Book Image

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

By : Kaiwan N. Billimoria
Book Image

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

By: Kaiwan N. Billimoria

Overview of this book

Linux Kernel Programming Part 2 - Char Device Drivers and Kernel Synchronization is an ideal companion guide to the Linux Kernel Programming book. This book provides a comprehensive introduction for those new to Linux device driver development and will have you up and running with writing misc class character device driver code (on the 5.4 LTS Linux kernel) in next to no time. You'll begin by learning how to write a simple and complete misc class character driver before interfacing your driver with user-mode processes via procfs, sysfs, debugfs, netlink sockets, and ioctl. You'll then find out how to work with hardware I/O memory. The book covers working with hardware interrupts in depth and helps you understand interrupt request (IRQ) allocation, threaded IRQ handlers, tasklets, and softirqs. You'll also explore the practical usage of useful kernel mechanisms, setting up delays, timers, kernel threads, and workqueues. Finally, you'll discover how to deal with the complexity of kernel synchronization with locking technologies (mutexes, spinlocks, and atomic/refcount operators), including more advanced topics such as cache effects, a primer on lock-free techniques, deadlock avoidance (with lockdep), and kernel lock debugging techniques. By the end of this Linux kernel book, you'll have learned the fundamentals of writing Linux character device driver code for real-world projects and products.
Table of Contents (11 chapters)
1
Section 1: Character Device Driver Basics
3
User-Kernel Communication Pathways
5
Handling Hardware Interrupts
6
Working with Kernel Timers, Threads, and Workqueues
7
Section 2: Delving Deeper

IRQ allocation the modern way the managed interrupt facility

Many modern drivers employ the kernel's devres or managed APIs framework for various purposes. The managed APIs in modern Linux kernels give you the advantage of not having to worry about freeing up resources that you've allocated (we have covered a few of them already, including devm_k{m,z}alloc() and devm_ioremap{_resource}()). Of course, you must use them appropriately, typically in the probe method (or init code) of the driver.

It is recommended that, when writing drivers, you use this newer API style. Here, we'll show how you to employ the devm_request_irq() API in order to allocate (register) your hardware interrupt. Its signature is as follows:

#include <linux/interrupt.h>

int __must_check
devm_request_irq(struct device *dev, unsigned int irq, irq_handler_t handler,
unsigned long irqflags, const char *devname, void *dev_id);

The first parameter is the...