Book Image

GNU/Linux Rapid Embedded Programming

By : Rodolfo Giometti
Book Image

GNU/Linux Rapid Embedded Programming

By: Rodolfo Giometti

Overview of this book

Embedded computers have become very complex in the last few years and developers need to easily manage them by focusing on how to solve a problem without wasting time in finding supported peripherals or learning how to manage them. The main challenge with experienced embedded programmers and engineers is really how long it takes to turn an idea into reality, and we show you exactly how to do it. This book shows how to interact with external environments through specific peripherals used in the industry. We will use the latest Linux kernel release 4.4.x and Debian/Ubuntu distributions (with embedded distributions like OpenWrt and Yocto). The book will present popular boards in the industry that are user-friendly to base the rest of the projects on - BeagleBone Black, SAMA5D3 Xplained, Wandboard and system-on-chip manufacturers. Readers will be able to take their first steps in programming the embedded platforms, using C, Bash, and Python/PHP languages in order to get access to the external peripherals. More about using and programming device driver and accessing the peripherals will be covered to lay a strong foundation. The readers will learn how to read/write data from/to the external environment by using both C programs or a scripting language (Bash/PHP/Python) and how to configure a device driver for a specific hardware. After finishing this book, the readers will be able to gain a good knowledge level and understanding of writing, configuring, and managing drivers, controlling and monitoring applications with the help of efficient/quick programming and will be able to apply these skills into real-world projects.
Table of Contents (26 chapters)
GNU/Linux Rapid Embedded Programming
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

The Ethernet devices in Linux


As already stated earlier, in a GNU/Linux system, Ethernet devices are usually called eth0, eth1, and so on, even if some exceptions may exist. In fact, as we already saw in Chapter 1 , Installing the Developing System , a virtual Ethernet connection (that is, an Ethernet port emulated over a USB connection) is called usb0, usb1, and so on. Also, in Chapter 7Serial Ports and TTY Devices - TTY, Managing TTY into the Kernel with SLIP, we found that SLIP devices are called sl0, sl1, and so on.

Note

Other examples can be found in The Linux Documentation Project at:  http://www.tldp.org/LDP/nag2/x-087-2-hwconfig.tour.html .

Another example of special naming can be the ones created by USB Ethernet adapters like the one shown here:

If we try to connect one of these devices to our host PC, we should get something similar to the following kernel messages:

New USB device found, idVendor=0b95, idProduct=7720
New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
Product...