Best, a senior software engineer at IBM's Linux Technology in Austin, Texas, presents debugging techniques and tools to make programming for Linux operating system kernel and applications problems easier to solve. Each chapter focuses on a specific tool/ set of tools, and how to build and install such in the event that a particular Linux distribution does not supply that tool or its latest release. The guide includes helpful summary charts and Web resources for crash dumps, defined as "a reliable method of detecting, saving, and examining system problems."