest of the chapter on memory allocation is equally excellent,
covering all the major allocators and providing insightful comparative
analysis.  (One addendum: the author notes that the 2.4 allocator
would benefit from a per-CPU caching layer.  Done in Solaris 2.5.)

I haven't read the whole thing yet, but if the section on memory
allocation is any indication, this book is a real gem: up-to-date,
thorough, and *very* accurate.

Jeff Bonwick
Solaris Performance