Dear All,

    A part of the class notes on the getpid()'s path to the system call
has been posted in the class directory:
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~sergey/cs258/surprises-with-linux-getpid.txt

    These notes include a number of links to documents with deeper 
descriptions of the underlying mechanisms, such as thread-local storage.

    Please skim sections 1.4 and 1.7 of Chapter 1 in the textbook.
Keep in mind that we look at x86, not SPARC; for a refresher on x86 
details read the execellent blogposts by Gustavo Duarte:

http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/memory-translation-and-segmentation
http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/cpu-rings-privilege-and-protection
http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/anatomy-of-a-program-in-memory)

    Linux manpages to read: strace(1), ptrace(2), proc(5), lsof(1).

    On Thurdsay we will start looking at the system call code below
the kernel line, and at the various kernel data structures that
describe the process and thread context.

    Thank you,

--Sergey