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Linux Kernel Programming Part 2 - Char Device Drivers and Kernel Synchronization

You're reading from   Linux Kernel Programming Part 2 - Char Device Drivers and Kernel Synchronization Create user-kernel interfaces, work with peripheral I/O, and handle hardware interrupts

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Product type Paperback
Published in Mar 2021
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781801079518
Length 452 pages
Edition 1st Edition
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Author (1):
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Kaiwan N. Billimoria Kaiwan N. Billimoria
Author Profile Icon Kaiwan N. Billimoria
Kaiwan N. Billimoria
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Table of Contents (11) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Section 1: Character Device Driver Basics
2. Writing a Simple misc Character Device Driver FREE CHAPTER 3. User-Kernel Communication Pathways 4. Working with Hardware I/O Memory 5. Handling Hardware Interrupts 6. Working with Kernel Timers, Threads, and Workqueues 7. Section 2: Delving Deeper
8. Kernel Synchronization - Part 1 9. Kernel Synchronization - Part 2 10. Other Books You May Enjoy

Freeing the IRQ line

Conversely, when the driver is being unloaded or the device is being detached, the remove() (or disconnect()) method is the right place where you should call the converse routine – free_irq() – to free the IRQ line back to the kernel:

void *free_irq(unsigned int, void *);

The first parameter to free_irq() is the IRQ line to free back to the kernel. The second parameter is, again, the same value that's passed to the interrupt handler (via the last parameter to request_irq()), so you must typically populate it with either the device structure pointer (which embeds your driver's context or private data structure) or the THIS_MODULE macro.

The return value is the device name argument that you passed as the fourth parameter of the request_irq() routine (yes, it's a string) on success and NULL on failure.

It's important that you, as the driver author, take...

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