Book Image

Mastering Embedded Linux Programming - Second Edition

By : Chris Simmonds
Book Image

Mastering Embedded Linux Programming - Second Edition

By: Chris Simmonds

Overview of this book

Embedded Linux runs many of the devices we use every day, from smart TVs to WiFi routers, test equipment to industrial controllers - all of them have Linux at their heart. Linux is a core technology in the implementation of the inter-connected world of the Internet of Things. The comprehensive guide shows you the technologies and techniques required to build Linux into embedded systems. You will begin by learning about the fundamental elements that underpin all embedded Linux projects: the toolchain, the bootloader, the kernel, and the root filesystem. You’ll see how to create each of these elements from scratch, and how to automate the process using Buildroot and the Yocto Project. Moving on, you’ll find out how to implement an effective storage strategy for flash memory chips, and how to install updates to the device remotely once it is deployed. You’ll also get to know the key aspects of writing code for embedded Linux, such as how to access hardware from applications, the implications of writing multi-threaded code, and techniques to manage memory in an efficient way. The final chapters show you how to debug your code, both in applications and in the Linux kernel, and how to profile the system so that you can look out for performance bottlenecks. By the end of the book, you will have a complete overview of the steps required to create a successful embedded Linux system.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)

Block devices

Block devices are also associated with a device node, which also has major and minor numbers.

Although character and block devices are identified using major and minor numbers, they are in different namespaces. A character driver with a major number 4 is in no way related to a block driver with a major number 4.

With block devices, the major number is used to identify the device driver and the minor number is used to identify the partition. Let's look at the MMC driver on the BeagleBone Black as an example:

# ls -l /dev/mmcblk*
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 179, 0 Jan 1 2000 /dev/mmcblk0
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 179, 1 Jan 1 2000 /dev/mmcblk0p1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 179, 2 Jan 1 2000 /dev/mmcblk0p2
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 179, 8 Jan 1 2000 /dev/mmcblk1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 179, 16 Jan 1 2000 /dev/mmcblk1boot0
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 179, 24 Jan 1 2000 /dev/mmcblk1boot1...