I found this book in Mel Gorman’s site when I was searching about Linux kernel internals. You can donwload this book from his site based on kernel 2.4 VM or get the printed edition which has notes about kernel 2.6 VM.

You will need to have some knowledge about operating system internals before reading this book. It has approximately 200 theory pages and 500 source code documented pages.

I recommend chapter 8: SLAB Allocator.

Everyone in the Linux world should know about Robert Love, he’s a great hacker. I read some articles he wrote in Linux Journal Magazine and I saw his work in linux kernel source. As you could imagine I bought this book and it didn’t desappoint me like other kernel books did (he explains the concepts behind the design of the kernel scheduler very well).

Let’s talk about the book. I recommend all the chapters, all the book!. I found very useful these chapters:

• Chapter 3: Scheduling
• Chapter 5: Interrupts and Interrupt Handlers
• Chapter 6: Bottom Halves and Deferring Work
• Chapter 8: Kernel Synchronization Methods

There is a new edition of this book!