John O'Gorman – författare

The Grassroots series has been designed to meet the students needs. The books address core subjects, are concise and affordable. They provide the student with enough resources and support, to pass a one semester course. Grassroots books have a common theme; they will inspire, educate and stimulate even the most reluctant of students. Macmillan Press, the Authors, and the series editor, Fintan Culwin are all working towards a standard of excellence which will enlighten and encourage the reader to extend their knowledge.Operating Systems has a traditional arrangement of material. Chapter 1 introduces the reader to operating systems, and gives an overview of the rest of the book. Chapter 2 covers the traditional material on processes, but with more emphasis than usual on threads. Chapter 3 considers interactions between concurrent threads, including semaphores, message queues, and monitors. On the assumption that this is the only place where a student will meet concurency, it goes into the topic in some detail. Memory management is covered in Chapter 4, including segmentation and paging. Input/Output is dealt with over two chapters: Chapter 5 concentrates on the high-level, device independent aspects, while Chapter 6 looks at low-level aspects such as the interface with hardware, control of devices, and file organisation on disk. Chapter 7 introduces the reader to distributed computer systems, and goes into some detail on communication mechanisms, and various distributed services which can be built on top of these. Finally, Chapter 8 looks briefly at fault handling and security issues, in both stand-alone and distributed systems.

Operating Systems is aimed at students at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, particularly those taking a module in a specialist computer systems or computer science course. It takes a new approach to operating systems, integrating three fundamental elements into one convenient and comprehensive text:- It presents the basic theory of operating system design and implementation in depth- It uses Linux as a running example throughout the text to expose students to the internals of operating systems- It gives a practical introduction to systems programming using the POSIX interfaceCurrently, such material has usually to be drawn from a variety of textbooks so Operating Systems provides a valuable resource for student and lecturer alike. The book aims to give the student a thorough knowledge of how operating systems work, and how they are implemented in practice. It develops a robust understanding of the concepts and building blocks which, although grounded in Linux, provide experience which will be transferable to other systems that the student will meet. Each chapter has a set of discussion questions and suggested reading to further stimulate thought. Whilst primarily written for the academic student, the material will also be of interest to users of Linux in the professional field who wish to increase their knowledge.John O'Gorman is a Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems at the University of Limerick. He has previously published a textbook on operating systems within the Palgrave Grassroots series.The Cornerstones of Computing series is dedicated to providing readers with rigorous and challenging texts that cover the breadth of computing science. The books published in this auspicious series are written by leading experts, reviewed by their peers, and offer a quality of text unsurpassed in today's market.Series Editors- Professor Richard Bird is Director of the Computing Laboratory and head of the Programming Research Group at Oxford University. He is also the author of several successful books, including the best-selling "Introduction to Functional Programming" ( Prentice Hall )- Professor Tony Hoare was formerly at Oxford and is now working at the Microsoft European Research HQ in Cambridge. He is the author of several textbooks, including "Communicating Sequential Processes" ( Prentice Hall )