Book Image

Linux Kernel Programming

By : Kaiwan N. Billimoria
Book Image

Linux Kernel Programming

By: Kaiwan N. Billimoria

Overview of this book

Linux Kernel Programming is a comprehensive introduction for those new to Linux kernel and module development. This easy-to-follow guide will have you up and running with writing kernel code in next-to-no time. This book uses the latest 5.4 Long-Term Support (LTS) Linux kernel, which will be maintained from November 2019 through to December 2025. By working with the 5.4 LTS kernel throughout the book, you can be confident that your knowledge will continue to be valid for years to come. You’ll start the journey by learning how to build the kernel from the source. Next, you’ll write your first kernel module using the powerful Loadable Kernel Module (LKM) framework. The following chapters will cover key kernel internals topics including Linux kernel architecture, memory management, and CPU scheduling. During the course of this book, you’ll delve into the fairly complex topic of concurrency within the kernel, understand the issues it can cause, and learn how they can be addressed with various locking technologies (mutexes, spinlocks, atomic, and refcount operators). You’ll also benefit from more advanced material on cache effects, a primer on lock-free techniques within the kernel, deadlock avoidance (with lockdep), and kernel lock debugging techniques. By the end of this kernel book, you’ll have a detailed understanding of the fundamentals of writing Linux kernel module code for real-world projects and products.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
1
Section 1: The Basics
6
Writing Your First Kernel Module - LKMs Part 2
7
Section 2: Understanding and Working with the Kernel
10
Kernel Memory Allocation for Module Authors - Part 1
11
Kernel Memory Allocation for Module Authors - Part 2
14
Section 3: Delving Deeper
17
About Packt

Attempt 4  – cross-compiling our kernel module

So, now that we understand the issue, there are two possible solutions:

  • We must use the required custom configured kernel for the product and build all our kernel modules against it.
  • Alternatively, we could rebuild the kernel module to match the current kernel the device happens to be running.

Now, in typical embedded Linux projects, you will almost certainly have a custom configured kernel for the target device, one that you must work with. All kernel modules for the product will/must be built against it. Thus, we follow the first approach – we must boot the device with our custom configured and built (5.4!) kernel, and since our kernel module is built against it, it should certainly work now.

We (briefly) covered the kernel build for the Raspberry Pi in Chapter 3, Building the 5.x Linux Kernel from Source - Part 2. Refer back there for the details if required.

Okay, I will have to assume that you've followed...