Linux/UNIX System Programming Training

Course code: M7D-LUSP01

• Course overview
• Course details
• Onsite and virtual onsite courses
• Public courses: upcoming dates, prices, and booking
• About the trainer
• Contact

Download Linux/UNIX System Programming course description (PDF)

Course overview

This course provides a deep understanding of the operating system architecture and low-level interfaces (principally, system calls and library functions) that are required to build system-level, multithreaded, and network applications on Linux and UNIX systems. The course consists of a mixture of detailed presentations coupled with a large number of carefully designed practical exercises that allow participants to apply the knowledge learned in the presentations.

By the completion of the course, participants will have the mastery needed to write complex system, network, and multithreaded applications on a Linux or UNIX system. Previous system programming experience (on Linux, UNIX, or any other operating system) is not required.

• Standard courses are normally five days long, and are delivered either live online, at a public training location, or on-site at customer premises. The content may vary a little, according to specific requests and time constraints, but in broad terms includes the following topics:
  
  
  • Low-level file I/O
  • Processes
  • Files, directories, and links
  • Signals
  • Process lifecycle: creation, termination, and waiting on child processes
  • Creating processes and executing programs
  • POSIX threads
  • Interprocess communication (pipes, FIFOs, semaphores, shared memory)
  • Network programming (sockets)
  • Alternative I/O models (poll(), select(), signal-driven I/O, epoll)
  
  A more detailed list of topics can be found here.
  
  
• The course includes extensive practical programming sessions.
  
  
• By default, the course is oriented towards Linux, but (as in The Linux Programming Interface) the Linux-specific material is clearly delineated. The course is thus also useful to attendees working on other UNIX systems such as FreeBSD, Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX.

Note: previous system programming experience is not required.

Related courses

This course is also available as two smaller parts that can be followed as separate pieces:

• Linux/UNIX System Programming Fundamentals (M7D-SPINTRO01, 2 days)
• Linux/UNIX Threads and IPC Programming (M7D-TIPC01, 3 days)

Course details

Course outline.

The course employs a lecture+lab format.

Audience and prerequisites

The audience for this course is in practice rather diverse, and includes:

• Programmers developing system-level or network applications for Linux and UNIX systems, or programmers porting such applications from other operating systems (e.g., Windows) to Linux or UNIX.
• Embedded programmers developing applications for Linux, or porting embedded applications from systems such as VxWorks or QNX to Linux.
• Security engineers
• Site reliability engineers
• DevOps engineers
• System administrators

In order to get the most out of the course, participants should have:

• A good reading knowledge of the C programming language.

  The content of the course is applicable in a range of compiled programming languages, such as C, C++, Rust, and D and scripting languages such as Python, and participants are welcome to use their preferred language in the lab sessions.

• A knowledge of basic UNIX/Linux shell commands.

• A basic knowledge of make(1) is helpful, but not essential.

Lab sessions

A significant part of the course is spent on practical exercises. The lab sessions also provide participants with the opportunity to obtain one-to-one assistance from the trainer on the course material and exercises.

Course materials

Course participants receive course books of around 500 pages. The course books include all of the slides and exercises presented in the course. Some notable features of the course books are the following:

• The course books have been developed by the trainer, and they are constantly updated based on ongoing changes in the Linux kernel, the GNU C library, and the POSIX standards as well as practical teaching experience in courses.
• The course books are closely integrated with The Linux Programming Interface (TLPI), via numerous references to precise locations in TLPI with more detail on various topics covered in the course.
• The course books include many example programs and exercises not found in TLPI.

In addition to the course book, participants receive a copy of The Linux Programming Interface, in either ebook or printed form (or, when possible, both).

The following samples give some idea of the course content and style of the course materials:

• Part of the File I/O course module.
• Signal Handlers course module.
• POSIX Shared Memory course module.
• Part of the Alternative I/O Models: epoll course module.
• By the end of the week, participants are in a position to write programs that solve some fairly strenuous exercises, such as this client-server exercise from one of the sockets modules.

Onsite and virtual onsite courses

For onsite and virtual onsite courses, please email [email protected] regarding availability and pricing.

If you elect to have an onsite training course on your premises, it is possible to determine the length and content of the course. The length and content of tailored courses is determined by your choice of topics, typically based on a subset of the topics in The Linux Programming Interface. Relevant topics that are not in the "Standard" list are also possible; see Alternative Topics in the course outline, and contact me if you have specific requests.

Public courses: upcoming dates, prices, and booking

Online courses in Europe timezones are normally timed around Berlin time, starting at 08:00, 08:30, or 09:00. Online courses in Americas timezones are normally timed around New York time, starting at 09:00 or 10:00. Depending on the length of breaks, classes typically run for 8 to 8.5 hours per day.

For public 5-day online courses, the per-attendee price is €3100 reduced to €3000 when booked (and either paid or a company purchase order is supplied) at least 4 weeks before the start of the course. (In addition, 19% German VAT is charged for participants attending from German locations; 19% German VAT is also applicable for private attendees in any location in the European Union without a VAT ID.)

Currently (and for the foreseeable future), public versions of this course are delivered only in online format.

Discounts are available for multiple attendees from the same company or organization; please inquire at [email protected] for details.

About the trainer

Michael Kerrisk has a unique set of qualifications and experience that ensure that course participants receive training of a very high standard:

• He has been programming on UNIX systems since 1987 and began teaching UNIX system programming courses in 1989.
• He is the author of The Linux Programming Interface, a 1550-page book widely acclaimed as the definitive work on Linux system programming.
• He is actively involved in Linux development—working with kernel developers on testing, review, and design of new Linux kernel-user-space APIs.
• From 2004 to 2021, he was the maintainer of the Linux man-pages project, which provides the manual pages documenting the Linux kernel-user-space and GNU C library APIs.

For more information about the trainer, as well as many reasons why you might want to consider choosing man7.org training courses, please see reasons to choose man7.org training.

Contact

For further inquiries about the course, please get in contact via one of the following methods:

• Email: [email protected]
• Phone: +49 (89) 2155 2990 (German landline)

Mailing list

If you would like to be added to a mailing list to receive notifications of public training courses that are scheduled in the future, send a mail (noting your location) to [email protected].