Working with UNIX Processes

by Jesse Storimer

You're a modern master of Ruby. Want to impress your coworkers and write the fastest, most efficient, stable code you ever have? Don't reinvent the wheel. Reuse decades of research into battle-tested, highly optimized, and proven techniques available on any Unix system.

This book will teach you what you need to know so that you can write your own servers, debug your entire stack when things go awry, and understand how things are working under the hood.

http://www.jstorimer.com/products/wor...

Genres: Programming, Technology, Computer Science, Software, Nonfiction, Computers, Technical

148 pages, ebook

First published December 20, 2011

Reviews

[Bo Jeanes · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was some useful information in here but for the most part I felt like the whole thing would be better suited as a series of blog posts. The writing style is weak and ranty at times and there wasn't enough history, depth, or context to the sections. It felt like a summary of RDocs.

There were also a few moments when reading this that I felt the author described things incorrectly and gave me the impression that he had not explored this topic beyond what Ruby offers. I was really hoping this book would be about Unix processes not about the Ruby libraries.

All in all, I don't think this book (or his other) helped me glean any piece of information that I wouldn't have been able to get with a quick Google search or a reference sheet. I really wanted a narrative and more context (than just Ruby).

[Arun · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great overview of how an Unix process works. It covers almost all the related topics like file descriptors, environments, exit codes, signals, fork(2), exec(2), daemons, terminal process, etc. Good mental model of how a process/task works is essential for effective understanding and debugging of systems in the unix world. While I have known the subject matter well enough from experience, I appreciate reading this structured technical guide that was written spiritedly and to the point.

[Stuart Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

storimer had a clear style, fantastic formatting, and relevant examples.

he kept it short and concise.

this was interacting with the kernel entirely through ruby, although he did always reference methods by their man page.

awesome for a ruby dev, good for someone that isn't a c programmer and wants some info on how processes work, what can be done with them, and common unix idioms (pre-forking, e.g.)

i'm very much looking forward to his books on sockets and threads.

[Kien Trung · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book explain quite detail about how unix process works

[surendranath chowdary bobba · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quick read for ruby programmers. Not so much depth in the content, but helpful for novice unix users.

[Gary Boland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite light but well aimed at beginning rubyists and I appreciated that it wasn't another tomb

[Mohsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a ruby on rails developer. I enjoyed a lot. snippets written in Ruby. Nice processes tricks are explained.

[Luis Segura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good overview and examples.

[Tom Purl · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's difficult for me to identify the target audience for this book. It's got some good stuff for lots of different people, including systems administrators, Unix scripters, and Ruby developers.

In a nutshell, this book gives you a medium-level tutorial on creating, managing, and forking new processes on Unix-based systems. Specifically, the author shows you how to use many powerful features of the Unix system API using Ruby.

This topic may sound mundane or even useless to a lot of people, but if you spend time writing or managing applications that run in operating systems like Linux and OS X, then this is really fantastic knowledge to possess.

One really wonderful thing about this book is that it makes the Unix system API much more accessible to most systems administrators. Most books about the Unix API assume that you know how to program in C. The problem is that most systems administrators don't know how to use C, and they don't really have an opportunity to learn on the job.

This book uses Ruby, a high-level, interpreted, and popular scripting language to showcase the Unix API. In my opinion, this makes the API much easier to understand and much less intimidating. Also, if you don't know Ruby, then it is a) simple to learn and b) very beneficial to learn due to its popularity.

Another great thing about this book is that it really "put a lot of pieces together" for me regarding the Unix process model. I've been using Unix since 1995, and I've been administering large applications on it for 12 years. I definitely consider myself to be an intermediate user, but there's still a decent number of gaps in my knowledge. This book filled a couple of those major gaps for me, and I feel that I am a much more confident and knowledgeable Unix user as a result.

The only real downside of this book is that it's a bit short for what you pay. The latest version of this book weighs in at about 143 pages. Also, while the book does include a sample project called Spyglass, its related explanation is only treated as a short appendix. I would have liked a little more depth overall and coverage of the Spyglass project.

However, for me, this book was still definitely worth the money. I now know much more about how Unix systems work, and I now am aware of a whole new world of concurrent programming options.

[Murali · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good, focused look at UNIX processes. Useful for me as I'm trying to get my system administration skills up to scratch; not sure if it would have general appeal, however.

It's a very short book; this is helpful in some ways, as it only covers the fundamentals of process management and job controls on Unix systems, nothing extraneous, but some people might feel hard done by having spent £13 on it.

[Karim El-Husseiny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such great book to give an introduction about how UNIX processes communicate with each other under the hood. I've learned a lot about process resources and file descriptors, and I've got a deep knowledge about how forking processes really works, the lifecycle of daemon process, how to spawn terminal process and even good understanding of how preforking web servers work such as Unicorn versus non-preforking web servers.
Now go forth and read the book! And may the fork(2) be with you! :)

[Hazel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is very short and to the point. It was informative, but about as informative as attending a one-day class in UNIX programming. Somehow, I expect more from programming books. That said, if you have only a small amount of time, you don't know much about pids and ssids and fork and exec and pipes and streams, and you want to learn something small, consider picking up this book.

[Nikhil Mulley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I am not a Ruby guy, I think the doc does provide a beginner friendly better perspective and pragmatic approach to understanding and handling UNIX/Linux processes. The coverage on zombie and orphan processes could be synthesized and improved for much better reading though. (No offense, Wikipedia has better wiki on these topics though).

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-written and concise. For sure most who spent reasonable years as a Ruby developer know how to find running Ruby process and kill them, daemonize a process, use gems like god and unicorn but probably have never considered understanding the code behind what makes all of these tasks possible. It's very interesting and could be useful in the future.

[Milad Khajavi · Rating 5 out of 5]

خوبیش اینه که به جای زبان سی، مفاهیم پردازه‌ها رو با زبان روبی توضیح می‌ده. اینطوری کم‌تر وقت آدم درگیر جزئیات پیاده سازی زبان سی می‌شه و بیشتر به مفاهیم تکیه می‌کنه تا مسائل پیاده سازی.
خوبه قبل از کتاب Linux Advanced Programming خونده بشه.

[Hector · Rating 3 out of 5]

Concise and useful, especially if you're developing with Ruby on UNIX.

[Nathan Powell · Rating 4 out of 5]

So far this is a great book. It's short, but well written. I am looking forward to referring to it in the future when trying to solve problems that require I interact with processes.

[Charles Wood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very clear examples and terrific understanding on how UNIX processes work. Clear explanation on how Ruby uses the utilities provided by the kernel as well.

[Philip Cristiano · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great intro to UNIX processes. If you use Linux and haven't worked with processes much this will get you up to speed very quickly!

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good short read on UNIX processes. Useful for system administrators as well as programmers. As I was reading it I thought of some possible future uses for some of my own sysadmin tools.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love this book. Short, to the point, very informative. Not too sure on how I could use the information learned but still enjoyed the read.

[Gmarik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easy to follow and understand!
Recommended!

[Michał Szajbe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read. Learned things I wasn't previously exposed to as a Rails programmer. Good introduction to Unix systems in general.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super duper awesome.

[Marcel Hlopko · Rating 5 out of 5]

clear, focused and short. I learned all the missing pieces and didn't "waste time" with the boring stuff. Perfect book.

[Joe James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Learnt so much from this book, I have an underlying knowledge I rely on for my day job!

[Daniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

There isn't much more than the Ruby documentation.