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

Dynamically controlling debug_level via procfs

Let's answer the aforementioned question  how is it done in code? It's quite straightforward, really:

  1. First off, within the init code of the kernel module, we must create our procfs directory, naming it after the name of our kernel module:
static struct proc_dir_entry *gprocdir;
[...]
gprocdir = proc_mkdir(OURMODNAME, NULL);
  1. Again, within the init code of the kernel module, we must create the procfs file that controls the project's "debug level":
// ch2/procfs_simple_intf/procfs_simple_intf.c
[...]
#define PROC_FILE1 "llkdproc_debug_level"
#define PROC_FILE1_PERMS 0644
[...]
static int __init procfs_simple_intf_init(void)
{
int stat = 0;
[...]
/* 1. Create the PROC_FILE1 proc entry under the parent dir OURMODNAME;
* this will serve as the 'dynamically view/modify debug_level'
* (pseudo) file */
if (!proc_create(PROC_FILE1, PROC_FILE1_PERMS, gprocdir,
...