Linux/UNIX IPC Programming course outline

1. Course Introduction
2. IPC: Introduction and Overview
   • Categorizing IPC
   • Choosing an IPC mechanism
3. Fundamentals
   • Error handling
   • Notes on code examples
4. Pipes and FIFOs
   • Preamble: file descriptors and file descriptor duplication
   • Creating and using pipes
   • FIFOs
   • Connecting filters with pipes
5. Sockets: Introduction
   • Socket types and domains
   • Creating and binding a socket (socket() and bind())
   • Overview of stream sockets
   • listen() and pending connections
   • accept() and connect()
   • I/O on stream sockets
   • Overview of datagram sockets
   • I/O on datagram sockets
6. UNIX Domain Sockets
   • UNIX domain stream sockets
   • UNIX domain datagram sockets
   • Further details of UNIX domain sockets
7. UNIX Domain Sockets: Ancillary Data (*)
   • Ancillary message types
   • sendmsg(), recvmsg(), and struct msghdr
   • struct msghdr in more detail
   • Ancillary data and struct cmsghdr
   • Example: passing a file descriptor over a socket
8. Internet Domain Sockets
   • Internet domain sockets
   • Data-representation issues
   • Presentation-format addresses
   • Loopback and wildcard addresses
   • Internet domain stream sockets example
9. Internet Domain Sockets: Address Conversion
   • Host addresses and port numbers
   • Host and service conversion
   • Internet domain sockets example with getaddrinfo()
10. Sockets: Further Details
    • Socket shutdown (shutdown())
    • Socket options
    • TCP TIME-WAIT state and SO_REUSEADDR
11. Alternative I/O Models
    • Nonblocking I/O
    • Signal-driven I/O
    • I/O multiplexing: poll()
    • Event-loop programming
12. Alternative I/O Models: epoll
    • Problems with poll() and select()
    • The epoll API
    • epoll events
    • Performance considerations
    • Edge-triggered notification
    • epoll API quirks
13. eventfd
    • Overview of eventfd
    • eventfd operations
    • Semaphore semantics for eventfd
14. POSIX IPC
15. POSIX Semaphores
    • Named semaphores
    • Semaphore operations
    • Unnamed semaphores
16. POSIX Shared Memory
    • Overview
    • Creating and opening shared memory objects
    • Using shared memory objects
    • Synchronizing access to shared memory
17. POSIX Message Queues
    • Opening, closing, and unlinking a message queue
    • Message queue attributes
    • Sending and receiving messages
    • The mqueue filesystem
    • Message queue limits and defaults
    • Message notification (*)
    • Message notification via a signal (*)
    • Message notification via a thread (*)
18. Other IPC methods (*)
    • Pseudoterminals
    • File locks
    • Cross-memory attach
    • Shared file mappings

(*) Topics marked with an asterisk will be covered subject to time constraints.

Return to the course overview