4.4BSD book online (well, just one chapter)

In my grad school years, there is one book from the library that I hog more than any other (the nice thing about being a doctoral candidate is that you get to borrow books for a ridiculously looonnng time :)). That book is "The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD Operating System" by Marshall Kirk McKusick, Keith Bostic, Michael J. Karels, and John S. Quarterman.

The book describes the architecture of 4.4BSD, which is the foundation of the other major BSD systems today -- FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD. It's still very relevant (otherwise its price tag won't be $55.99 on Amazon), though obviously it doesn't cover newer BSD subsystems like PF. ;)

The other day I discovered that Chapter 2 of the book is now available online from the FreeBSD FTP site, in various formats. Chapter 2 is what I would call the "tour guide" chapter of the book, because it gives you a high-level overview of the various subsystems in the kernel, i.e. process management, memory management, filesystems, networking, etc. Those concepts are then discussed in greater detail in the later chapters.

The full online version of the book is available from Safari, but you'll have to subscribe, of course.

P.S. I've finally got my personal copy of the book. Still haven't finished reading it though. :)