Finally, a comprehensive guide to the Linux VM!

VM's behavior affects every Linux kernel subsystem and dramatically impacts overall performance. But until now, there was only one way to understand VM: study the poorly documented source one line at a time. Now there's an easier, faster alternative. This book describes VM in unprecedented detail, presenting both theoretical foundations and a line-by-line source code commentary. It systematically covers everything from physical memory description to out-of-memory management. Coverage includes:

• Linux VM 2.4 architecture in depth-with diagrams and call graphs
• Physical memory description, page tables, address spaces, and memory allocation
• High memory, swapping, shared memory, and much more
• Expert guidance for analyzing the code of any open source project
• New Linux 2.6 kernel features in every chapter

Well organized and superbly written, Understanding the Linux Virtual Memory Manager will be indispensable to every kernel programmer and researcher.

This book gives a detailed tour of the Linux VM as implemented in 2.4.22 and gives a solid introduction of what to expect in 2.6. As well as discussing the implementation, the theory that Linux VM is based on will also be introduced. This is not intended to be a memory management theory book, but understanding why the VM is implemented in a particular fashion is often much simpler if the underlying basis is known in advance.

To complement the description, the appendices include a detailed code commentary on a significant percentage of the VM. This should drastically reduce the amount of time a developer or researcher needs to invest in understanding what is happening inside the Linux VM because VM implementations tend to follow similar code patterns even between major versions. This means that, with a solid understanding of the 2.4 VM, the later 2.5 development VMs and the 2.6 final release will be decipherable in a number of weeks.

CD-ROM INCLUDED
Complete VM Learning Lab! Contains the author's new toolkit for exploring VM, including a browsable version of kernel source, CodeViz call graph generator; and VMRegress for analyzing and benchmarking VM. Also includes all code commentary in HTML, PDF, and plain text formats.