New edition for 4.4 is out now.
One of my favorite books is getting old.
Not a lot of people care too much about 4.3BSD (though Linux fans might find more here than the rest of us). This book, affectionately known as the "Devil" book because of it's cover, is 4.3BSD internals, and most of us are far more interested in System V or Linux today.
Still, I think this is worth reading. The text is clear and easy to read, and it's interesting to compare 4.3 with System V (assuming you know enough about System V to make the comparisons.)
My copy was re-printed in 1990, so that should give you some idea of what state of the art was when this was written.
Still, there is knowledge to be gained here. SVR4 is not the only way to do Unix, and having an understanding of another approach can be useful. It is also true that SVR4 has borrowed and integrated a lot of BSD, so knowing about this can help you understand SVR4 better.
If nothing else, you should have this just because you should have the Devil Book.
Tony Lawrence 1997/01/04 Rating:
Order (or just read more about) The Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Unix Operating System from Amazon.com
Got something to add? Send me email.
More Articles by Tony Lawrence © 2011-04-29 Tony Lawrence
What worries me about religion is that it teaches people to be satisfied with not understanding. (Richard Dawkins)
Printer Friendly Version
The Devil Book Copyright © January 1997 Tony Lawrence
Have you tried Searching this site?
This is a Unix/Linux resource website. It contains technical articles about Unix, Linux and general computing related subjects, opinion, news, help files, how-to's, tutorials and more.
Contact us
Printer Friendly Version