Design of the UNIX Operating System

In this timely new book, Maurice J. Bach traces the popularity of the UNIX System throughout the computer industry. The author describes the internal algorithms and structures that form the basis of the opertaing system (the kernal) and their relationship to the programmer interface.

Among tis key features, the book:
* describes the outline of the kernal architecture
* introduces the system buffer cache mechanism
* includes the system structures and algorithms used internally by the file system
* covers the system calls that provide the user interface to the file system
* defines the context of a process and investigates the internal kernal primitives that manipulates the process context
* presents the system calls that control the process context
* describes process scheduling
* discusses memory management, including swapping and paging system
* outlines general driver interfaces, with specific discission of disk drivers and terminal drivers
* presents an overview of streams
* introduces inter-process communication and networking, including SystemV messages, shared memory, and semphores
* explains tightly coupled multiprocessor UNIX system
* investigates distributed UNIX systems