Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach

2276 Pages·2006·15.92 MB·English

by  Amit Singh

Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach
By Amit Singh
...............................................
Publisher: Addison Wesley Professional
Pub Date: June 19, 2006
Print ISBN-10: 0-321-27854-2
Print ISBN-13: 978-0-32127854-8
Pages: 1680

Table of Contents
Mac OS X was released in March 2001, but many components, such as Mach and BSD, are
considerably older. Understanding the design, implementation, and workings of Mac OS X requires
examination of several technologies that differ in their age, origins, philosophies, and roles.
Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach is the first book that dissects the internals of the system,
presenting a detailed picture that grows incrementally as you read. For example, you will learn the roles
of the firmware, the bootloader, the Mach and BSD kernel components (including the process, virtual
memory, IPC, and file system layers), the object-oriented I/O Kit driver framework, user libraries, and
other core pieces of software. You will learn how these pieces connect and work internally, where they
originated, and how they evolved. The book also covers several key areas of the Intel-based Macintosh
computers.
A solid understanding of system internals is immensely useful in design, development, and debugging
for programmers of various skill levels. System programmers can use the book as a reference and to
construct a better picture of how the core system works. Application programmers can gain a deeper
understanding of how their applications interact with the system. System administrators and power
users can use the book to harness the power of the rich environment offered by Mac OS X. Finally,
members of the Windows, Linux, BSD, and other Unix communities will find the book valuable in
comparing and contrasting Mac OS X with their respective systems.
Mac OS X Internals focuses on the technical aspects of OS X and is so full of extremely useful
information and programming examples that it will definitely become a mandatory tool for every Mac OS
X programmer.
Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach
By
Amit Singh
...............................................
Publisher: Addison Wesley Professional
Pub Date: June 19, 2006
Print ISBN-10: 0-321-27854-2
Print ISBN-13: 978-0-32127854-8
Pages: 1680

Table of Contents
Copyright
Preface
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Chapter 1.

Origins of Mac OS X
Section 1.1.

Apple's Quest for the Operating System
Section 1.2.

The NeXT Chapter
Section 1.3.

The Mach Factor
Section 1.4.

Strategies
Section 1.5.

Toward Mac OS X
Chapter 2.

An Overview of Mac OS X
Section 2.1.

Firmware
Section 2.2.

Bootloader
Section 2.3.

Darwin
Section 2.4.

The xnu Kernel
Section 2.5.

A User-Space View of the File System
Section 2.6.

The Runtime Architecture
Section 2.7.

The C Library
Section 2.8.

Bundles and Frameworks
Section 2.9.

Core Services
Section 2.10.

Application Services
Section 2.11.

Application Environments
Section 2.12.

User Interface
Section 2.13.

Programming
Section 2.14.

Security
Section 2.15.

Mac OS X Server
Section 2.16.

Networking
Chapter 3.

Inside an Apple
Section 3.1.

The Power Mac G5
Section 3.2.

The G5: Lineage and Roadmap
Section 3.3.

The PowerPC 970FX
Section 3.4.

Software Conventions
Section 3.5.

Examples
Chapter 4.

The Firmware and the Bootloader
Section 4.1.

Introduction
Section 4.2.

A Whole New World
Section 4.3.

Power-On Reset
Section 4.4.

Open Firmware
Section 4.5.

Forth
Section 4.6.

The Device Tree
Section 4.7.

Open Firmware Interfaces
Section 4.8.

Programming Examples
Section 4.9.

Firmware Boot Sequence
Section 4.10.

BootX
Section 4.11.

Alternate Booting Scenarios
Section 4.12.

Firmware Security
Section 4.13.

Launching the Kernel
Section 4.14.

The BootCache Optimization
Section 4.15.

Boot-Time Kernel Arguments
Section 4.16.

The Extensible Firmware Interface
Chapter 5.

Kernel and User-Level Startup
Section 5.1.

Arranging for the Kernel to Execute
Section 5.2.

Low-Level Processor Initialization
Section 5.3.

High-Level Processor Initialization
Section 5.4.

Mach Subsystem Initialization
Section 5.5.

The First Thread
Section 5.6.

I/O Kit Initialization
Section 5.7.

BSD Initialization
Section 5.8.

Launching the First User-Space Program
Section 5.9.

Slave Processors
Section 5.10.

User-Level Startup
Chapter 6.

The xnu Kernel
Section 6.1.

xnu Source
Section 6.2.

Mach
Section 6.3.

A Flavor of the Mach APIs
Section 6.4.

Entering the Kernel
Section 6.5.

Exception Processing
Section 6.6.

System Call Processing
Section 6.7.

System Call Categories
Section 6.8.

Kernel Support for Debugging, Diagnostics, and Tracing
Section 6.9.

Virtual Machine Monitor
Section 6.10.

Compiling the Kernel
Chapter 7.

Processes
Section 7.1.

Processes: From Early UNIX to Mac OS X
Section 7.2.

Mach Abstractions, Data Structures, and APIs
Section 7.3.

Many Threads of a New System
Section 7.4.

Scheduling
Section 7.5.

The execve() System Call
Section 7.6.

Launching Applications
Chapter 8.

Memory
Section 8.1.

Looking Back
Section 8.2.

An Overview of Mac OS X Memory Management
Section 8.3.

Mach VM
Section 8.4.

Resident Memory
Section 8.5.

Virtual Memory Initialization during Bootstrap
Section 8.6.

The Mach VM User-Space Interface
Section 8.7.

Using the Mach VM Interfaces
Section 8.8.

Kernel and User Address Space Layouts
Section 8.9.

Universal Page Lists (UPLs)
Section 8.10.

Unified Buffer Cache (UBC)
Section 8.11.

The Dynamic Pager Program
Section 8.12.

The Update Daemon
Section 8.13.

System Shared Memory
Section 8.14.

Task Working Set Detection and Maintenance
Section 8.15.

Memory Allocation in User Space
Section 8.16.

Memory Allocation in the Kernel
Section 8.17.

Memory-Mapped Files
Section 8.18.

64-bit Computing
Chapter 9.

Interprocess Communication
Section 9.1.

Introduction
Section 9.2.

Mach IPC: An Overview
Section 9.3.

Mach IPC: The Mac OS X Implementation
Section 9.4.

Name and Bootstrap Servers
Section 9.5.

Using Mach IPC
Section 9.6.

MIG