Chapter 13. Kernel (Topic 1.105)

In the early days of personal computing, operating systems were simple interfaces, designed to provide access to a rudimentary filesystem and to launch programs. Once a program was running, it had full control of the system. This made the system simple but also contributed to instability, because a single program failure could cause the entire system to crash. To run a computer in an organized and reliable fashion, it is important to isolate physical hardware resources from the software running on the system. In Linux, the kernel is the core software that owns and manages your system. It controls hardware, memory, and process scheduling and provides an interface for programs to indirectly access hardware resources.

This Topic on the Linux kernel has two Objectives:

Objective 1: Manage/Query Kernel and Kernel Modules at Runtime

This Objectives states that candidates should be able to manage and query a kernel and its loadable modules. This Objective includes using command-line utilities to get information about a running kernel and kernel modules. It also includes manually loading and unloading modules as appropriate. In addition, a candidate should be able to determine what parameters a module accepts. Weight: 4.

Objective 2: Reconfigure, Build, and Install a Custom Kernel and Kernel Modules

A candidate should be able to customize, build, and install a kernel and kernel modules from source. This Objective includes customizing the current kernel configuration, building a new kernel, and building kernel modules as appropriate. It also includes installing the new kernel and modules and ensuring that the boot manager can locate the new kernel and associated files. Weight: 3.