Linux Capabilities and Namespaces Training

Course code: M7D-CAPNS01

• Course overview
• Course details
• Onsite and virtual onsite courses
• Public courses: upcoming dates, prices, and booking
• About the trainer
• Contact

Download Linux Capabilities and Namespaces course description (PDF)

Course overview

This course provides an in-depth exploration of Linux namespaces, which are used in a wide array of virtualization and sandboxing technologies such as Docker, LXC, Flatpak, Firejail, Systemd, and various web browsers. In addition, the course covers the Linux capabilities model, since an understanding of that model is essential to understanding the operation of user namespaces, which are a cornerstone of many of the aforementioned applications. Detailed presentations coupled with carefully designed practical exercises provide participants with the knowledge needed to understand, design, develop, and administer such applications.

• Courses are two days long and are delivered either live online, at a public training location, or on-site at customer premises. The course covers the following topics:
  
  
  • Classical privileged programs (set-UID and set-GID programs)
  • Capabilities
  • Namespaces (UTS, mount, network, IPC, PID, user, and cgroup namespaces)
  • User namespaces in detail
  
  A more detailed list of topics can be found here.
  
  
• The course includes extensive practical sessions.
  
  

Related courses

If you are interested in this course, you might also be interested in the following longer courses which cover a number of related topics, including control groups (cgroups) and seccomp:

• Linux Security and Isolation APIs (M7D-SECISOL02, 4 days)
• System Programming for Linux Containers (M7D-SPLC02, 5 days)

Course details

Course outline.

The course employs a lecture+lab format.

Audience and prerequisites

The primary audience comprises designers and programmers building privileged applications, container applications, and sandboxing applications. Systems administrators who are managing such applications are also likely to find the course of benefit.

In order to get the most out of the course, participants should have:

• At least a good reading knowledge of the C programming language.

• A knowledge of basic UNIX/Linux shell commands.

• A basic knowledge of make(1) is helpful, but not essential.

Note: knowledge of some fundamental Linux/UNIX system programming concepts (fork(), execve(), waitpid(), basics of programming with signals, the /proc filesystem) is assumed. Some background reading material on these topics will be sent to attendees before the course.

Lab sessions

A significant part of the course is spent on practical exercises. The lab sessions also provide participants with the opportunity to obtain one-to-one assistance from the trainer on the course material and exercises.

Course materials

Course participants receive course books of around 250 pages. The course books include all of the slides and exercises presented in the course.

The course book has been developed by the trainer, and is constantly updated based on ongoing changes in the Linux kernel, as well as practical teaching experience in courses.

In addition to the course book, participants receive a copy of The Linux Programming Interface, in ebook form.

The following samples give some idea of the course content and style of the course materials:

• Part of the User Namespaces course module.
• Part of the Capabilities course module.

Onsite and virtual onsite courses

For onsite and virtual onsite courses, please email training@man7.org regarding availability and pricing.

Public courses: upcoming dates, prices, and booking

Online courses in Europe timezones are normally timed around Berlin time, starting at 08:00, 08:30, or 09:00. Online courses in Americas timezones are normally timed around New York time, starting at 09:00 or 10:00. Depending on the length of breaks, classes typically run for 8 to 8.5 hours per day.

For public online courses, the per-attendee price is €1500 reduced to €1400 when booked (and either paid or a company purchase order is supplied) at least 4 weeks before the start of the course. (In addition, 19% German VAT is charged for participants attending from German locations; 19% German VAT is also applicable for private attendees in any location in the European Union without a VAT ID.)

Currently (and for the foreseeable future), public versions of this course are delivered only in online format.

Discounts are available for multiple attendees from the same company or organization; please inquire at training@man7.org for details.

About the trainer

Michael Kerrisk has a unique set of qualifications and experience that ensure that course participants receive training of a very high standard:

• He has been programming on UNIX systems since 1987 and began teaching UNIX system programming courses in 1989.
• He is the author of The Linux Programming Interface, a 1550-page book widely acclaimed as the definitive work on Linux system programming.
• He is actively involved in Linux development—working with kernel developers on testing, review, and design of new Linux kernel-user-space APIs.
• From 2004 to 2021, he was the maintainer of the Linux man-pages project, which provides the manual pages documenting the Linux kernel-user-space and GNU C library APIs.

For more information about the trainer, as well as many reasons why you might want to consider choosing man7.org training courses, please see reasons to choose man7.org training,

Contact

For further inquiries about the course, please get in contact via one of the following methods:

• Email: training@man7.org
• Phone: +49 (89) 2155 2990 (German landline)

Mailing list

If you would like to be added to a mailing list to receive notifications of public training courses that are scheduled in the future, send a mail (noting your location) to training@man7.org.