The Linux Virtual File System
Linux allows different filesystems to be accessed via a kernel software layer called Virtual File System (VFS). VFS handles all the system calls related to a...
Posts
Linux
Linux Filesystem and file operation
In the previous article, we see that system processes need to perform files operation very frequently. In this article, I will discuss some of Linux filesyst...
Zombie process
Zombie process is the process that finished execution but still has an entry in the process table; and the exit status has not been read by the parent proces...
Linux system boot process - Part 4: Init Process
Welcome! You are about to start on a journey to learn about booting process in different operating systems. For your reference, below is a list of the articl...
Linux system boot process - Part 3: Kernel and Initial Ramdisk
Welcome! You are about to start on a journey to learn about booting process in different operating systems. For your reference, below is a list of the articl...
Linux system boot process - Part 2: The Bootloader
For your reference, below is a list of the articles in this series:
Linux system boot process - Part 1: BIOS and Master Boot Record
For your reference, below is a list of the articles in this series:
Brief introduction to OS concepts: interrupts, system call, context switch
In the previous post, We mentioned system call, interrupt, signal, etc. Let’s try to understand them in this post.
What happen when you type command into Linux terminal
Any operating system is built upon 4 foundational subsystems: process management, memory management, filesystem and I/O management. Process management is pro...
TCP/IP
TCP series - Part 3: Congestion control
In this series, you will learn about crucial (but easily overlooked) details of the most important (and complicated) protocol in computer networking, aka TCP...
TCP series - Part 2: connection termination
For your reference, below is a list of the articles in this series:
TCP series - Part 1: connection establishment
In this series, you will learn about crucial details of the most important (and complicated) TCP protocol. For your reference, below is a list of the article...
Access a website on the Internet
Let’s walk through an example where we need to access a website on the Internet, say “distributedsystemsblog.com” from browser or curl command on terminal. W...
Distributed Systems
Logical clock algorithms
Logical clock synchronization takes a different approach based on Leslie_Lamport’s 2 observations: The clocks do not really need to agree on time if there...
Leader election algorithms
Many distributed systems require a leader to coordinate members. For instance, usually a group of replicas will have 1 leader that receives reads from the cl...
Reliable group communication
Multicast is a popular implementation of group communication, for example, data can be replicated within database cluster with multicasts.
Clock synchronization algorithms
Synchronizing time in distributed systems is crucial to ensure that the interactions between members in the system are correct and fair. For instance, let’s ...
Algorithm
Shortest path problem in unweighted graph
Breadth-first search (BFS) algorithm is one of two elementary graph algorithms that extensively used for graph traversal and searching problems.