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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.rmit.EDU.AU!goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!gate.net!gate.net!bapat From: bapat@news.gate.net (S. Bapat) 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: New Book on Unix Internals Date: 11 Nov 1995 04:15:52 -0500 Organization: CyberGate Lines: 30 Distribution: inet Message-ID: <bapat.816081191@gate.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: seminole.gate.net Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.internals:9324 comp.unix.sys5.r4:10482 comp.unix.solaris:51985 comp.unix.osf.osf1:10851 comp.unix.bsd.misc:336 comp.unix.programmer:30881 misc.books.technical:6843 alt.books.technical:4213 I just saw a great new book on UNIX Internals. It is called "UNIX Internals: The New Frontiers" by Uresh Vahalia (publisher Prentice Hall, ISBN# 0-13-101908-2). The book gives a comparative treatment of the kernel design of several important UNIX systems. Its primary focus is on SVR4 and Solaris, but it also covers 4.4BSD, Digital UNIX, Mach, and some other variants. The book is very up-to-date and treats many advanced topics in detail, such as multi-threaded and multi-processor systems, log-structured file systems, and distributed file systems such as NFS and DFS. For each kernel component, it analyzes the major design issues, describes the alternatives adopted by the major UNIX variants, and provides a comparative discussion. It describes many recent advances and OS releases, such as the Solaris 2.4 memory allocator, SVR4.2 multiprocessor synchronization, and NFSv3. The New Frontiers stays away from lengthy pseudo-code and algorithmic details, and instead provides a high-level understanding of the issues. It also contains an comprehensive list of references at the end of each chapter, plus a number of exercises which reinforce the concepts. Diagrams are clear and intuitively understandable; the book would be an excellent learning aid for a graduate OS course or as a reference for an undergraduate course. Readers wishing to obtain insight into not only the current research in UNIX, but also into the next generation of operating systems in general, will certainly consider this book worthy of their time. -- S. Bapat bapat@gate.net