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The c

 began in 1991 with the commencement of a personal project by a Finnish
student, Linus Torvalds, to create a new operating system kernel.

Since then the resulting Linux kernel has been marked by constant growth throughout its history.
Since the initial release of its source code in 1991, it has grown from a small number of C files
under a license prohibiting commercial distribution to its state in 2009 of over 370 megabytes of
source under the GNU General Public License.[1]

  

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The Unix operating system was conceived and implemented in the 1960s and first released in
1970. Its availability and portability caused it to be widely adopted, copied and modified by
academic institutions and businesses. Its design became influential to authors of other systems.

In 1983, Richard Stallman started the GNU project with the goal of creating a free UNIX-like
operating system.[2] As part of this work, he wrote the GNU General Public License (GPL). By the
early 1990s there was almost enough available software to create a full operating system.
However, the GNU kernel, called Hurd, failed to attract enough attention from developers leaving
GNU incomplete.

Another free operating system project in the 1980s was the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD).
This was developed by UC Berkeley from the 6th edition of Unix from AT&T. Since BSD
contained Unix code that AT&T owned, AT&T filed a lawsuit (USL v. BSDi) in the early 1990s
against the University of California. This strongly limited the development and adoption of
BSD.[3][4]

MINIX, a Unix-like system intended for academic use, was released by Andrew S. Tanenbaum in
1987. While source code for the system was available, modification and redistribution were
restricted. In addition, MINIX's 16-bit design was not well adapted to the 32-bit features of the
increasingly cheap and popular Intel 386 architecture for personal computers.

These factors and the lack of a widely-adopted, free kernel provided the impetus for Torvalds's
starting his project. He has stated that if either the GNU or 386BSD kernels were available at the
time, he likely would not have written his own[5][6].

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In 1991, in Helsinki, Linus Torvalds began a project that later became the Linux kernel. It was
initially a terminal emulator, which Torvalds used to access the large UNIX servers of the
university. He wrote the program specifically for the hardware he was using and independent of an
operating system because he wanted to use the functions of his new PC with an 80386 processor.
Development was done on MINIX using the GNU C compiler, which is still the main choice for
compiling Linux today (although the code can be built with other compilers, such as the Intel C
Compiler).[á

]

As Torvalds wrote in his book 

 [7], he eventually realized that he had written an
operating system kernel. On 25 August 1991, he announced this system in a Usenet posting to the
newsgroup "comp.os.minix.":[8]

Hello everybody out there using minix -

I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for
386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any
feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical
layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things).

I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work. This implies that I'll get
something practical within a few months, and I'd like to know what features most people would
want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-)

Linus (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi)

PS. Yes ± it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs. It is NOT portable (uses 386
task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's
all I have :-(.

6!

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!

Linus Torvalds had wanted to call his invention Freax, a portmanteau of "freak", "free", and "x"
(as an allusion to Unix). During the start of his work on the system, he stored the files under the
name "Freax" for about half of a year. Torvalds had already considered the name "Linux," but
initially dismissed it as too egotistical.[7]

In order to facilitate development, the files were uploaded to the FTP server (ftp.funet.fi) of
FUNET in September 1991. Ari Lemmke, Torvald's coworker at the University of Helsinki who
was one of the volunteer administrators for the FTP server at the time, did not think that "Freax"
was a good name. So, he named the project "Linux" on the server without consulting Torvalds.[7]
Later, however, Torvalds consented to "Linux".

To demonstrate how the word "Linux" should be pronounced, Torvalds included an audio guide (
listen (help·info)) with the kernel source code.[10]

£  

  
Torvalds first published the Linux kernel under its own licence, which had a restriction on
commercial activity.

The software to use with the kernel was software developed as part of the GNU project licensed
under the GNU General Public License, a free software license. The first release of the Linux
kernel, Linux 0.01, included a binary of GNU's Bash shell.[11]

In the "Notes for linux release 0.01", Torvalds lists the GNU software that is required to run
Linux:[11]

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In 1992, he suggested releasing the kernel under the GNU General Public License. He first
announced this decision in the release notes of version 0.12[12]. In the middle of December 1992 he
published version 0.99 using the GNU GPL[13].

Linux and GNU developers worked to integrate GNU components with Linux to make a fully-
functional and free operating system.[14]

Torvalds has stated, ³making Linux GPL'd was definitely the best thing I ever did.´[15]

£  
    

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The designation "Linux" was initially used by Torvalds only for the Linux kernel. The kernel was,
however, frequently used together with other software, especially that of the GNU project. This
quickly became the most popular adoption of GNU software. In June 1994 in GNU's bulletin,
Linux was referred to as a "free UNIX clone", and the Debian project began calling its product
·   . In May 1996, Richard Stallman published the editor Emacs 19.31, in which
the type of system was renamed from Linux to Lignux. This spelling was intended to refer
specifically to the combination of GNU and Linux, but this was soon abandoned in favor of
"GNU/Linux".[16].

This name garnered varying reactions. The GNU and Debian projects use the name, although most
developers simply use the term "Linux" to refer to the combination.

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Torvalds announced in 1996 that there would be a mascot for Linux, a penguin. Larry Ewing
provided the original draft of today's well known mascot based on this description. The name Tux
was suggested by James Hughes as derivative of 
 .[7]

£       
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There are many other well-known maintainers for the Linux kernel beside Torvalds such as Alan
Cox and Marcelo Tosatti. Cox maintained version 2.2 of the kernel until it was discontinued at the
end of 2003. Likewise, Tosatti maintained version 2.4 of the kernel until the middle of 2006.
Andrew Morton steers the development and administration of the 2.6 kernel, which was released
on 18 December 2003 in its first stable incarnation. Also the older branches are still constantly
improved.

£



The largest part of the work on Linux is performed by the community: the thousands of
programmers around the world that use Linux and send their suggested improvements to the
maintainers. Various companies have also helped not only with the development of the Kernels,
but also with the writing of the body of auxiliary software, which is distributed with Linux.

It is released both by organized projects such as Debian, and by projects connected directly with
companies such as Fedora and openSUSE. The members of the respective projects meet at various
conferences and fairs, in order to exchange ideas. One of the largest of these fairs is the LinuxTag
in Germany (currently in Berlin), where about 10,000 people assemble annually, in order to
discuss Linux and the projects associated with it.

£
 
    



  

The Open Source Development Lab (OSDL) was created in the year 2000, and is an independent
nonprofit organization which pursues the goal of optimizing Linux for employment in data centers
and in the carrier range. It served as sponsored working premises for Linus Torvalds and also for
Andrew Morton (until the middle of 2006 when Morton transferred to Google). Torvalds works
full-time on behalf of OSDL, developing the Linux Kernels.

On January 22, 2007, OSDL and the Free Standards Group merged to form The Linux
Foundation, narrowing their respective focuses to that of promoting GNU/Linux in competition
with Microsoft Windows.[17]

£



Despite being open-source, a few companies profit from Linux. These companies, most of which
are also members of the Open Source Development Lab, invest substantial resources into the
advancement and development of Linux, in order to make it suited for various application areas.
This includes hardware donations for driver developers, cash donations for people who develop
Linux software, and the employment of Linux programmers at the company. Some examples are
IBM and HP, which use Linux on their own servers, and Red Hat, which maintains its own
distribution. Likewise Nokia supports Linux by the development and LGPL licensing of Qt, which
makes the development of KDE possible, and by employing some of the X and KDE developers.

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Linux has been surrounded by controversy repeatedly since its inception.

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In 1992 Andrew S. Tanenbaum, recognized computer scientist and author of the Minix
microkernel system, wrote a Usenet article on the newsgroup comp.os.minix with the title "Linux
is obsolete",[18] which marked the beginning of a famous debate about the structure of the then-
recent Linux kernel. Among the most significant criticisms were that:

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Tanenbaum's prediction that Linux would become outdated within a few years and replaced by
GNU Hurd (which he considered to be more modern) proved incorrect. Linux has been ported to
all major platforms and its open development model has led to an exemplary pace of development.
In contrast, GNU Hurd has not yet reached the level of stability that would allow it to be used on a
production server.[22]

£
 


In his unpublished book ½ 
, Ken Brown claims that Torvalds illegally copied code from
MINIX. These claims have been refuted by Tanenbaum[23]:

He [Ken Brown] wanted to go on about the ownership issue, but he was also trying to avoid telling
me what his real purpose was, so he didn't phrase his questions very well. Finally he asked me if I
thought Linus wrote Linux. I said that to the best of my knowledge, Linus wrote the whole kernel
himself, but after it was released, other people began improving the kernel, which was very
primitive initially, and adding new software to the system--essentially the same development
model as MINIX. Then he began to focus on this, with questions like: "Didn't he steal pieces of
MINIX without permission." I told him that MINIX had clearly had a huge influence on Linux in
many ways, from the layout of the file system to the names in the source tree, but I didn't think
Linus had used any of my code.
The book's claims, methodology and references were seriously questioned and in the end it was
never released and was delisted from the distributor's site.

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Linux (often pronounced LIH-nuhks with a short "i") is a Unix-like operating system that was
designed to provide personal computer users a free or very low-cost operating system comparable
to traditional and usually more expensive Unix systems. Linux has a reputation as a very efficient
and fast-performing system. Linux's kernel (the central part of the operating system) was
developed by Linus Torvalds at the University of Helsinki in Finland. To complete the operating
system, Torvalds and other team members made use of system components developed by
members of the Free Software Foundation for the GNU Project.

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Linux is a remarkably complete operating system, including a graphical user interface, an X

Window System, TCP/IP, the Emacs editor, and other components usually found in a
comprehensive Unix system. Although copyrights are held by various creators of Linux's
components, Linux is distributed using the Free Software Foundation's copyleft stipulations that
mean any modified version that is redistributed must in turn be freely available.


 (commonly pronounced / l nԥks/ 
in American English,[4][5] also pronounced
/ l n ks/ 
[6] in Europe and Canada) refers to the family of Unix-like computer operating
systems using the Linux kernel. Linux can be installed on a wide variety of computer hardware,
ranging from mobile phones, tablet computers and video game consoles, to mainframes and
supercomputers.[7][8][9][10] Linux is predominantly known for its use in servers; in 2009 it held a
server market share ranging between 20±40%. Most desktop computers run either Microsoft
Windows or Mac OS X, with Linux having anywhere from a low of an estimated 1±2% of the
desktop market to a high of an estimated 4.8%.[11] However, desktop use of Linux has become
increasingly popular in recent years, partly owing to the popular Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, and
openSUSE distributions[12] and the emergence of netbooks and smartphones running an embedded
Linux.[13][14]

The development of Linux is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source
software collaboration; typically all the underlying source code can be used, freely modified, and
redistributed, both commercially and non-commercially, by anyone under licenses such as the
GNU General Public License. Typically Linux is packaged in a format known as a   


 
 for desktop and server use. Linux distributions include the Linux kernel and all of the
supporting software required to run a complete system, such as utilities and libraries, the X
Window System, the GNOME and KDE desktop environments, and the Apache HTTP Server.
Commonly used applications with desktop Linux systems include the Mozilla Firefox web-
browser, the OpenOffice.org office application suite and the GIMP image editor.

 


Th 




This chapter is based on Chapters 9 through 12 of the Siever book,    

 [Siever
2003] .

Linux has a surprisingly large number of available editors, many of them inherited from UNIX.
Figure 1 illustrates some of them.

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Some distributions have 
as the default version of , e.g. Red Hat Linux. This brief overview
will concentrate on the two important screen-based editors that are shipped with Linux
distributions. For information on the other editors, consult the relevant
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Emacs is more than "just an editor" -- it provides a fully integrated user environment offering the
sort of facilities outlined below.

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These allow you to set or unset features that are independent of the major mode, e.g. auto-fill
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If you spend a lot of time editing files with a particular structure, then a customised version of
u
 will pay real dividends by reducing the number of keystrokes needed to complete a specific
task. For more information, see  !"á
[Cameron 1996] .

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This is the classic screen-based editor for UNIX. Apart from 
, there are a number of enhanced
versions of , including u , , and  u. The  editor works in two modes, á and


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Once a file is opened, you are in command mode. This provides the following facilities.

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Today most major operating systems employ multitasking. Earlier versions of the Macintosh and
Microsoft Windows used cooperative multitasking. Preemptive multitasking operating systems
include Linux and other Unix-like systems, Microsoft Windows NT/2000/XP, Mac OS X and
OS/2.

Unix-like operating systems were developed right from the start as preemptive multitasking and
multi-user systems. These are among the features that have helped make them an extremely
efficient and robust (as well as highly successful and long-lived) family of operating systems.
(They are also  
#á

 operating systems, which means that they can make effective use of
computers that have more than a single CPU.)

Multiple processes exist for virtually the entire duration of a Linux session, even if no user
application programs are running. The only exception is a very brief period during booting (i.e.,
starting up of a computer), when 
, which is the first process to be created on a newly booted
system, has not yet
#$ additional processes.

Multitasking can be easily observed in Unix-like operating systems when the % $½


(i.e., the standard system for managing GUIs on single computers and on networks of computers)
is used. That is, multiple windows can be simultaneously open on the display screen, each with an
application program running independently of the others. The independence of these applications
is evidenced by the fact that, as experienced Linux users are well aware, even if one of the
applications crashes, it is very rare that it will cause other applications to malfunction or cause the
system as a whole to crash (and thus require rebooting).

While not quite as obvious, especially to new users, multitasking is also occurring when a Unix-
like system is operating in á
 (i.e., text only) mode. That is, different programs can be
operating on different  
á

. Moreover, multiple programs can also operate on a single
console or
 $ $ (i.e., a window in a GUI that emulates console mode) by having one
program run in the foreground while others are running in the background.
The full extent of processes currently residing on a can be seen by using the #
command with its 
,  and  options, i.e.,

 u

As the number of processes can be quite long and occupy more than a single screen, this command
uses a # # (represented by the vertical bar) to transfer the output of #
  to the 

command
so that that it can be viewed one screenful at a time. The list of processes can be advanced one
screen forward by pressing the SPACE bar and one screen backward by pressing the  key. An
alternative way to view the processes is with the #

 command, which presents them in a tree
diagram.

Several instances of a single program may be visible in the output from either of these commands.
If they are not, a simple way to start two instances of a single program is to open a second terminal
window. This results in another shell process being started. Repeating the above command will
then show the processes for both instances of 
 (which is the default shell on Linux) or
whatever shell is being used.


 

†   



You may be able to boot single-user mode directly. If your system boots, but does not allow you
to log in when it has completed booting, try single-user mode.

If you are using GRUB, use the following steps to boot into single-user mode:

1.p If you have a GRUB password configured, type  and enter the password.
2.p Select — c
 with the version of the kernel that you wish to boot and type u for
edit. You will be presented with a list of items in the configuration file for the title you just
selected.
3.p Select the line that starts with
uu and type u to edit the line.
4.p Go to the end of the line and type single as a separate word (press the [Spacebar] and then
type single). Press [Enter] to exit edit mode.
5.p Back at the GRUB screen, type 3 to boot into single user mode.

If you are using LILO, specify one of these options at the LILO boot prompt (if you are using the
graphical LILO, you must press [Ctrl]-[x] to exit the graphical screen and go to the 3
prompt):

3linux single
3linux emergency

In single-user mode, you computer boots to runlevel 1. Your local filesystems will be mounted,
but your network will not be activated. You will have a usable system maintenance shell.
In emergency mode, you are booted into the most minimal environment possible. The root
filesystem will be mounted read-only and almost nothing will be set up. The main advantage of
emergency mode over  u is that your  files are not loaded. If  is corrupted or
not working, you can still mount filesystems to recover data that could be lost during a re-
installation.

Have you ever rebuilt a kernel and, eager to try out your new handiwork, rebooted before running
D3D  ß If you did not have an entry for an older kernel in  , you had a problem. If
you would like to know a solution to this problem, read this section.

In many cases, you can boot your Red Hat Linux system from the Red Hat Linux boot disk [1]
with your root filesystem mounted and ready to go. Here is how to do it:

Enter the following command at the boot disk's 3 prompt:

 uD uD AA 

Replace the AA in D uD AA with the appropriate letter and number for your root partition.

What does this command doß First, it starts the boot process in single-user mode, with the root
partition set to your root partition. The empty  specification bypasses the installation-
related image on the boot disk, which will cause you to enter single-user mode immediately.

Is there a negative side to using this techniqueß Unfortunately, yes. Because the kernel on the Red
Hat Linux boot disk only has support for IDE built-in, if your system is SCSI-based, you will not
be able to do this. In that case, you will have to access rescue mode using the linux rescue
command mentioned above.

o,,4#"#$08


ÿ

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#$ u 



%&D3D3 
u
'

3u( u
 uu  u)


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+,

+*
 u




u
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 u-D 
uDuD
 u-
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u -
-
u


"6


 
getitimer, setitimer - get or set value of an interval timer

' 


€include <sys/time.h>

int getitimer(intx
 ` struct itimerval *);

int setitimer(intx
 ` const struct itimerval *`
struct itimerval *);

·
   
The system provides each process with three interval timers, each decrementing in a distinct time
domain. When any timer expires, a signal is sent to the process, and the timer (potentially) restarts.

* *
ÿÿ

decrements in real time, and delivers '#o— upon expiration.

##— &#—o

decrements only when the process is executing, and delivers '#&o— upon expiration.

##— —(

decrements both when the process executes and when the system is executing on behalf of the
process. Coupled with ##— &#—o, this timer is usually used to profile the time spent by
the application in user and kernel space. '#—( is delivered upon expiration.

 

  - 

(  


u 

u (u )Du uD

u ( u)Du uD
)

u 
 (u)Du D
 (u)D
u D
)



    
 -j
(   
  
 
 -

* *
ÿÿ* *
ÿ* 
* *
ÿ÷   j


 


 

  
/
   
- +
 
j


  
  


  
  
 
j
 4j

2
/
 
 

  
    

Timers decrement from
&  to zero, generate a signal, and reset to
& 
. A timer which
is set to zero (
&  is zero or the timer expires and
& 
 is zero) stops.

Both
&
á and
&
á are significant in determining the duration of a timer.

Timers will never expire before the requested time, but may expire some (short) time afterwards,
which depends on the system timer resolution and on the system load. (But see BUGS below.)
Upon expiration, a signal will be generated and the timer reset. If the timer expires while the
process is active (always true for ##— &#—o) the signal will be delivered immediately
when generated. Otherwise the delivery will be offset by a small time dependent on the system
loading.

— 
 &

On success, zero is returned. On error, -1 is returned, and  is set appropriately.



ÿ÷ 

  or   are not valid pointers.

#&o

$ á is not one of ##— —o, ##— &#—o, or ##— —(.