Linux Lab Projects and Tutorials

Smith College, Summer 2002

Small lab experiences designed to assist teaching of the Linux Operating System. The labs include questions and short projects. An introduction to some important topics of the Linux kernel.

Contents

• Configuring, compiling and installing the kernel
• How to write a kernel module for Linux
• A keyboard interrupt handler
• The Ext2 filesystem
• Processes and Process Scheduling
  • A quick look to processes on Linux
  • Process scheduling in the kernel
• Synchronization in software
• Synchronization in the kernel
• POSIX Threads
• Inter-process communication (IPC)
• Memory Simulation
• Memory Management

Please also read additonal notes about the lab

Possible Final Projects

• Implement a simple file system. Test it on a floppy disk.
• Performance measurement with different scheduling quantum values
• Implement a message passing system with a kernel module (use semaphores and wait queues)

References

	Linux Device Drivers, Second Edition, by Alessandro Rubini and Jonathan Corbet. Original version published by O'Reilly & Associates. Available online in PDF or HTML format.
	Understanding the Linux Kernel, by Daniel P. Bovet & Marco Cesati. O'Reilly.
	Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment, by Richard W. Stevens. Addison Wesley