Book Image

Linux Device Driver Development Cookbook

By : Rodolfo Giometti
Book Image

Linux Device Driver Development Cookbook

By: Rodolfo Giometti

Overview of this book

Linux is a unified kernel that is widely used to develop embedded systems. As Linux has turned out to be one of the most popular operating systems worldwide, the interest in developing proprietary device drivers has also increased. Device drivers play a critical role in how the system performs and ensure that the device works in the manner intended. By exploring several examples on the development of character devices, the technique of managing a device tree, and how to use other kernel internals, such as interrupts, kernel timers, and wait queue, you’ll be able to add proper management for custom peripherals to your embedded system. You’ll begin by installing the Linux kernel and then configuring it. Once you have installed the system, you will learn to use different kernel features and character drivers. You will also cover interrupts in-depth and understand how you can manage them. Later, you will explore the kernel internals required for developing applications. As you approach the concluding chapters, you will learn to implement advanced character drivers and also discover how to write important Linux device drivers. By the end of this book, you will be equipped with the skills you need to write a custom character driver and kernel code according to your requirements.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
10
Additional Information: Managing Interrupts and Concurrency

Using the device tree compiler and utilities

We need proper tools to convert our code into a binary format that Linux can understand. Specifically, we need a way to convert a device tree source (DTS) file into its binary form: device tree binary (DTB).

In this recipe, we'll discover how to install the device tree compiler (dtc) on our system and how we can use it to generate the binary for any device tree.

Getting ready

To convert a DTS file into a DTB one we have to use the device tree compiler (named dtc) and a set of proper tools we can use to inspect or manipulate DTB files (device tree utilities).

Every recent Linux release has its own copy of the dtc program in the linux/scripts/dtc directory, which is used during...