site_archiver@lists.apple.com Delivered-To: darwin-kernel@lists.apple.com http://www.osxbook.com/ Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach, by Amit Singh On Apr 12, 2007, at 2:57 AM, Michael Smith wrote: A bigger book list: Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach Amit Singh Addison-Wesley Professional ISBN 032127854 As a general overview, I'd recommend: UNIX Internals: The new frontiers Uresh Vahalia Prentice Hall ISBN 01310190 Solaris Internals: Core Kernel Architecture Jim Mauro, Richard McDougall Sun Microsystems Press Prentice Hall Ptr ISBN 0130224960 The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System Marshall Kirk McKusick, George V. Neville-Neil Addison-Wesley Professional ISBN 0201702452 The Design of the UNIX Operating System (Prentice Hall Software Series) Maurice J. Bach Prentice Hall PTR ISBN 0132017997 -- Terry _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Darwin-kernel mailing list (Darwin-kernel@lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/darwin-kernel/site_archiver%40lists.a... On Apr 12, 2007, at 8:45 AM, Travis Rose wrote: Thanks for the information; helpful posts like yours and others serve to reduce/eliminate confusion; I recommend the following (to self and/or others): I would encourage you to consider a small investment in any reputable operating systems textbook. It's been long enough that I'm not in a position to make a current recommendation, unfortunately. = Mike There isn't a lot of _new_ new work in this area; Amit's book has already been mentioned by you. It's a bit daunting to some people (it has many pages, and it has a lot more collateral material posted on line at his site). For a complete rundown of MacOS X, including things not directly related to kernel operation or libc, you can't go wrong with his book, but for an introductory text on the generic idea of UNIX internals, you may want to take smaller bites. 8-). Here's a full reference for Amit's book, so that people can look for it more easily: And here's what I'd recommend you check out of the VT technical library, if you don't already own them: This is perhaps one of the best "broad overview" books for UNIX implementation internals, and how various OS implementations have gone about it. The material covered is generally "oldest implementation to current", though it's about 10 years old. The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD Operating System (Unix and Open Systems Series.) Marshall Kirk McKusick, Keith Bostic, Michael J. Karel, John S. Quarterman Addison-Wesley Professional ISBN 0201549794 This is a moderately good overview of what you'll find in xnu/bsd/* sources, and a somewhat better overview than looking at FreeBSD or NetBSD sources, since the kernel side of the BSD kernel mostly comes from Net/2, Net/3, and BSD4.4-Lite sources. This is flat out one of the best UNIX internals books ever written; it's only drawback is that it's not written about MacOS X, and so a lot of things about the more modern aspects of its design are not applicable. This is an excellent overview of FreeBSD, from which MacOS X has borrowed heavily, particularly in user space and libc (libSystem). The Magic Garden Explained: The Internals of Unix System V Release 4 : An Open Systems Design Berny Goodheart, James Cox Prentice Hall ISBN 0130981389 The material is a bit dated, but it's still applicable from a design perspective. This is a seminal work; it's also rather dated at this point, but no collection would be complete without it. This email sent to site_archiver@lists.apple.com