<title>Linux Kernel Documentation</title>

<span id="Sources of documentation">

<p>These are various upstream sources of documentation, many of which are linked
into the <a href=http://kernel.org/doc>linux kernel documentation index</a>.</p>

<ul>
<li><a href=Documentation>Text files in the kernel's Documentation directory.</a></li>
<li><a href=htmldocs>Output of kernel's "make htmldocs".</a></li>
<li><a href=menuconfig>Menuconfig help</a></li>
<li><a href=readme>Linux kernel README files</a></li>
<li><a href=xmlman>html version of man-pages package</a></li>
<li><a href=http://lwn.net/Kernel/Index/>Linux Weekly News kernel articles</a></li>
<li>Linux Device Drivers book (<a href=http://lwn.net/Kernel/LDD3/>third edition</a>) (<a href=http://www.xml.com/ldd/chapter/book/>second edition</a>)</li>
<li><a href=ols>Ottawa Linux Symposium papers</li>
<li><a href=http://www.linuxjournal.com/xstatic/magazine/archives>Linux Journal archives</a></li>
<li><a href=http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/views/linux/library.jsp>IBM Developerworks Linux Library</a> (also <a href=http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-linux-kernel/>here</a>)
</li>
<li><a href=http://www.tux.org/lkml/>Linux Kernel Mailing List FAQ</a></li>
<li><a href=http://kernelplanet.org>Kernel Planet (blog aggregator)</a></li>
<li><a href=video.html>Selected videos of interest</a></li>
<li><a href=local>Some locally produced docs</a></li>
</ul>

<span id="Standards">
<ul>
<li><a href=http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/>Single Unix Specification v3</a> (Also known as Open Group Base Specifications issue 6, and closely overlapping with Posix.  See especially <a href=http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/idx/xsh.html>system interfaces</a>)</li>
<li><a href=http://www.linux-foundation.org/spec/refspecs/>Linux Foundation's specs page</a> (ELF, Dwarf, ABI...)</li>
</ul>
</span id="Standards">

<span id="Translations">
<ul>
<li><a href=http://tlktp.sourceforge.net/>Linux Kernel Translation Project</a></li>
<li><a href=http://kernelnewbies.org/RegionalNewbies>Kernel Newbies regional pages</a></li>
<li><a href=http://www.linux.or.jp/JF/index.html>Japanese</a></li>
<li><a href=http://zh-kernel.org/docs>Chinese</a></li>
</ul>
</span id="Translations">

<span id="About this index">

<p>The Linux kernel documentation index is maintained by Rob Landley
&lt;rob@landley.net&gt;, tracked in <a href=http://landley.net/hg/kdocs>this
mercurial repostiory</a>, and discussed on the
<a href=http://vger.kernel.org/vger-lists.html#linux-doc>linux-doc</a> mailing
list on vger.kernel.org.  The cannonical location of the page is
<a href=http://kernel.org/doc>here</a>.</p>
</span id="About this index">

</span id="Sources of documentation">

<span id="Building from source">
  <span id="User interface">
    <span id="Configuring">
    </span>
    <span id="building">
      <span id="Building out of tree">
      </span>
    </span>
    <span id="Installing">
    </span>
    <span id="running">
    </span>
    <span id="debugging">
      <span id="QEMU">
      </span>
    </span>
    <span id="cross compiling">
      <span id="User Mode Linux">
      </span>
    </span>
  </span>
  <span id="Infrastructure">
    <span id="kconfig">
    </span>
    <span id="kbuild">
    </span>
    <span id="build and link (tmppiggy)">
    </span>
  </span>
</span>

<span id="Reading the source code">
  <span id="Source code layout">
    <span id="Following the boot process">
    </span>
    <span id="Major subsystems">
    </span>
    <span id="Architectures">
    </span>
  </span>
  <span id="Concepts">
    <span id="rbtree">
    </span>
    <span id="rcu">
    </span>
  </span>
</span>

<span id="Kernel infrastructure">
  <span id="Process Scheduler">
    <span id="fork, exec">
    </span>
    <span id="sleep">
    </span>
  <span id="Timers">
    <span id="Interrupt handling">
    </span>
  </span>
  <span id="memory management">
    <a href="gorman">Understanding the Linux Virtual Memory Manager</a>, by Mel Gorman.
    <span id="mmap, DMA">
    </span>
  </span>
  <span id="vfs">
    <span id="Filesystems">
      <span id="Types of filesystems (see /proc/filesystems)">
        <span id="Block backed">
        </span>
        <span id="Ram backed">
          <span id="ramfs">
          </span>
          <span id="tmpfs">
          </span>
        </span>
        <span id="Synthetic">
          <span id="proc">
          </span>
          <span id="sys">
          </span>
          <span id="internal (pipefs)">
          </span>
          <span id="usbfs">
          </span>
          <span id="devpts">
          </span>
          <span id="rootfs">
          </span>
        </span>
        <span id="Network">
          <span id="nfs">
          </span>
          <span id="smb/cifs">
          </span>
          <span id="FUSE">
          </span>
        </span>
      </span>
      <span id="Filesystem drivers">
        <span id="Using">
        </span>
        <span id="Writing">
        </span>
      </span>
    </span>
  </span>

  <span id="Drivers">
    <span id="Filesystem">
    </span>
    <span id="Block (block layer, scsi layer)">
      <span id="SCSI layer">
	<ul>
	<li><a href="Documentation/scsi">Documentation/scsi</a> scsi.txt scsi_mid_low_api.txt scsi-generic.txt scsi_eh.txt</li>
        <li><a href="http://sg.torque.net/sg/p/sg_v3_ho.html">SCSI Generic (sg) HOWTO</a></li>
	<li><a href="xmlman/man4/sd.html">man 4 sd</a></li>
        <li><a href="http://www.t10.org/scsi-3.htm">SCSI standards</a></li>
	</ul>
      </span>
    </span>
    <span id="Character">
      <span id="serial">
      </span>
      <span id="keyboard">
      </span>
      <span id="tty">
        <span id="pty">
        </span>
      </span>
      <span id="audio">
      </span>
      <span id="null">
      </span>
      <span id="random/urandom">
      </span>
      <span id="zero">
      </span>
    </span>
    <span id="DRI">
    </span>
    <span id="Network">
    </span>
  </span>

  <span id="Hotplug">
  </span>
  <span id="Input core">
  </span>
  <span id="Network">
  </span>
  <span id="Modules">
    <span id="Exported symbols">
      <p>EXPORT_SYMBOL() vs EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL()</p>
      <p>List of exported symbols.</p>
    </span>
  </span>
  <span id="Busses">
  </span>
  <span id="API (how userspace talks to the kernel)">
    <span id="Syscalls">
    </span>
    <span id="ioctls">
    </span>
    <span id="executable file formats">
      <span id="a.out">
      </span>
      <span id="elf">
        <span id="css, bss, etc.">
        </span>
      </span>
      <span id="#!">
      </span>
      <span id="flat">
      </span>
      <span id="misc">
      </span>
    </span>
    <span id="Device nodes">
    </span>
    <span id="Pipes (new pipe infrastructure)">
    </span>
    <span id="Synthetic filesystems (as API)">
    </span>
  </span>
</span>

<span id="Hardware">
  <span id="Architectures">
<pre>
ls arch/*
include/asm-generic
uml
x86, x86-64 powerpc/ppc arm mips sparc sh 68k/coldfire
</pre>
  </span>
  <span id="DMA, IRQ, MMU (mmap), IOMMU, port I/O">
  </span>
  <span id="Busses">
    <span id="PCI, USB">
    </span>
  </span>
</span>

<span id="A working Linux root filesystem">
  <span id="Bootloader, kernel">
  </span>
  <span id="finding root">
    <span id="initramfs, switch_root vs pivot_root, /dev/console">
    </span>
  </span>
  <span id="init program and PID 1">
    <span id="What does daemonizing really mean?">
    </span>
  </span>
  <span id="C library, Dynamic loader">
  </span>
  <span id="FHS directories">
    <p>FHS spec</p>
    <a href="pending/hotplug.txt">populating /dev from sysfs</a>.
  </span>
</span>

<span id="Submitting Patches">
</span>

<span id="Following Linux development">
  <span id="Distibutions.">
  </span>
  <span id="community">
<pre>
  CATB
  http://vger.kernel.org/vger-lists.html
  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
  lwn, kernel traffic, kernelplanet.
  http://www.kernel.org/faq
    http://www.kernel.org/kdist/rss.xml
  git/mercurial
  Documentation/{CodingStyle,SubmitChecklist}
  The four layer (developer, maintainer, subsystem, linus) model.
  Politics
    Stable API nonsense
    Why reiser4 not in.
</pre>

<span id="Glossary">
</span>