Introduction to Kernel
– History of Linux
– Types of Kernel
– The Linux kernel
– Kernel Architecture

The Boot Process
– BIOS Level
– Boot Loader
– Setup, startup_32 functions
– The start_kernel() function

Kernel Recompilation
– Importance of make files
– Procedure to recompile the kernel

Implementing System Calls
– System Calls Defined
– System Calls and APIs
– System Call Table
– Unistd.h and entry.S files
– Implementing a new system call

The File System
– Virtual File system & its role
– VFS data structures super_block, inode, file, dentry
– Files associated with a process
– System Calls
– Lab Exercisers

Process management
– Process Defined
– Process Descriptor Structures in the kernel
– Process States
– Process Scheduling
– Process Creation
– System calls related to process management

Inter Process Communication
– Pipes, Fifos, signals
– System-V IPCs
– Message queues
– Shared memory
– SemaphoresSockets
– An Overview
– System calls related to TCP and UDP sockets

Memory Management
– Defining and Creating secondary memory areas
– Responsibilities of Memory Management Module
– Memory allocation & deallocation system calls malloc, calloc, alloca, free
– Demand Paging defined
– Process Organization in Memory
– Address Translation and page fault handling
– Memory allocation strategies
– Buddy System Algorithm
– Slab Allocator
– Swapping Memory Areas
– Memory Mapping

Programming & Debugging Tools
– strace: tracing system calls
– Tools used to detect memory access error and Memory leakage in Linux : mtrace
– Using gdb and ddd utilities