System Programming with C++

The Unix Operating System is written in C and this will probably not change soon. System Programming (i.e. all programming that interfaces with the machines ressources through system calls like open(), close(), socket(), pipe(), ...) on the other hand is done more often using C++. Developers benefit from the advantages of an object oriented language plus their frameworks like STL along with the power of having direct access to system calls. In other languages - like Java - access to OS ressources is always deeply encapsulated. C++ programmers want to create encapsulation themselves. The writer who writes a taylored http server, is not interested in talking to a black box every time, he opens a TCP/IP connection.

Literature

There are not as many books on C++ system programming as there are on system programming with C. I present a few very good books here. I tried to get a complete coverage of all sysprog topics, without having too many books, which tell about one and the same thing.

Richard Stevens "Unix Network Programming" has been a classic for many years. "Could you borrow me your Stevens, please?" is a phrase you hear quite often in developer labs. The book is good for Windows developers as well - not only because you can use Cygwin and "bypass" the Unix API - but also because lots of the System calls are industry standard (IEEE, POSIX). The book covers Berkely Sockets, System V Transport Layer Interface (TLI), many protocols and their implementation (RPC, telnet, rlogin, rmt, lpr)
Marc J. Rochkind's "Advanced Unix Programming" is another classic, covering File I/O, Terminal I/O, Interprocess Communication, processes (exec(), fork(), wait(), ... ). This is book is more Unix specific, but still more than half of what you read in this book is valid for Windows as well.
Practical Unix Programming is covering well Files, Timers, Threads (focusing on POSIX compliant threads), Thread Synchronisation, Client Server Processing, Remote Procedure Calls
Comer and Stevens wrote a series of three books on "Internetworking with TCP/IP". I am using Volume II and Volume III. Volume II (Design, Implmentation and Internals) tells about the concept of TCP/IP protocols. It gives details about the TCP finite state machine as well as about SNMP, multicasting, urgent data, ospf (routing protocol). This is not a real programmers book, it is exaplaining conceptually how network programming works, from client and server perspective and also from the operating systems perspective. A very good book. Volume III is more programming oriented. All aspects of client/server computing are covered with lots of details and examples and pracatical hints. It is a good follow up of Volume II. I assume Volume I is good as well, but I have not read it.
Again Richard Stevens. TCP/IP Illustrated Vol 1. shows detailed message charts and state transition charts of many network protocols. IP, UDP, TCP, NFS, FTP, TFTP, BOOTP, DNS, SMTP, Telnet, Rlogin Protocols are explained in detail. Broadcasting, multicasting, message flows etc are also covered.