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Foreword
Writing books is not a new experience for me. I’ve been doing it since the age of 10.
Most of these books gather proverbial dust on this or that hard disk, others are being
pampered for limelight, others yet have been abandoned. There’s no better place to
announce the demise of one project as at the birth of another. As you may have guessed,
my super-extensive mother-of-all Linux topics book is not going to be published any time
soon, as simple system administration no longer excites me. The single Apache chapter
remains a proof-of-concept poetic demonstration, an orphan of what might have been.
Instead, I have started casting my eye toward more advanced, more complex topics. Like
Linux crash analysis. This is a subject that has lots of unanswered mail threads and plain
text documents scattered all over the place, inaccessible to almost everyone, save the
tiny percentage of super geeks. Whether this should be so or not makes no difference.
There comes a need, there comes a man with an idea, and that man writes a book.
My personal and professional interest in the last three years has taken me down the path
of Linux kernel secrets, all the way into assembly code, where magic happens. I felt the
desire to learn what happens in the heart of the system. Like most technical topics, there
was some information to be found online, but it was cryptic, ambiguous, partial, nerdy,
or just not there at all. Dedoimedo is a reflection of how things ought to be after all.
I’m writing guides and tutorials and reviews the way I perceive the world - friendly and
accessible toward normal human beings. In a way, every article is an attempt to make
things a little clearer, a little more understandable. Step by step, nothing omitted, you
know the mantra.
Linux kernel crash is no exception. If you’re familiar with my website, you know this book
is just a compilation of seven in-depth tutorials already posted and available freely for
everyone’s use. But there’s a difference between some HTML code, scattered around,
and a beautiful stylish book written in L
A
T
E
X. Not much difference, I admit, but still
worth this fancy foreword.
This book is a product of several factors. First, my ego demands recognition, so I’m
making the best effort of appearing smart in the posh circles. Nothing like a book to
make you look wise and whatnot. Second, the book really makes sense, when you take
the entire crash series into consideration. Starting with crash tools via collection all the
way to analysis, plus some extras and general tips. It’s an entire world, really, and it
belongs inside a single, comprehensive volume. Third, half a dozen Dedoimedo readers
contacted me by mail, asking that I compile my crash material into one document. I did
hint at a possible PDF given popular demand, so here we go.
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