This is the text of the e-mail from one my students who is now working in a well known MNC. This is his advice. I hope students can benefit from this. I have not corrected anything and all mistakes in spelling grammar etc are as it is. --Atul Negi

Hi Sir,

   Good afternoon,  Hope everything is fine.  For fresher to beat any kind of interview on system programming, first 3 books are sufficient.  

Unix Internals

The following books gives good theoritical concept on UNIX's sub systems. The first 3 books are very easy to get in the market AND affordable cost. but others are not.

1. UNIX Internals: The New Frontiers by Uresh Vahalia  - Theory

2. Design of the UNIX Operating System, by Maurice J. Bach - Theory

3. Richard Stevens books - 3 books ( 1. Advanced Unix Programming, 2. Vol 1 - sockets api, 3. Vol2 - Inter process communication ) - gives good practical knowledge.

4. Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition, with Source Code (freely available)

5. Solaris Internals: Core Kernel Architecture, by Jim Mauro, Richard McDougall, Sun Microsystems Press

6. The Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating System, Marshall Kirk McKusick
Keith Bostic, Michael J. Karels, John S. Quarterman

7. The Magic Garden Explained: The Internals of Unix System V Release 4 : An Open Systems Design, by Berny Goodheart, James Cox (too much details)

8. The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System
by Marshall Kirk McKusick, George V. Neville-Neil


Linux Internals

People who start on Linux on X86, I would suggest to read the intel ia-32 processor manuals too.
Here too first 4 books are available in the market and they are affordable, others are not.

1. Understanding Linux virtual memory manager. - Mel Gorman

2. Linux kernel developement 3rd edition - robert love, This gives very good abstract overview of the kernel, one can read it in a week time, and start working on linux, but this alone is not suffience, for each concept there are lot of examples availabe on net, with presentation slides. it would be nice to have practical touch.

3. LInux device drivers 3rd edition (gives lot of practical exposure)

4. Understanding Linux kernel - orielly (most boring, but can't read in short period of time, takes 1 year)

5. Understanding linux process manager - john gormen(sry I couldn't recollect the author name), John Wiley publications

6. IA64 - Linux design and implementation (very good book, gives precise explanation) from HP before reading this I would suggest to read IA-64 hardware manuals too.


Please let me know, if I'm missing anything.  

Thanks & Regards