Third print run (and request for bug reports)

Sales of The Linux Programming Interface have continued well enough that the publisher will soon start preparing the third print run. That print run will incorporate all of the outstanding errata.

If you've been reading TLPI and noticed any errors or typos, now would be a good time to report them, so that fixes can be included in the next printing.

Nice discount on No Starch books

No Starch Press is doing a brief pre-Christmas sale -- 40% off all paper books, and the ebook is included for free. That's cheaper than the normal discount offered for TLPI, and it applies to all No Starch books. But I only found out about this sale a little late: according to http://nostarch.com/newsletters/2011_holiday.htm, the sale finishes at midnight on 3 Dec. I presume that means midnight in California (UTC-8), about 24 hours from now. So, you might want to take a quick look at the full catalog at No Starch.

PS The publisher's costs for international shipping from the US is pretty hefty, but with the free ebooks, and if you're ordering more than one book, the prices might still beat the online bookstores even if you're shipping outside the US.

Slides from OpenFest presentation

The slides from my OpenFest presentation, Why kernel space sucks, can be found here.

Speaking tomorrow at OpenFest

The organizers very kindly invited me to speak at OpenFest in Sofia, Bulgaria. My talk tomorrow is entitled Why Kernel Space Sucks.

That title is of course a reference to the highly amusing presentation of a few years ago by kernel hacker Dave Jones entitled Why Userspace Sucks (MagicPoint presentation). (For the PDF of Dave's complete paper presented at Linux Symposium 2006, look here; LWN.net has a nice tl;dr summary.)

Dave's presentation was all about the ways in which various userspace systems and applications kill performance by wasting system resources on pointless tasks. I'm not contradicting anything that Dave says, but it seems at least fair to point out that there are places where kernel space sucks too. My talk is about one of those places with special interest to me--the kernel-userspace programming interface--a place where kernel developers have inflicted a steady stream of small train wrecks (to borrow Dave's term) on userspace.

LinuxCon Europe

I'll be at LinuxCon Europe, 26-28 October, in Prague, Czech Republic. (In fact, I arrive already on Monday, 24 October.) I'll have a few copies of The Linux Programming Interface with me for sale. If you want to buy a copy (signed even, if you want!), drop me a mail (mtk AT man7.org).

Linux Plumbers Conference

I'm going to be at Linux Plumbers Conference, 7-9 September, in Santa Rosa, California. I'm looking forward to connect up with folk, and spend a couple of days in the Bay Area. I may have a limited number of copies of The Linux Programming Interface with me for sale. If you want to buy a copy directly from me (signed even, if you want!), please contact me by email by the end of this month (mtk AT man7.org).

Updated API Changes page

With the release of Linux 2.6.39, and the opening of the merge window for Linux 2.8.0 (or 2.6.40, or 3.0, or whatever) 3.0, I've updated the API changes page to include recent and upcoming userspace API changes in the Linux kernel. (This page covers changes since Linux 2.6.36, which was the next kernel released after the book went to press.)

Updated 2011-05-30: fixed kernel version number

No Starch Press discount offer further extended

Because TLPI was temporarily out of stock while the second print run was being completed, No Starch Press has further extended their earlier discount offer, allowing you to order the paper version of TLPI from them at a 30% discount (i.e., a total price of US$70 plus shipping), and receive the ebook free (look here for details on the ebook release). The offer is now extended to 30 June 2011.

To obtain the discount (and ebook), you must buy TLPI direct from the publisher's web site, and quote the coupon code Mamaku (what's that?). (No Starch Press is located in San Francisco, so international shipping rates will apply for readers outside North America.)

No Starch Press has the second print run in stock, so they can ship immediately.

Second print run now available

The second print run of The Linux Programming Interface is now available. Sellers such as Amazon are now restocked.

Reworked errata page

I've reworked the errata page to use color and fonts to classify the errata into three broad types and two levels of "severity".

One reason that I've done this is because there are by now quite a few errata. Another reason is because I earlier received a couple of inquiries along the lines "Because there are a lot of errata, should I wait for the second printing of the book before I buy a copy?" My response to this was "probably not", for reasons that I give below.

As of today, there are 104 errata posted on the errata page. One reason that there are a lot of errata is because there is a lot of book: 1500 pages. Another reason is that I'm very conscientious about fixing and documenting all errors that I find or that are reported to me (by contrast, a lot of books don't even maintain an errata list).

However, the observation that there are a lot of errata also needs to be tempered with some analysis. The current set of errata can be broken down (see the coding on the errata page) as follows:

• 5 fixes to significant code problems.
• 1 significant fix to an explanation in the text.
• 1 significant fix to a technical detail explained in the text.
• 10 minor code fixes. The corresponding code problem is minor and its solution is normally obvious to an attentive reader with a good understanding of C. (The most common culprit here was small code snippets that I wrote directly into the text--complete with syntax errors--rather than extracting directly from source files.)
  
• 24 minor technical fixes. These are typically obvious fixes to minor technical errors or imprecisions in the text. (In many cases, these issues probably wouldn't have impacted the reader's understanding of the topic.)
• 25 minor clarifications. These are improvements or fixes to minor details in the text. In many cases, the fix could simply have been omitted (the problem would have been unlikely to trouble most readers), but I took the opportunity anyway to improve the text because it was easily possible to do so.
• 38 typo fixes. Spelling and grammar corrections and obvious fixes to wording errors.

For most readers, probably only the first three categories of errata will matter--and possibly a few of those in the fourth category. In other words, the number of significant errata fixed between the two print runs is actually quite small, which is why I counseled those wondering whether to wait for the second print run that they probably didn't need to.

PS Meanwhile, we look to still be on target to have the second print run ready and in shops at the start of May.

Low stock

While we wait for the second print run to complete, it looks like some of the online booksellers (such as Amazon.com) have temporarily run out of stock. The second print run should be completed at the start of next month, and sellers will be restocked within a couple of days after that.

man7.org down this weekend

Currently, the company where I work and host my website is going through a move of offices. As a result, access to the man7.org website will see some interruptions. Everything should be right by Monday.

Update 2011-04-17: And we're back