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Free Book on FreeBSD System Programming
An anonymous reader writes "A new book on BSD system programming has been released. And, in the spirit of open source, the book was released using the GNU Free Documentation License. Anyone interested in system programming on the BSD's can use this."
Chapter 2: Bootsrapping BSD
Which makes it a cheap gift, too. Just put the link in the card.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
The FDL, as the first paragraph states.
... one of the letters in the acronym is the same, I trip over that all the time ;-)
I can understand the confusion
"The purpose of argument is to change the nature of truth." -- Bene Gesserit Precept
Free programming books published online.
Okay, I've only read the Basic and Advanced I/O chapters here, but it doesn't look like there's any material that's not straight from the man pages... certainly no discussion of best practice, or performance ramifications, or any of the other good systems stuff I had hoped to see...
I've had this sig for three days.
This book reminds me of Marc Rockhind's "Advanced Unix Programming", but is less technical in nature.
The chapter on BSD make was interesting, a topic not usually covered because most people use GNU Make these days.
And the section on kqueue(2) was interesting, although very superficial.
Everything else would be largely familiar to anyone who's familiar with the Unix programming idiom.
As someone who cut his teeth on "The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD Operating System", I'm eagerly anticipating McKusick's book on FreeBSD 5.2, to be released in August. http://www.mckusick.com/FreeBSDbook.html
I fail to understand how the parent post is "interesting" (funny, perhaps). I understand the point being made -- the word "bootstrapping" was misspelled -- but that happens. It seems to me that is why the licensing on this book is significant: At least with this book this error can be corrected and reprinted by anyone so readers don't have to live with the error for long. As I read the web page, it looks like there is no error in the table of contents.
It's got to be tough to write a book and not make a minor spelling error. I've never written a book like this so I wouldn't know, but I have read many books (including technical books) with such errors. I read the error, mark it in my notes if I have paper handy, and move on. After reading the book, I often remember to submit my notes to the publisher for future corrections. It seems to me that the remarkably thorough editing and more restrictive licensing terms on these other books I've read do not prevent the errors from occurring. So my notes never result in fixing the book for subsequent readers unless the publisher decides to reprint.
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