Linux/UNIX IPC Programming Training

Course code: M7D-IPC02

• Course overview
• Course details
• Onsite and virtual onsite courses
• Public courses: upcoming dates, prices, and booking
• About the trainer
• Contact

Download Linux/UNIX IPC Programming course description (PDF)

Course overview

This three-day course provides a thorough introduction to the interprocess (IPC) techniques that Linux and UNIX systems provide for use by user-space programs. Using these features allows the creation of complex multiprocess applications that coordinate their actions and exchange information with each other. Detailed presentations coupled with many carefully designed practical exercises provide participants with the knowledge to write such applications. The course dives into some specifics of the Linux system, but makes careful and frequent reference to the POSIX standard, so that it is also valuable to developers working on other UNIX systems.

• The course is three days long, and is delivered either live online, 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 includes the following topics:
  
  
  • Pipes and FIFOs
  • POSIX IPC: message queues, semaphores, shared memory
  • Sockets (UNIX domain and Internet domain)
  • 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.
  
  

Related courses

Note that this course is similar to the 3-day Linux/UNIX Threads and IPC Programming (M7D-TIPC01) course (and, by extension, it is similar to the final three days of the Linux/UNIX System Programming course (M7D-LUSP01)), but omits POSIX threads while adding some additional IPC topics.

Course details

Course outline.

The course employs a lecture+lab format.

Audience and prerequisites

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

• Programmers developing system-level 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:

• 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, C++, Rust, and D and scripting languages such as Python, and participants are welcome to use their preferred language in the lab sessions.

• A knowledge of basic UNIX/Linux shell commands.

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

It is presumed that attendees will have a working knowledge of the topics covered in the course Linux/UNIX System Programming Fundamentals (M7D-SPINTRO01). In particular, participants should have a good understanding of concepts such as: file I/O using system calls, process lifecycle (fork(), exec(), wait()), and signals.

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 receive course books of around 250 pages. The course books include all of the slides and exercises presented in the course. Some notable features of the course book 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 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 receive a copy of The Linux Programming Interface, in ebook form.

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

• POSIX Shared Memory course module.
• Part of the Alternative I/O Models: epoll course module.

Onsite and virtual onsite courses

For onsite and virtual onsite courses, please email training@man7.org regarding availability and pricing.

Public courses: upcoming dates, prices, and booking

Online courses in Europe timezones are normally timed around Berlin time, starting at 08:00, 08:30, or 09:00. Online courses in Americas timezones are normally timed around New York time, starting at 09:00 or 10:00. Depending on the length of breaks, classes typically run for 8 to 8.5 hours per day.

For public online courses, the per-attendee price is €1900 reduced to €1800 when booked (and either paid or a company purchase order is supplied) at least 4 weeks before the start of the course. (In addition, 19% German VAT is charged for participants attending from German locations; 19% German VAT is also applicable for private attendees in any location in the European Union without a VAT ID.)

Currently (and for the foreseeable future), public versions of this course are delivered only in online format.

Discounts are available for multiple attendees from the same company or organization; please inquire at training@man7.org for details.

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.
• From 2004 to 2021, he was 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 see reasons to choose man7.org training,

Contact

For further inquiries about the course, please get in contact 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.