- The Linux Kernel documentation¶
- Working with the development community¶
- Internal API manuals¶
- Development tools and processes¶
- User-oriented documentation¶
- Firmware-related documentation¶
- Architecture-specific documentation¶
- Other documentation¶
- The Linux Kernel documentation¶
- Working with the development community¶
- Internal API manuals¶
- Development tools and processes¶
- User-oriented documentation¶
- Firmware-related documentation¶
- Architecture-specific documentation¶
- Other documentation¶
- The Linux kernel user’s and administrator’s guide¶
- The Linux kernel user’s and administrator’s guide¶
The Linux Kernel documentation¶
This is the top level of the kernel’s documentation tree. Kernel documentation, like the kernel itself, is very much a work in progress; that is especially true as we work to integrate our many scattered documents into a coherent whole. Please note that improvements to the documentation are welcome; join the linux-doc list at vger.kernel.org if you want to help out.
Working with the development community¶
The essential guides for interacting with the kernel’s development community and getting your work upstream.
Internal API manuals¶
Manuals for use by developers working to interface with the rest of the kernel.
Development tools and processes¶
Various other manuals with useful information for all kernel developers.
User-oriented documentation¶
The following manuals are written for users of the kernel — those who are trying to get it to work optimally on a given system and application developers seeking information on the kernel’s user-space APIs.
See also: the Linux man pages, which are kept separately from the kernel’s own documentation.
Firmware-related documentation¶
The following holds information on the kernel’s expectations regarding the platform firmwares.
Architecture-specific documentation¶
- CPU Architectures
- ARC architecture
- ARM Architecture
- ARM64 Architecture
- IA-64 Architecture
- LoongArch Architecture
- m68k Architecture
- MIPS-specific Documentation
- Nios II Specific Documentation
- OpenRISC Architecture
- PA-RISC Architecture
- powerpc
- RISC-V architecture
- s390 Architecture
- SuperH Interfaces Guide
- Sparc Architecture
- x86-specific Documentation
- Xtensa Architecture
Other documentation¶
There are several unsorted documents that don’t seem to fit on other parts of the documentation body, or may require some adjustments and/or conversion to ReStructured Text format, or are simply too old.
The Linux Kernel documentation¶
This is the top level of the kernel’s documentation tree. Kernel documentation, like the kernel itself, is very much a work in progress; that is especially true as we work to integrate our many scattered documents into a coherent whole. Please note that improvements to the documentation are welcome; join the linux-doc list at vger.kernel.org if you want to help out.
Working with the development community¶
The essential guides for interacting with the kernel’s development community and getting your work upstream.
Internal API manuals¶
Manuals for use by developers working to interface with the rest of the kernel.
Development tools and processes¶
Various other manuals with useful information for all kernel developers.
User-oriented documentation¶
The following manuals are written for users of the kernel — those who are trying to get it to work optimally on a given system and application developers seeking information on the kernel’s user-space APIs.
See also: the Linux man pages, which are kept separately from the kernel’s own documentation.
Firmware-related documentation¶
The following holds information on the kernel’s expectations regarding the platform firmwares.
Architecture-specific documentation¶
- CPU Architectures
- ARC architecture
- ARM Architecture
- ARM64 Architecture
- IA-64 Architecture
- LoongArch Architecture
- m68k Architecture
- MIPS-specific Documentation
- Nios II Specific Documentation
- OpenRISC Architecture
- PA-RISC Architecture
- powerpc
- RISC-V architecture
- s390 Architecture
- SuperH Interfaces Guide
- Sparc Architecture
- x86-specific Documentation
- Xtensa Architecture
Other documentation¶
There are several unsorted documents that don’t seem to fit on other parts of the documentation body, or may require some adjustments and/or conversion to ReStructured Text format, or are simply too old.
The Linux kernel user’s and administrator’s guide¶
The following is a collection of user-oriented documents that have been added to the kernel over time. There is, as yet, little overall order or organization here — this material was not written to be a single, coherent document! With luck things will improve quickly over time.
This initial section contains overall information, including the README file describing the kernel as a whole, documentation on kernel parameters, etc.
- Linux kernel release 6.x
- The kernel’s command-line parameters
- Linux allocated devices (4.x+ version)
- Documentation for /proc/sys
- Linux ABI description
- Feature status on all architectures
This section describes CPU vulnerabilities and their mitigations.
Here is a set of documents aimed at users who are trying to track down problems and bugs in particular.
- Reporting issues
- Reporting regressions
- How to quickly build a trimmed Linux kernel
- Bug hunting
- Bisecting a bug
- Tainted kernels
- Ramoops oops/panic logger
- Dynamic debug
- Explaining the «No working init found.» boot hang message
- Documentation for Kdump — The kexec-based Crash Dumping Solution
- Performance monitor support
- pstore block oops/panic logger
This is the beginning of a section with information of interest to application developers. Documents covering various aspects of the kernel ABI will be found here.
This is the beginning of a section with information of interest to application developers and system integrators doing analysis of the Linux kernel for safety critical applications. Documents supporting analysis of kernel interactions with applications, and key kernel subsystems expectations will be found here.
The rest of this manual consists of various unordered guides on how to configure specific aspects of kernel behavior to your liking.
- ACPI Support
- ATA over Ethernet (AoE)
- Auxiliary Display Support
- A block layer cache (bcache)
- The Android binderfs Filesystem
- Kernel Support for miscellaneous Binary Formats (binfmt_misc)
- Block Devices
- Boot Configuration
- Linux Braille Console
- btmrvl driver
- Control Groups version 1
- Control Group v2
- CIFS
- Clearing WARN_ONCE
- CPU load
- How CPU topology info is exported via sysfs
- Dell Remote BIOS Update driver (dell_rbu)
- Device Mapper
- EDID
- The EFI Boot Stub
- ext4 General Information
- File system Monitoring with fanotify
- NFS
- gpio
- Notes on the change from 16-bit UIDs to 32-bit UIDs
- Hardware random number generators
- Using the initial RAM disk (initrd)
- I/O statistics fields
- Java(tm) Binary Kernel Support for Linux v1.03
- IBM’s Journaled File System (JFS) for Linux
- Reducing OS jitter due to per-cpu kthreads
- Laptop Drivers
- Parallel port LCD/Keypad Panel support
- LDM — Logical Disk Manager (Dynamic Disks)
- Softlockup detector and hardlockup detector (aka nmi_watchdog)
- Linux Security Module Usage
- RAID arrays
- Media subsystem admin and user guide
- Memory Management
- Kernel module signing facility
- Mono(tm) Binary Kernel Support for Linux
- Namespaces
- Numa policy hit/miss statistics
- Parport
- Perf events and tool security
- Power Management
- Linux Plug and Play Documentation
- RapidIO Subsystem Guide
- Reliability, Availability and Serviceability
- Real Time Clock (RTC) Drivers for Linux
- Linux Serial Console
- Video Mode Selection Support 2.13
- Syscall User Dispatch
- Linux Magic System Request Key Hacks
- Thermal Subsystem
- USB4 and Thunderbolt
- Using UFS
- Unicode support
- Software cursor for VGA
- Video Output Switcher Control
- The SGI XFS Filesystem
The Linux kernel user’s and administrator’s guide¶
The following is a collection of user-oriented documents that have been added to the kernel over time. There is, as yet, little overall order or organization here — this material was not written to be a single, coherent document! With luck things will improve quickly over time.
This initial section contains overall information, including the README file describing the kernel as a whole, documentation on kernel parameters, etc.
- Linux kernel release 6.x
- The kernel’s command-line parameters
- Linux allocated devices (4.x+ version)
- Documentation for /proc/sys
- Linux ABI description
- Feature status on all architectures
This section describes CPU vulnerabilities and their mitigations.
Here is a set of documents aimed at users who are trying to track down problems and bugs in particular.
- Reporting issues
- Reporting regressions
- How to quickly build a trimmed Linux kernel
- Bug hunting
- Bisecting a bug
- Tainted kernels
- Ramoops oops/panic logger
- Dynamic debug
- Explaining the «No working init found.» boot hang message
- Documentation for Kdump — The kexec-based Crash Dumping Solution
- Performance monitor support
- pstore block oops/panic logger
This is the beginning of a section with information of interest to application developers. Documents covering various aspects of the kernel ABI will be found here.
This is the beginning of a section with information of interest to application developers and system integrators doing analysis of the Linux kernel for safety critical applications. Documents supporting analysis of kernel interactions with applications, and key kernel subsystems expectations will be found here.
The rest of this manual consists of various unordered guides on how to configure specific aspects of kernel behavior to your liking.
- ACPI Support
- ATA over Ethernet (AoE)
- Auxiliary Display Support
- A block layer cache (bcache)
- The Android binderfs Filesystem
- Kernel Support for miscellaneous Binary Formats (binfmt_misc)
- Block Devices
- Boot Configuration
- Linux Braille Console
- btmrvl driver
- Control Groups version 1
- Control Group v2
- CIFS
- Clearing WARN_ONCE
- CPU load
- How CPU topology info is exported via sysfs
- Dell Remote BIOS Update driver (dell_rbu)
- Device Mapper
- EDID
- The EFI Boot Stub
- ext4 General Information
- File system Monitoring with fanotify
- NFS
- gpio
- Notes on the change from 16-bit UIDs to 32-bit UIDs
- Hardware random number generators
- Using the initial RAM disk (initrd)
- I/O statistics fields
- Java(tm) Binary Kernel Support for Linux v1.03
- IBM’s Journaled File System (JFS) for Linux
- Reducing OS jitter due to per-cpu kthreads
- Laptop Drivers
- Parallel port LCD/Keypad Panel support
- LDM — Logical Disk Manager (Dynamic Disks)
- Softlockup detector and hardlockup detector (aka nmi_watchdog)
- Linux Security Module Usage
- RAID arrays
- Media subsystem admin and user guide
- Memory Management
- Kernel module signing facility
- Mono(tm) Binary Kernel Support for Linux
- Namespaces
- Numa policy hit/miss statistics
- Parport
- Perf events and tool security
- Power Management
- Linux Plug and Play Documentation
- RapidIO Subsystem Guide
- Reliability, Availability and Serviceability
- Real Time Clock (RTC) Drivers for Linux
- Linux Serial Console
- Video Mode Selection Support 2.13
- Syscall User Dispatch
- Linux Magic System Request Key Hacks
- Thermal Subsystem
- USB4 and Thunderbolt
- Using UFS
- Unicode support
- Software cursor for VGA
- Video Output Switcher Control
- The SGI XFS Filesystem