Reporting an Error

Should you find an error in Advanced Linux Programming that is not already listed here, please send mail to [email protected].

Errata for Advanced Linux Programming

• page iv (publication information)

  Due to an oversight in production, an incorrect copyright notice was included. The copyright notice should read:

  Advanced Linux Programming
  
  FIRST EDITION: June, 2001
  
  Copyright © 2001 by New Riders Publishing. This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, Version 1, no options exercised. (The latest version of this license is available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/).

• page xx

  The term "GNU/Linux" is misspelled as "GNU/Liux."

• page 6

  In Listing 1.1, add #include <stdlib.h> since atoi is used.

• page 8

  The first paragraph of Section 1.2.2 should refer to reciprocal.cpp, not utilties.cpp.

• page 31

  In the third paragraph, the third sentence should read:

  You should still always check for invalid input and produce sensible error messages in response to such input.

  The words "to such" are missing in the book as printed.

• page 34

  In the code, the comment for case ENOENT should read PATH does not exist.

• page 38

  The first sentence in Section 2.3.2 should refer to an archive rather than a archive.

• page 38

  In the last sentence of the text, omitting the sidebar, the resulting object file is test1.o, not test.o.

• page 39

  In the first paragraph, the linker stops searching directories.

• page 41

  In the paragraph beginning with "Static libraries", modify "If decide to link" to "If you decide to link".

• page 41

  When linking statically, linking in the math library is also required. Thus, the compilation line becomes gcc -static -o tifftest tifftest.c -ltiff -ljpeg -lz -lm.

• page 43

  The indented line of code near the bottom of the page should refer to my_function, not foo.

• page 48

  In the first paragraph, the first technique has "considerable risks", not "considerably risks".

• page 53

  The word "it" in the last sentence of the second paragraph should instead be "is". In particular, the sentence should read:

  The default disposition for these signals is to terminate the process and produce a core file.

• page 57

  The word "is" in the last sentence should instead be "it." In particular, the sentence should read:

  Instead, when a child process terminates, it becomes a zombie process.

• page 60

  The code in clean_up_child_process would not work correctly if there were more than one child process. The Linux kernel will only call the signal handler once if two or more child processes terminate at almost the same time. Therefore, if there is may be more than one child process, the signal handler must repeatedly call waitpid (or one of the other related functions) with the WNOHANG option until waitpid returns zero.

• page 73

  In the first paragraph, the second argument is for pthread_key_create, not pthread_key_t. Thus, the pthread_key_create function takes two arguments: a pointer to a pthread_key_t variable and a cleanup function.

• page 98

  The example code for calling shmget should use S_IWUSR, not S_IWUSER. This write permission flag is spelled correctly throughout the rest of the page. For a list of available flags, see the section 2 stat man page.

• page 108

  In Listing 5.6, the function used to parse the string should be sscanf, not scanf.

• page 110

  The last sentence of section 5.4.1 should read:

  Data written to the file descriptor write_fd can be read back from read_fd.

  The identifiers write_fd and read_fd are swapped in the text as printed.

• page 117

  In section 5.5.2, the list of system calls should mention close, not closes.

• page 120

  In Listing 5.10, text should be checked for the quit message before it is freed. The consequent of the strcmp should be free (text); return 1. Its alternative should be free (text). The standalone free statement should be omitted.

• page 121

  In Listing 5.10, the client_name_len variable in the do-loop should be initialized to sizeof(client_name) before being passed to accept.

• page 121

  In Listing 5.10, the call to bind on the ninth line of this page should cast the second argument to a struct sockaddr *. That is, the bind call should be

  bind (socket_fd, (struct sockaddr *) &name, SUN_LEN (&name)).

  Similarly, on the nineteenth line, the second argument of accept should be cast:

  accept (socket_fd, (struct sockaddr *) &client_name, &client_name_len)

• page 122

  In Listing 5.11, the call to connect on the sixth line from the end should cast the second argument to a struct sockaddr *. That is, the connect call should be

  connect (socket_fd, (struct sockaddr *) &name, SUN_LEN (&name)).

• page 125

  In Listing 5.12, the call to connect on the second line should cast the second argument to a struct sockaddr *. That is, the connect call should be

  connect (socket_fd, (struct sockaddr *) &name, sizeof (struct sockaddr_in)).

• page 130

  The third line of the first full paragraph should omit the word "cause".

• page 132

  The sixth line of the first full paragraph should refer to "the character device", not the "the block device".

• page 133

  In the first footnote, the Windows device name should be LPT1, not LRP1.

• page 133

  In the second footnote, the ASCII code for a carriage return should be 13, not 14.

• page 149

  The check for whether or not the read failed should be:

  if (bytes_read == 0 || bytes_read != sizeof (buffer))

  Note that the operator for the second half of the conditional should be != rather than ==.

• page 171

  In the third paragraph, use F_SETLKW, not F_SETLCKW. This LK abbreviation differs from the LCK abbreviation in F_RDLCK and F_WRLCK.

• page 174

  The first sentence of the third paragraph of section 8.5 should end with "pointer to a struct rlimit", rather than "pointer to a structrlimit" as printed. Note the space between struct and rlimit.

• page 181

  The description of tv_nsec should read "tv_nsec, an additional number of nanoseconds" rather than "tv_nsec, an additional number of milliseconds."

• page 183

  The third parameter in the call to readlink should be sizeof (target_path) - 1 to allow for the terminating NUL character.

• page 185

  The file presented in Listing 8.11 should be named "itimer.c".

• page 186

  The sysinfo manual page describes struct sysinfo, not structsysinfo.

• page 188

  The file presented in Listing 8.11 should end with a ".c", i.e., "print-uname.c".

• page 191

  The assembly instructions shown corresponding to the asm should be:

  #APP
          mycool_asm %ecx, %edx
  #NOAPP
  

  reflecting the fact that foo and bar are in separate registers.

• page 206

  In the beginning of 10.4.1, the root process impersonates another user, not another process.

• page 212

  The prototype of the GNU extension getline function differs from that presented. To use the GNU extension, modify the code to

   char *username = NULL;
   size_t username_length = 0;
   ssize_t characters_read = getline (&username, &username_length, stdin);
   

  If the call fails, characters_read will be -1. Otherwise, username will point to a malloc-allocated buffer with username_length characters.

• page 224

  The third parameter in the call to readlink should be sizeof (link_target) - 1 to allow for the terminating NUL character.

• page 231

  The third parameter in the first call to write should be strlen (bad_request_response).

• page 241

  The error_page string should note a failure to open /etc/issue, not /proc/issue.

• page 245

  The comment above the get_group_name function should say "deallocate with free", not "allocate with free".

• page 286

  The first line inside the while loop is incorrect. It should read:

  size_t written = write (fd, buffer + count - left_to_write, left_to_write);