Linux/UNIX Threads and IPC Programming course outline

1. Threads: Introduction
   • Overview of threads
   • Pthreads API basics
   • Thread creation and termination
   • Thread IDs
   • Joining and detaching threads
   • Thread attributes
   • Signals and threads
   • Threads and process control
2. Threads: Synchronization
   • Shared resources and critical sections
   • Mutexes
   • Locking and unlocking a mutex
   • Condition variables
   • Signaling and waiting on condition variables
   • Further details on signaling condition variables
   • Dynamically initialized synchronization primitives
   • Other synchronization primitives
3. IPC: Introduction and Overview (*)
   • Categorizing IPC
   • Choosing an IPC mechanism
4. Pipes and FIFOs
   • Creating and using pipes
   • FIFOs
   • Connecting filters with pipes
5. Sockets: Introduction
   • Socket types and domains
   • Creating and binding a socket (socket() and bind())
   • Overview of stream sockets
   • listen() and pending connections
   • accept() and connect()
   • I/O on stream sockets
   • Overview of datagram sockets
   • I/O on datagram sockets
6. Internet Domain Sockets
   • Internet domain sockets
   • Data-representation issues
   • Presentation-format addresses
   • Loopback and wildcard addresses
   • Internet domain stream sockets example
7. Internet Domain Sockets: Address Conversion
   • Host addresses and port numbers
   • Host and service conversion
   • Internet domain sockets example with getaddrinfo()
8. Sockets: Further Details
   • Socket shutdown (shutdown())
   • Socket options
   • TCP TIME-WAIT state and SO_REUSEADDR
9. UNIX Domain Sockets
   • UNIX domain stream sockets
   • UNIX domain datagram sockets
   • Further details of UNIX domain sockets
10. Alternative I/O Models
    • Nonblocking I/O
    • Signal-driven I/O
    • I/O multiplexing: poll()
    • Event-loop programming
11. Alternative I/O Models: epoll
    • Problems with poll() and select()
    • The epoll API
    • Creating an epoll instance: epoll_create()
    • Populating the interest list: epoll_ctl()
    • epoll events
    • Waiting for events: epoll_wait()
    • Performance considerations
    • Edge-triggered notification
    • epoll API quirks
12. POSIX Semaphores
    • Named semaphores
    • Semaphore operations
    • Unnamed semaphores
13. POSIX Shared Memory
    • Creating and opening shared memory objects
    • Using shared memory objects
    • Synchronizing access to shared memory

(*) Topics marked with an asterisk will be covered subject to time constraints.