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System Programming in Linux
book

System Programming in Linux

by Stewart N. Weiss
October 2025
Intermediate to advanced
1048 pages
29h 35m
English
No Starch Press
Content preview from System Programming in Linux

10PROCESS FUNDAMENTALS

Chapter opening image from the book’s cover; shows a sunflower.

In this chapter, we examine the structure and representation of a process in Linux. If we think of a process as something that performs a task for an ordinary nonprivileged user such as you or me but that is managed by the kernel, it leads to two very different views of a process. One is the way that nonprivileged users see it, and the other is the way that the kernel represents it. We begin by exploring the user-visible manifestation of a process. After that, we’ll look at it from the kernel’s perspective.

More specifically, we start by examining the kinds of relationships that can exist among sets of processes. Since ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0642572230128Errata Page