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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!yarrina.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!agate!agate!misawa From: misawa@physics20.berkeley.edu (Shigeki Misawa) 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: 23 Nov 1995 06:14:03 GMT Organization: UCB Physics Department Lines: 51 Distribution: inet Message-ID: <MISAWA.95Nov22221403@physics20.berkeley.edu> References: <bapat.816081191@gate.net> <48kror$okh@nntp.atlanta.com> <48pb0h$bou@pretzel.cs.huji.ac.il> <48s3k8$l1p@engnews2.Eng.Sun.COM> <OZ.95Nov21160409@nexus.yorku.ca> <UArimmg0sZL1073yn@sscp.lkg.dec.com> Reply-To: misawa@physics.berkeley.edu NNTP-Posting-Host: physics20.berkeley.edu In-reply-to: cambria@sscp.lkg.dec.com's message of Wed, 22 Nov 1995 11:41:02 -0500 Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.internals:9338 comp.unix.sys5.r4:10494 comp.unix.solaris:52186 comp.unix.osf.osf1:10887 comp.unix.bsd.misc:346 comp.unix.programmer:30956 misc.books.technical:6864 alt.books.technical:4235 First, I should say that I am not a OS expert or a Unix expert. Having said that, I must say that "Unix Internals" by Vahalia is quite a nice book. I'm about half way through it and I have found it to be very easy to understand. It gives a good overview of where things are in Unix development and implementation. However, since it is an overview of such a large topic, it does not go into very much detail. One should really look at the book as providing an overview of what makes Unix "Unix" and how people have added "modern" OS features while still keeping the "look and feel" of Unix. For a given feature, e.g., threads, it explains the important concepts, how it interacts with the standard Unix services, and provides an overview of the different implementations that vendors have provided. It also provides some comments about each implementation. However, for an truly indepth analysis of the different implementations of a particular feature, one would really have to go to a book that covers that specific feature. With respect to threads, it covers the concepts of kernel threads, kernel supported user threads (aka. LWP), and user threads. It discusses issues like fork "semantics" and signal handling wrt threads. It gives an overview of threads in SVR5/Solaris, Mach and Digital Unix. It mentions pthreads but doesn't say much about them. If you want more information about threads, a book specifically about threads is probably a better bet. Think of the book as providing a good starting point in the investigation of the different features of "modern Unix". If one wants more information about a given topic, the references the book cites is probably where one would want to look. I give the book "two thumbs up". Shigeki Misawa Graduate Student Solaris SysAdmin "Software Junkie" UCB Physics Department URL: http://dogbert.lbl.gov/~misawa In article <UArimmg0sZL1073yn@sscp.lkg.dec.com> cambria@sscp.lkg.dec.com (Michael C. Cambria) writes: > > Could someone who has seen this book comment on "how" up to date it > is with respect to POSIX 1003.1, 1003.1b (real time extentions) and > 1003.1c (pthreads)?? I understand that the pthreads has only quite > recently become a standard but several unix implementations have been > quite close to the final standard for yeard (Digital, Sun) the the book > could discussed it and possibly the differences between kernel (Digital) > vs. user (Sun, others?) threads. > > 1003.1b has been available for a short time. Does the book discuss it?