How to create a system call for FreeBSD kernel

This is a short note on how to create a system call for FreeBSD.  First of all, assume that you already have a kernel function that you would like to call. Let gives a more complicate example than just hello world.

Handy unix commands for debugging

I spend most of my time in my job reading other peoples’ code or kernel source code than writing my own. These code can be scattered into many directories in multiple levels. I constantly have to do ‘find’ and ‘grep’ to trace variable and function names. Typing these commands manually can add up a lot of time.

Making the most of unix commands when programming (Part 1) – the ps command

With the use of unix commands not only can reduce programming effort, but also if we utilise the them even more, less code is needed. Less code means less bugs. The well known unix tools philosophy is to ‘do one thing and do it well’. All we need is to make the tool doing well for our programs. In this article, I will give some examples in C and Php.

PHP – print statement works differently on 32 bits and 64 bits platforms

Just notices a strange behaviour in PHP (4.3.4) print statement that acts differently on 32 bits and 64 bits platforms, both have the same OS.

The task was to report the time from the webserver side to the javascript on the client side.

Guidelines on integrating complex unix command lines into programs

Needless to say, the power of combining unix commands together can break any complicated tasks into challenging tricks. These commands are a great help in programming to offer great short cuts. Less code means less bugs. However, I have seen some code embedded with complex unix command lines used slightly to the extreme.