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

Finding the interrupts disabled worst-case time latency with Ftrace

Ftrace has a number of plugins (or tracers) that it works with. First, you need to ensure that the irqsoff latency tracer (or plugin of Ftrace) is actually enabled within the kernel. You can check this in two different ways:

  • Check the kernel config file (grep for CONFIG_IRQSOFF_TRACER within it).
  • Check the available tracers (or plugins) via Ftrace infrastructure.

We'll go with the latter option here:

$ sudo cat /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/available_tracers
hwlat blk mmiotrace function_graph wakeup_dl wakeup_rt wakeup function nop

In the preceding output, the irqsoff tracer – the one we require – is missing! This is usually the case and implies that you will have to configure the kernel (turning it on) and (re)build your custom 5.4 kernel. (This will be provided as an exercise in the Questions section at the end of this chapter.) We also recommend that...