The Interrupted System

According to all accepted criteria, Israel has developed a refined universe of social science research, yet the sociology of war, in a society whose brief history is described by "rounds" of war, is utterly lacking. Baruch Kimmerling's monumental work is an effort to correct this glaring omission. He does so by calling upon the best in survey research along with a deep reexamination of the classical social science literature on conflict and consensus. Israeli society is characterized by a large army of reserves, citizen-soldiers mobilized into military service during an emergency. One such emergency was the 1973 war; another the 1982 war. Kimmerling's approach is to treat such conflicts as temporary but powerful interruptions in many social processes. These episodic events not only lead to changing conceptions of mobilization, but higher risks stemming from potential loss of life and injury, shortages, and conceptions of disaster. This is a work which takes seriously both institutional requirements and personal traumas, and is thus very much in the mainstream of social analyses. Kimmerling and his research assistant Irit Backer have come up with most unusual data to measure stress and strain, occupational background of these citizen-soldiers, relationships between normal work and military tasks, the impact of such conflicts on migration patterns--among other truly unusual ways of getting at the topic of an "interrupted" system. This is a book written with a controlled passion, and no mere data-mon-gering activity. The author understands the high costs which Israelis pay to be part of the "club." He sees interruption as an integral part of a chronic conflict situation. Curiously he sees the special features of the Israeli system, when viewed in tandem with external pressures and conflicts, as enabling Israel to strike a balance which enables it to persevere. This is "a "critical work, but spares the reader fatuous policy recommendations.

To thoroughly understand what makes Linux tick and why it's so efficient, you need to delve deep into the heart of the operating system--into the Linux kernel itself. The kernel is Linux--in the case of the Linux operating system, it's the only bit of software to which the term "Linux" applies. The kernel handles all the requests or completed I/O operations and determines which programs will share its processing time, and in what order. Responsible for the sophisticated memory management of the whole system, the Linux kernel is the force behind the legendary Linux efficiency. The new edition of Understanding the Linux Kernel takes you on a guided tour through the most significant data structures, many algorithms, and programming tricks used in the kernel. Probing beyond the superficial features, the authors offer valuable insights to people who want to know how things really work inside their machine. Relevant segments of code are dissected and discussed line by line. The book covers more than just the functioning of the code, it explains the theoretical underpinnings for why Linux does things the way it does. The new edition of the book has been updated to cover version 2.4 of the kernel, which is quite different from version 2.2: the virtual memory system is entirely new, support for multiprocessor systems is improved, and whole new classes of hardware devices have been added. The authors explore each new feature in detail. Other topics in the book include: Memory management including file buffering, process swapping, and Direct memory Access (DMA) The Virtual Filesystem and the Second Extended Filesystem Process creation and scheduling Signals, interrupts, and the essential interfaces to device drivers Timing Synchronization in the kernel Interprocess Communication (IPC) Program execution Understanding the Linux Kernel, Second Edition will acquaint you with all the inner workings of Linux, but is more than just an academic exercise. You'll learn what conditions bring out Linux's best performance, and you'll see how it meets the challenge of providing good system response during process scheduling, file access, and memory management in a wide variety of environments. If knowledge is power, then this book will help you make the most of your Linux system.

For more than twenty years, serious C programmers have relied on one book for practical, in-depth knowledge of the programming interfaces that drive the UNIX and Linux kernels: W. Richard Stevens’ Advanced Programming in the UNIX® Environment. Now, once again, Rich’s colleague Steve Rago has thoroughly updated this classic work. The new third edition supports today’s leading platforms, reflects new technical advances and best practices, and aligns with Version 4 of the Single UNIX Specification. Steve carefully retains the spirit and approach that have made this book so valuable. Building on Rich’s pioneering work, he begins with files, directories, and processes, carefully laying the groundwork for more advanced techniques, such as signal handling and terminal I/O. He also thoroughly covers threads and multithreaded programming, and socket-based IPC. This edition covers more than seventy new interfaces, including POSIX asynchronous I/O, spin locks, barriers, and POSIX semaphores. Most obsolete interfaces have been removed, except for a few that are ubiquitous. Nearly all examples have been tested on four modern platforms: Solaris 10, Mac OS X version 10.6.8 (Darwin 10.8.0), FreeBSD 8.0, and Ubuntu version 12.04 (based on Linux 3.2). As in previous editions, you’ll learn through examples, including more than ten thousand lines of downloadable, ISO C source code. More than four hundred system calls and functions are demonstrated with concise, complete programs that clearly illustrate their usage, arguments, and return values. To tie together what you’ve learned, the book presents several chapter-length case studies, each reflecting contemporary environments. Advanced Programming in the UNIX® Environment has helped generations of programmers write code with exceptional power, performance, and reliability. Now updated for today’s systems, this third edition will be even more valuable.

A guide to help programmers learn how to support computer peripherals under the Linux operating system, and how to develop new hardware under Linux. This third edition covers all the significant changes to Version 2.6 of the Linux kernel. Includes full-featured examples that programmers can compile and run without special hardware

The networks and information systems of today are evolving rapidly. There are new trends and applications in information networking such as wireless sensor networks, ad hoc networks, peer-to-peer systems, vehicular networks, opportunistic networks, grid and cloud computing, pervasive and ubiquitous computing, multimedia systems, security, multi-agent systems, high-speed networks, and web-based systems. These kinds of networks need to manage the increasing number of users, provide support for different services, guarantee the QoS, and optimize the network resources. For these networks, there are many research issues and challenges that should be considered and find solutions. The aim of the book is to provide latest research findings, innovative research results, methods, and development techniques from both theoretical and practical perspectives related to the emerging areas of information networking and their applications.

From the Foreword: "...the presentation of real-time scheduling is probably the best in terms of clarity I have ever read in the professional literature. Easy to understand, which is important for busy professionals keen to acquire (or refresh) new knowledge without being bogged down in a convoluted narrative and an excessive detail overload. The authors managed to largely avoid theoretical-only presentation of the subject, which frequently affects books on operating systems. ... an indispensable [resource] to gain a thorough understanding of the real-time systems from the operating systems perspective, and to stay up to date with the recent trends and actual developments of the open-source real-time operating systems." —Richard Zurawski, ISA Group, San Francisco, California, USA Real-time embedded systems are integral to the global technological and social space, but references still rarely offer professionals the sufficient mix of theory and practical examples required to meet intensive economic, safety, and other demands on system development. Similarly, instructors have lacked a resource to help students fully understand the field. The information was out there, though often at the abstract level, fragmented and scattered throughout literature from different engineering disciplines and computing sciences. Accounting for readers’ varying practical needs and experience levels, Real Time Embedded Systems: Open-Source Operating Systems Perspective offers a holistic overview from the operating-systems perspective. It provides a long-awaited reference on real-time operating systems and their almost boundless application potential in the embedded system domain. Balancing the already abundant coverage of operating systems with the largely ignored real-time aspects, or "physicality," the authors analyze several realistic case studies to introduce vital theoretical material. They also discuss popular open-source operating systems—Linux and FreRTOS, in particular—to help embedded-system designers identify the benefits and weaknesses in deciding whether or not to adopt more traditional, less powerful, techniques for a project.