Linux/UNIX System Programming Training

Course code: M7D-SP01

• Summary
• Overview
• Audience and prerequisites
• Course format
• Course materials
• Course outline
• About the trainer
• Prices
• Upcoming courses and registration
• Contact

Download Linux/UNIX System Programming course description (PDF)

Summary

This course provides a deep understanding of the operating system architecture and low-level interfaces (principally, system calls and library functions) that are required to build system-level, multithreaded, and network applications on Linux and UNIX systems. The course consists of a mixture of detailed presentations coupled with a large number of carefully designed practical exercises that allow participants to apply the knowledge learned in the presentations.

By the completion of the course, participants will have the mastery needed to write complex system, network, and multithreaded applications on a Linux or UNIX system. Previous system programming experience (on Linux, UNIX, or any other operating system) is not required.

Overview

• Standard courses are normally five days long, and are either delivered at a public training location or on-site at customer premises. The content may vary a little, according to specific requests and time constraints, but in broad terms will include the following topics:
  
  
  • Low-level file I/O
  • Processes
  • Files, directories, and links
  • Signals
  • Process lifecycle: creation, termination, and waiting on child processes
  • Creating processes and executing programs
  • POSIX threads
  • Interprocess communication (pipes, FIFOs, message queues, semaphores, shared memory)
  • Network programming (sockets)
  • Privileged programs (set-UID, set-GID) and secure programming
  • Alternative I/O models (poll(), select(), signal-driven I/O, epoll)
  
  A more detailed list of topics can be found here.
  
  
• The course includes extensive practical programming sessions. Come along prepared to work fairly hard, interact, and learn a lot during the week.
  
  
• By default, the course is oriented towards Linux, but (as in The Linux Programming Interface) the Linux-specific material is clearly delineated. The course is thus also useful to attendees working on other UNIX systems such as FreeBSD, Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX.

Tailored onsite courses

If you elect to have an onsite training course on your premises, it is possible to determine the length and content of the course. The length and content of tailored courses is determined by your choice of topics, typically based on a subset of the topics in The Linux Programming Interface. Relevant topics that are not in the "Standard" list are also possible; see Alternative Topics in the course outline, and contact me if you have specific requests.

Audience and prerequisites

The audience for this course is in practice rather diverse, and includes:

• Programmers developing system-level or network applications for Linux and UNIX systems, or programmers porting such applications from other operating systems (e.g., Windows) to Linux or UNIX.
• Embedded programmers developing applications for Linux, or porting embedded applications from systems such as VxWorks or QNX to Linux.
• Security engineers
• Site reliability engineers
• DevOps engineers
• System administrators

In order to get the most out of the course, participants should have:

• At least a good reading knowledge of the C programming language.

  The content of the course is applicable in a range of compiled programming languages, such as C++ and D, and scripting languages such as Perl, Python, and Ruby, and participants are welcome to use their preferred language in the lab sessions.

• A basic knowledge of the more commonly used functions in the standard C library.

  For example, it's assumed that participants know what the common functions in the stdio and malloc packages do.

• A knowledge of basic UNIX/Linux shell commands.

• A basic knowledge of make(1) is helpful, but not essential.

Note: previous system programming experience is not required.

Course format

The course employs a lecture+lab format.

Lab sessions

A significant part of the course is spent on practical exercises. The lab sessions also provide participants with the opportunity to obtain one-to-one assistance from the trainer on the course material and exercises.

Course materials

Course participants will receive two course books consisting of around 600 pages that include all of the slides used in the course. Some notable features of the course books are the following:

• The course books have been developed by the trainer, and they are constantly updated based on ongoing changes in the Linux kernel, the GNU C library, and the POSIX standards as well as practical teaching experience in courses. The course books are printed on demand: typically, a new version is printed for each course.
• The course books are closely integrated with The Linux Programming Interface (TLPI), via numerous references to precise locations in TLPI with more detail on various topics covered in the course.
• The course books include many example programs and exercises not found in TLPI.

In addition to the course book, participants will receive a copy of The Linux Programming Interface, in either ebook or printed form (or, when possible, both).

Sample materials

The following samples give some idea of the course content and style of the course materials:

• Part of the File I/O course module.
• POSIX Shared Memory course module.
• The epoll section in the Alternative I/O Models course module.
• By the end of the week, participants are in a position to write programs that solve some fairly strenuous exercises, such as this client-server exercise from one of the sockets modules.

Course outline

Look here.

About the trainer

Michael Kerrisk has a unique set of qualifications and experience that ensure that course participants receive training of a very high standard:

• He has been programming on UNIX systems since 1987 and began teaching UNIX system programming courses in 1989.
• He is the author of The Linux Programming Interface, a 1550-page book widely acclaimed as the definitive work on Linux system programming.
• He is actively involved in Linux development—working with kernel developers on testing, review, and design of new Linux kernel-user-space APIs.
• Since 2004, he has been the maintainer of the Linux man-pages project, which provides the manual pages documenting the Linux kernel-user-space and GNU C library APIs.

For more information about the trainer, as well as many reasons why you might want to consider choosing man7.org training courses, please look here.

Prices

Public courses in Munich

For public 5-day courses in Munich, GERMANY, the per-person price is €2700 + German VAT (MWSt). The price includes the cost of training materials as well as lunch and refreshments. Discounts are available for multiple attendees from the same company or organization; please inquire at training@man7.org for details.

Public courses in the USA

For public courses in San Francisco, the per-person price is US$3400. The price includes the cost of training materials as well as lunch and refreshments. Discounts are available for multiple attendees from the same company or organization; please inquire at training@man7.org for details.

Onsite courses

For tailored onsite courses at your location, email training@man7.org regarding availability and rates.

Upcoming courses and registration

Contact

For further inquiries about the course, please contact us via one of the following methods:

• Email: training@man7.org
• Phone: +49 (89) 2155 2990 (German landline)

Mailing list

If you would like to be added to a mailing list to receive notifications of public training courses that are scheduled in the future, send a mail (noting your location) to training@man7.org. Likely future locations are Europe and USA West Coast, but other locations may also be possible, especially if they can be scheduled to coincide with an interesting conference.