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Linux Device Drivers Development
Linux Device Drivers Development

Linux Device Drivers Development: Develop customized drivers for embedded Linux

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Linux Device Drivers Development

Device Driver Basis

A driver is a piece of software whose aim is to control and manage a particular hardware device, hence the name device driver. From an operating system point of view, it can be either in the kernel space (running in privileged mode) or in the user space (with lower privileges). This book only deals with kernel space drivers, especially Linux kernel drivers. Our definition is that a device driver exposes the functionality of the hardware to user programs.

This book's aim is not to teach you how to become a Linux guru—I'm not even one at all—but there are some concepts you should understand prior to writing a device driver. C programming skills are mandatory; you should be at least familiar with pointers. You should also be familiar with some of the manipulating functions. Some hardware skills are required too. So, this chapter essentially...

User space and kernel space

The concepts of kernel space and user space are a bit abstract. It is all about memory and access rights. One may consider the kernel to be privileged, whereas the user apps are restricted. It is a feature of a modern CPU, allowing it to operate either in privileged or unprivileged mode. This concept will be clearer to you in Chapter 11, Kernel Memory Management:

User space and kernel space

The preceding diagram introduces the separation between kernel and user space, and highlights the fact that system calls represent the bridge between them (we discuss this later in this chapter). We can describe each space as follows:

  • Kernel space: This is a set of addresses where the kernel is hosted and where it runs. Kernel memory (or kernel space) is a memory range, owned by the kernel, protected by access flags, preventing any user apps from messing with the...

Driver skeletons

Let's consider the following helloworld module. It will be the basis for our work during the rest of this chapter:

helloworld.c

#include <linux/init.h> 
#include <linux/module.h> 
#include <linux/kernel.h> 
 
static int __init helloworld_init(void) { 
    pr_info("Hello world!\n"); 
    return 0; 
} 
 
static void __exit helloworld_exit(void) { 
    pr_info("End of the world\n"); 
} 
 
module_init(helloworld_init); 
module_exit(helloworld_exit); 
MODULE_AUTHOR("John Madieu <john.madieu@gmail.com>"); 
MODULE_LICENSE("GPL"); 

Module entry and exit point

Kernel drivers all have entry and exit points: the former corresponds to the function called...

Errors and message printing

Error codes are interpreted either by the kernel or by the user space application (through the errno variable). Error handling is very important in software development, more than it is in kernel development. Fortunately, the kernel provides a couple of errors that cover almost every error you'll encounter, and sometimes you will need to print them out in order to help you debug.

Error handling

Return the wrong error code for a given error and it will result in either the kernel or user space app producing unwanted behavior and making a wrong decision. To keep things clear, there are predefined errors in the kernel tree that cover almost every case you may face. Some of the errors (with their...

Module parameters

As a user program does, a kernel module can accept arguments from the command line. This allows dynamically changing the behavior of the module according to given parameters, and can help the developer not having to indefinitely change/compile the module during a test/debug session. In order to set this up, you should first declare the variables that will hold the values of command line arguments, and use the module_param() macro on each of these. The macro is defined in include/linux/moduleparam.h (this should be included in the code too: #include <linux/moduleparam.h>), shown as follows:

module_param(name, type, perm); 

This macro contains the following elements:

  • name: The name of the variable used as the parameter
  • type: The parameter's type (bool, charp, byte, short, ushort, int, uint, long, ulong), where charp stands for char pointer
  • perm: This...

Building your first module

There are two places to build a module. It depends on whether you want people to enable the module by themselves or not using the kernel config interface.

The module's makefile

A makefile is a special file used to execute a set of actions, among which the most important is the compilation of programs. There is a dedicated tool to parse makefiles, called make. Prior to jumping to the description of the whole make file, let's introduce the obj-<X> kbuild variable.

In almost every kernel makefile, you will see at least one instance of an obj<-X> variable. This actually corresponds to the obj-<X> pattern, where <X> should be either y, m, left blank, or n. This is used...

Summary

This chapter showed you the basics of driver development and explained the concept of modules/built-in devices, as well as their loading and unloading. Even if you are not able to interact with the user space, you are ready to write a complete driver, print a formatted message, and understand the concept of init/exit. The next chapter will deal with character devices, with which you will be able to target enhanced features, write code accessible from the user space, and have a significant impact on the system.

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Key benefits

  • Learn to develop customized Linux device drivers
  • Learn the core concepts of device drivers such as memory management, kernel caching, advanced IRQ management, and so on.
  • Practical experience on the embedded side of Linux

Description

Linux kernel is a complex, portable, modular and widely used piece of software, running on around 80% of servers and embedded systems in more than half of devices throughout the World. Device drivers play a critical role in how well a Linux system performs. As Linux has turned out to be one of the most popular operating systems used, the interest in developing proprietary device drivers is also increasing steadily. This book will initially help you understand the basics of drivers as well as prepare for the long journey through the Linux Kernel. This book then covers drivers development based on various Linux subsystems such as memory management, PWM, RTC, IIO, IRQ management, and so on. The book also offers a practical approach on direct memory access and network device drivers. By the end of this book, you will be comfortable with the concept of device driver development and will be in a position to write any device driver from scratch using the latest kernel version (v4.13 at the time of writing this book).

Who is this book for?

This book will help anyone who wants to get started with developing their own Linux device drivers for embedded systems. Embedded Linux users will benefit highly from this book. This book covers all about device driver development, from char drivers to network device drivers to memory management.

What you will learn

  • • Use kernel facilities to develop powerful drivers
  • • Develop drivers for widely used I2C and SPI devices and use the regmap API
  • • Write and support devicetree from within your drivers
  • • Program advanced drivers for network and frame buffer devices
  • • Delve into the Linux irqdomain API and write interrupt controller drivers
  • • Enhance your skills with regulator and PWM frameworks
  • • Develop measurement system drivers with IIO framework
  • • Get the best from memory management and the DMA subsystem
  • • Access and manage GPIO subsystems and develop GPIO controller drivers
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Length: 586 pages
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Linux Device Drivers Development
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Mastering Embedded Linux Programming
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Table of Contents

22 Chapters
Introduction to Kernel Development Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Device Driver Basis Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Kernel Facilities and Helper Functions Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Character Device Drivers Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Platform Device Drivers Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
The Concept of Device Tree Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
I2C Client Drivers Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
SPI Device Drivers Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Regmap API – A Register Map Abstraction Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
IIO Framework Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Kernel Memory Management Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
DMA – Direct Memory Access Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
The Linux Device Model Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Pin Control and GPIO Subsystem Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
GPIO Controller Drivers – gpio_chip Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Advanced IRQ Management Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Input Devices Drivers Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
RTC Drivers Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
PWM Drivers Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Regulator Framework Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Framebuffer Drivers Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Network Interface Card Drivers Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

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5 star 56.7%
4 star 10%
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texier pierre-jean Oct 29, 2017
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
From Linux Kernel to network interface, this book covers a lot of interesting topics:- device-tree,- i2c drivers,- RTC drivers,- PWM drivers,- ...There is also a very good chapter which explain how to develop with the Linux IIO framework.Recommended for Embedded Linux Engineer !
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sandeep bhuyan Jul 04, 2018
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i love this book,we can get lot of information about Linux Driver Development
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Nguefack Nov 01, 2017
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
This book helped me a lot to find a solution to a business problem that we had ...The content is very well explained and simple to understand even for beginners ....The practical examples are really clear ..Very good Book...Rosty ....
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Electronics fan May 26, 2019
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Started this book not knowing anything about Linux device drivers, left this book knowing a bunch about Linux drivers.
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Daiane Dec 08, 2017
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
The first part of this book has a great introduction to the meanings and terms needed to become a linux developer. I think it does help a lot for the readers starting with Linux. The second part of the book has several important chapters describing the drivers and frameworks used nowadays in the source code.It's very easy to read and I like very much how text flows. I liked this book very much!
Amazon Verified review Amazon
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