Structure of a Daemon

Structure of a Daemon
Daemons typically have the same structure, regardless of their functionality. A daemon starts off by initializing its variables. It then sets its IPC interface up, which could simply be signal handlers. The daemon then executes its body, which is almost always an infinite loop.

Most daemons start off by forking. Forking is a method that allows a process to clone itself, creating an identical child. A daemon, as a parent process, usually forks off and terminates (or dies), while its child is left executing the main loop. The child is usually called an orphan process. In Unixes, orphan processes are automatically adopted by the "init" process, and this action is known as re-parenting.

For a more practical approach, the following sections dissect the two previously mentioned daemons. Links to their sources are found at the end of the tutorial

How Daemons can be used

How Daemons can be used

 Daemons usually handle tasks that require no user intervention, and consume low CPU power. CPU-intensive background tasks are not typically termed daemons, as bringing down computers to a sluggish performance can be hardly satisfying for any user, but decreasing the priority of these tasks can qualify them for that without sacrificing their performance, since CPUs are normally idle more than 90% of their time.

A daemon usually handles a single task, and accepts commands through means of IPC (Inter-Process Communication), which you will be briefly exposed to in this tutorial. Tasks handled by daemons include serving web pages, transferring emails, caching name service requests, logging, and for the purposes of this site, serving game clients.

Daemon game servers handle incoming game requests through a network, process these requests, update its persistent storage (database or flat files), and finally sends back responses to the clients. A major issue with game servers, among other servers, is that clients cannot be trusted, since a modified or reverse engineered version of the client can wreck havoc if the server is not ready to handle it. This enforces that clients should not keep a copy of the current game data, they should only send actions, not states, to the server, which would in turn validate those actions, and update the game status.

What is daemon

Every multitasking operating system supports a special type of process, a process that is usually kept a lower priority, performing a specific task over and over. Those processes are kept out of sight, performing their function in the background, without any direct intervention by the user. In the Unix operating system terminology, among other operating systems as well, background processes are called daemons.

This tutorial will introduce you to daemon programming. You will first write a simple BASH script daemon, just to get a grip on what daemons are, and what they are capable of, only to move on to coding your first daemon in C. Daemons can be easily created under GNU/Linux, they mostly follow a specific convention. To begin coding your first daemon, you will need to find a use for it. Daemons can handle many tasks that could otherwise bother users and affect their productivity, which brings us to t

Ways Linux can swich from Kernel Space to User Space

Ways  Linux can swich from  Kernel Space to User Space?

Linux can switch from kernel Space to User space:-
1) process in kernel mode is preempted.
2) After completion  of Interrupt handler / System call

Ways Linux can swich from User Space to Kernel Space

Ways  Linux can swich from User Space to Kernel Space

There are 2 situations when Linux can switch from user Spaceto Kernel Space:-
1) by doing System calls
2) When interrupt comes (to handle interrupt)

insmod & rmmod in Linux Device Drivers?

What heppens when insmod & rmmod in Linux Device Drivers ?

At time of insmod required o's brings in ram or updated the kernel with the 
perticular device driver. At the time of rmmod removes the o's by kmod 
it kills the process and refresh the kernel.
 

Information linux driver modules (.ko )files has ?

What Information does linux driver modules (.ko )files has ?
kernel 2.6 introduces a new file naming convention: kernel modules now have a .ko extension (in place of the old .o extension) which easily distinguishes them from conventional object files. The reason for this is that they contain an additional .modinfo section that where additional information about the module is kept. Linux program modpost can be used to convert .o files into .ko files.

What is Device driver?

What is Device driver?
A device driver is a code that performs device control operations specific to the device being addressed.It is software layer that lies between applications and the actual device.
or
A more formal definition would be Device drivers are distinct black boxes that make a particular piece of hardware respond to a well defined internal programming interface.
or
Device Driver lies between the Hardware & operating system.Through this layer only all the request/response between the OS & H/w are happening.  

In Java hashtable vs hashmaps difference

This question oftenly asked in interview to check whether candidate understand correct usage of collection classes and aware of alternative solutions available.

1. The HashMap class is roughly equivalent to Hashtable, except that it is non synchronized and permits nulls. (HashMap allows null values as key and value whereas Hashtable doesn't allow nulls).

2. HashMap does not guarantee that the order of the map will remain constant over time.

3. HashMap is non synchronized whereas Hashtable is synchronized.

4. Iterator in the HashMap is  fail-fast  while the enumerator for the Hashtable is not and throw ConcurrentModificationException if any other Thread modifies the map structurally  by adding or removing any element except Iterator's own remove()  method. But this is not a guaranteed behavior and will be done by JVM on best effort.

Note on Some Important Terms

1)Synchronized means only one thread can modify a hash table at one point of time. Basically, it means that any thread before performing an update on a hashtable will have to acquire a lock on the object while others will wait for lock to be released.

2)Fail-safe is relevant from the context of iterators. If an iterator has been created on a collection object and some other thread tries to modify the collection object "structurally", a concurrent modification exception wjavascript:void(0)ill be thrown. It is possible for other threads though to invoke "set" method since it doesn't modify the collection "structurally". However, if prior to calling "set", the collection has been modified structurally, "IllegalArgumentException" will be thrown.

3)Structurally modification means deleting or inserting element which could effectively change the structure of map.

HashMap can be synchronized by

Map m = Collections.synchronizeMap(hashMap);

Hope this will be useful.