Understanding memory management

[Mahesh Mohan]

Hi folks,

Whether you're developing applications, filesystems, networking modules, block level drivers

or anything else, knowing more about memory management in your system is always a plus.

I myself have been trying to understand more about memory management in Linux.

Here are the steps I would suggest you follow(if you want to learn more about memory management):

1. Read about the mmap system call and understand it to a basic level at least.

2. Go through the following articles(in that order):

• http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/anatomy-of-a-program-in-memory
  
• http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/how-the-kernel-manages-your-memory
  
• http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/page-cache-the-affair-between-memory-and-files
  

3. Read the chapters on process address space and page cache from the book Linux Kernel Development

by Robert Love.

Depending on how much further you want to delve into this, you can either read Understanding the Linux Kernel

or go through kernel code.

Mind you, even if you're not a Linux internals enthusiast, I would still suggest going through the three

steps suggested above. Most operating systems have a very similar framework for working things out.

So it is good to know how stuff works in one OS and then if need be, you can move on to other operating

systems like Solaris and Windows.

Personally, I had to take multiple readings of all the above articles/chapters before I could gain some

clarity. If you can grasp all this in the first go, then good for you. But if not, then have patience and keep

poking into it! :-)

Regards,

Mahesh