Summary

In this chapter, we covered the key aspects of kernel internals that will help you as a kernel module or device driver author to better and more deeply understand the internal workings of the OS. We examined, in some detail, the organization of and relationships between the process and its threads and stacks (in both user and kernel space). We examined the kernel task_struct metadata structure and learned how to iterate over the task list in different ways via our custom written kernel modules.

Though it may not be obvious, the fact is that understanding these kernel internal details is a necessary and required step in your journey to becoming a seasoned kernel (and/or device driver) developer. The content of this chapter will help you debug many system programming scenarios and it lays the foundation for our deeper exploration into the Linux kernel, particularly that of memory management.

The next chapter and the couple that follow it are critical indeed: we’...