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Welcome to System Programming coursebook!

This coursebook is being built by students and faculty from the University of Illinois. It is based on a crowd-source authoring wikibook experiment by Lawrence Angrave from CS @ Illinois, but is now its own .tex based project

This book is an introduction to programming in C, and system programming (processes, threads, synchronization, networking and more!). We assume you've already had some programming experience, in an earlier computer science course.

1. Introduction

2. Background

1. Systems Architecture
2. Debugging and Environments
3. Valgrind
4. GDB
5. Homework 0
6. UIUC Specific Guidlines

3. C Programming Language

1. History of C
2. Features
3. Crash course intro to C
4. Preprocessor
5. Language Facilities
6. Common C Functions
7. System Calls
8. C Memory Model
9. Pointers
10. Shell
11. Common Bugs
12. Logic and Program flow mistakes
13. Topics
14. Questions/Exercises

4. Processes

1. Processes
2. Process Contents
3. Intro to Fork
4. Waiting and Execing
5. exec
6. The fork-exec-wait Pattern
7. Further Reading
8. Questions/Exercises

5. Memory Allocators

1. Introduction
2. C Memory Allocation Functions
3. Intro to Allocating
4. Memory Allocator Tutorial
5. Case study: Buddy Allocator (an example of a segregated list)
6. Further Reading
7. Topics
8. Questions/Exercises

6. Threads

1. Processes vs threads
2. Thread Internals
3. Simple Usage
4. Pthread Functions
5. Race Conditions
6. Topics
7. Questions

7. Synchronization

1. Mutex
2. Condition Variables
3. Thread Safe Data Structures
4. Candidate Solutions
5. Working Solutions
6. Implementing Counting Semaphore
7. Ring Buffer
8. Extra: Process Synchronization
9. Extra: Higher Order Models of Synchronization
10. External Resources
11. Topics
12. Questions

8. Deadlock

1. Resource Allocation Graphs
2. Coffman conditions
3. Approaches to solving deadlock
4. Dining Philosophers
5. Viable Solutions
6. Topics
7. Questions

9. Scheduling

1. Measurements
2. Measures of Efficiency
3. Scheduling Algorithms
4. Topics
5. Questions

10. Interprocess Communication

1. MMU and Translating Addresses
2. Advanced Frames and Page Protections
3. Pipes
4. Named Pipes

11. Networking

1. The OSI Model
2. Layer 3: The Internet Protocol
3. Layer 4: TCP and Client
4. Layer 4: TCP Server
5. Layer 4: UDP
6. Layer 7: HTTP
7. Nonblocking IO
8. Remote Procedure Calls
9. Topics
10. Questions

12. Filesystems

1. What is a filesystem?
2. Storing data on disk
3. Permissions and bits
4. Virtual filesystems and other filesystems
5. Memory Mapped IO
6. Reliable Single Disk Filesystems
7. Simple Filesystem Model
8. Topics
9. Questions

13. Signals

1. The Deep Dive of Signals
2. Sending Signals
3. Handling Signals
4. Signal Disposition
5. Disposition in Child Processes (No Threads)
6. Signals in a multithreaded program
7. Topics
8. Questions

14. Review

1. C
2. Threading
3. Deadlock
4. IPC
5. Processes
6. Mapped Memory
7. Networking
8. Signals

15. Appendix

1. Shell
2. Stack Smashing
3. Assorted Man Pages
4. System Programming Jokes

16. Post Mortems

1. Shell Shock
2. Heartbleed
3. Dirty Cow
4. Meltdown
5. Spectre
6. Mars Pathfinder
7. Mars Again
8. Year 2038
9. Northeast Blackout of 2003
10. Apple IOS Unicode Handling
11. Apple SSL Verification
12. Sony Rootkit Installation
13. Civilization and Ghandi
14. The Woes of Shell Scripting
15. Appnexus Double Free
16. ATT Cascading Failures - 1990