When a process needs to fetch data from a disk, it effectively stops running on the CPU to let other processes run because the operation might take a long time to complete – at least 5ms seek time for a disk is common, and 5ms is 10 million CPU cycles, an eternity from the point … Read more
It is initialization using Designated Initializers. The range based initialization is a gnu gcc extension. To initialize a range of elements to the same value, write [first … last] = value. This is a GNU extension. For example, int widths[] = { [0 … 9] = 1, [10 … 99] = 2, [100] = 3 … Read more
The solution to the bad thread wake up performance problem in recent kernels has to do with the switch to the intel_idle cpuidle driver from acpi_idle, the driver used in older kernels. Sadly, the intel_idle driver ignores the user’s BIOS configuration for the C-states and dances to its own tune. In other words, even if … Read more
The vsyscall and vDSO segments are two mechanisms used to accelerate certain system calls in Linux. For instance, gettimeofday is usually invoked through this mechanism. The first mechanism introduced was vsyscall, which was added as a way to execute specific system calls which do not need any real level of privilege to run in order … Read more
It is used in the stack unwiding tables, which you can see for instance in the assembly output of my answer to another question. As mentioned on that answer, its use is defined by the Itanium C++ ABI, where it is called the Personality Routine. The reason it “works” by defining it as a global … Read more
The kernel is part of the operating system and closer to the hardware it provides low level services like: device driver process management memory management system calls An operating system also includes applications like the user interface (shell, gui, tools, and services).
What’s the difference between kernel stack and user stack ? In short, nothing – apart from using a different location in memory (and hence a different value for the stack pointer register), and usually different memory access protections. I.e. when executing in user mode, kernel memory (part of which is the kernel stack) will not … Read more
Monolithic kernel is a single large process running entirely in a single address space. It is a single static binary file. All kernel services exist and execute in the kernel address space. The kernel can invoke functions directly. Examples of monolithic kernel based OSs: Unix, Linux. In microkernels, the kernel is broken down into separate … Read more
ctags enables two features: allowing you to jump from function calls to their definitions, and omni completion. The first means that when you are over a call to a method, hitting g] or CTRL-] will jump to the place where that method is defined or implemented. The second feature means that when you type foo. … Read more
The really simplified answer is that the kernel runs in kernel space, and normal programs run in user space. User space is basically a form of sand-boxing — it restricts user programs so they can’t mess with memory (and other resources) owned by other programs or by the OS kernel. This limits (but usually doesn’t … Read more