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To: Jon Drews <jon.drews@gmail.com>
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From: Lowell Gilbert <freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org>
Date: 07 May 2005 12:57:01 -0400
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Subject: Re: Learning UNIX internals
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Jon Drews <jon.drews@gmail.com> writes:

> On 5/7/05, Chris Hodgins <christopher.hodgins@gmail.com> wrote:
> > If you are interested in Unix and FreeBSD this is a good choice:
> > 

[McKusick/Neville-Neil,"The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD
Operating System", ISBN 0201702452]

>  Thank you Chris:
> 
>  The problem is I don't know what semaphores, mutex locks or therading
> is. So this book is probably beyond my level.

Yes, it will be.  You'll need something more basic to start with.
While the books you asked about in your initial post will be okay,
my suggestion would be [Tanenbaum, "Modern Operating Systems",
ISBN 0130313580], which provides more of a theoretical background for
OS concepts.  It depends a little on your own ends, but I think that
it is useful to understand what (for example) the idea of a mutex is,
separately from how Unix implements one.

Good luck.