Operating Systems & Systems Programming Topics
Covers operating system fundamentals and systems programming topics, including process management, memory management, file system interfaces, inter-process communication, low-level kernel interactions, and system call interfaces (e.g., fork, exec, opendir, stat) across Unix/Linux and other OS environments.
Memory Management, Paging & Virtual Address Space
How the OS gives each process an isolated virtual address space and maps it onto physical memory: paging, page tables, the TLB, page faults, demand paging, and swapping. Covers the layout of a process address space (text, data, heap, stack), memory isolation and protection between processes, and how virtual memory enables overcommit and copy-on-write.
Linux System Administration & Networking
Operating and troubleshooting Linux hosts: users and groups, packages, cron, logging, and the /proc and /sys interfaces, together with host-level networking such as interfaces, routing, DNS resolution, ports, and firewall rules. Covers diagnosing connectivity and configuration issues with standard tooling on a running Linux system.
Linux Command Line & Shell
Working effectively at the Linux/Unix shell: core commands, file and text manipulation, pipes and redirection, process control, permissions and ownership, and shell scripting fundamentals. Covers navigating the filesystem, chaining tools, and the everyday command-line workflow expected of anyone operating Linux systems.
Process & Thread Management
The lifecycle of processes and threads: creation and termination, process states, the process control block, parent/child relationships, zombies and orphans, and the distinction between processes and threads. Covers how the OS tracks and isolates execution contexts and how threads share address space while maintaining separate stacks and registers.
Systems Performance Analysis & Tuning
Finding and fixing performance problems at the OS and low level: profiling CPU, memory, I/O, and lock contention, reading utilization and saturation signals, and using tools like perf, strace, and tracepoints. Covers cache behavior, false sharing, syscall overhead, and the methodology of isolating a bottleneck before optimizing.
Concurrency, Synchronization & Deadlock
Coordinating concurrent execution against shared state: mutexes, semaphores, condition variables, spinlocks, and atomic operations, plus the problems they solve and cause. Covers race conditions, critical sections, the classic deadlock conditions and prevention/avoidance strategies, priority inversion, and livelock at the OS level.