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Linux Device Driver Development

Linux Device Driver Development

By : John Madieu
4.5 (8)
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Linux Device Driver Development

Linux Device Driver Development

4.5 (8)
By: John Madieu

Overview of this book

Linux is by far the most-used kernel on embedded systems. Thanks to its subsystems, the Linux kernel supports almost all of the application fields in the industrial world. This updated second edition of Linux Device Driver Development is a comprehensive introduction to the Linux kernel world and the different subsystems that it is made of, and will be useful for embedded developers from any discipline. You'll learn how to configure, tailor, and build the Linux kernel. Filled with real-world examples, the book covers each of the most-used subsystems in the embedded domains such as GPIO, direct memory access, interrupt management, and I2C/SPI device drivers. This book will show you how Linux abstracts each device from a hardware point of view and how a device is bound to its driver(s). You’ll also see how interrupts are propagated in the system as the book covers the interrupt processing mechanisms in-depth and describes every kernel structure and API involved. This new edition also addresses how not to write device drivers using user space libraries for GPIO clients, I2C, and SPI drivers. By the end of this Linux book, you’ll be able to write device drivers for most of the embedded devices out there.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
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1
Section 1 -Linux Kernel Development Basics
6
Section 2 - Linux Kernel Platform Abstraction and Device Drivers
12
Section 3 - Making the Most out of Your Hardware
18
Section 4 - Misc Kernel Subsystems for the Embedded World

Chapter 4: Writing Character Device Drivers

Unix-based systems expose hardware to user space by means of special files, all created in the /dev directory upon device registration with the system. Programs willing to access a given device must locate its corresponding device file in /dev and perform the appropriate system call on it, which will be redirected to the driver of the underlying device associated with that special file. Though system calls redirection is done by an operating system, what system calls are supported depends on the type of device and the driver implementation.

On the topic of types of devices, there are many of them from a hardware point of view, which are, however, grouped into two families of special device files in /dev – these are block devices and character devices. They are differentiated by the way they are accessed, their speed, and the way data is transferred between them and the system. Typically, character devices are slow and transfer data...

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