|
|
The Linux Kernel Module Programming GuidePeter Jay SalzmanOri Pomerantz Copyright © 2001 Peter Jay Salzman 2003-04-04 ver 2.4.0 The Linux Kernel Module Programming Guide is a free book; you may reproduce and/or modify it under the terms of the Open Software License, version 1.1. You can obtain a copy of this license at http://opensource.org/licenses/osl.php. This book is distributed in the hope it will be useful, but without any warranty, without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. The author encourages wide distribution of this book for personal or commercial use, provided the above copyright notice remains intact and the method adheres to the provisions of the Open Software License. In summary, you may copy and distribute this book free of charge or for a profit. No explicit permission is required from the author for reproduction of this book in any medium, physical or electronic. Derivative works and translations of this document must be placed under the Open Software License, and the original copyright notice must remain intact. If you have contributed new material to this book, you must make the material and source code available for your revisions. Please make revisions and updates available directly to the document maintainer, Peter Jay Salzman <p@dirac.org>. This will allow for the merging of updates and provide consistent revisions to the Linux community. If you publish or distribute this book commercially, donations, royalties, and/or printed copies are greatly appreciated by the author and the Linux Documentation Project (LDP). Contributing in this way shows your support for free software and the LDP. If you have questions or comments, please contact the address above.
Foreword1. AcknowledgementsOri Pomerantz would like to thank Yoav Weiss for many helpful ideas and discussions, as well as finding mistakes within this document before its publication. Ori would also like to thank Frodo Looijaard from the Netherlands, Stephen Judd from New Zealand, Magnus Ahltorp from Sweeden and Emmanuel Papirakis from Quebec, Canada. I'd like to thank Ori Pomerantz for authoring this guide in the first place and then letting me maintain it. It was a tremendous effort on his part. I hope he likes what I've done with this document. I would also like to thank Jeff Newmiller and Rhonda Bailey for teaching me. They've been patient with me and lent me their experience, regardless of how busy they were. David Porter had the unenviable job of helping convert the original LaTeX source into docbook. It was a long, boring and dirty job. But someone had to do it. Thanks, David. Thanks also goes to the fine people at www.kernelnewbies.org. In particular, Mark McLoughlin and John Levon who I'm sure have much better things to do than to hang out on kernelnewbies.org and teach the newbies. If this guide teaches you anything, they are partially to blame. Both Ori and I would like to thank Richard M. Stallman and Linus Torvalds for giving us the opportunity to not only run a high-quality operating system, but to take a close peek at how it works. I've never met Linus, and probably never will, but he has made a profound difference in my life. The following people have written to me with corrections or good suggestions: Ignacio Martin, David Porter, and Dimo Velev 2. Authorship And CopyrightThe Linux Kernel Module Programming Guide (lkmpg) was originally written by Ori Pomerantz. It became very popular as being the best free way to learn how to program Linux kernel modules. Life got busy, and Ori no longer had time or inclination to maintain the document. After all, the Linux kernel is a fast moving target. Peter Jay Salzman (that's me) offered to take over maintainership so at least bug fixes and occaisional updating would happen. If you would like to 3. Nota BeneOri's original document was good about supporting earlier versions of Linux, going all the way back to the 2.0 days. I had originally intended to keep with the program, but after thinking about it, opted out. My main reason to keep with the compatibility was for GNU/Linux distributions like LEAF, which tended to use older kernels. However, even LEAF uses 2.2 and 2.4 kernels these days.
Both Ori and I use the x86 platform. For the most part, the source code and discussions should apply to other architectures, but I can't promise anything. One exception is Chapter 12, Interrupt Handlers, which should not work on any architecture except for x86. Chapter 1. Introduction1.1. What Is A Kernel Module?So, you want to write a kernel module. You know C, you've written a few normal programs to run as processes, and now you want to get to where the real action is, to where a single wild pointer can wipe out your file system and a core dump means a reboot. What exactly is a kernel module? Modules are pieces of code that can be loaded and unloaded into the kernel upon demand. They extend the functionality of the kernel without the need to reboot the system. For example, one type of module is the device driver, which allows the kernel to access hardware connected to the system. Without modules, we would have to build monolithic kernels and add new functionality directly into the kernel image. Besides having larger kernels, this has the disadvantage of requiring us to rebuild and reboot the kernel every time we want new functionality. 1.2. How Do Modules Get Into The Kernel?You can see what modules are already loaded into the kernel by running lsmod, which gets its information by reading the file /proc/modules. How do these modules find their way into the kernel? When the kernel needs a feature that is not resident in the kernel, the kernel module daemon kmod[1] execs modprobe to load the module in. modprobe is passed a string in one of two forms:
If modprobe is handed a generic identifier, it first looks for that string in the file /etc/modules.conf. If it finds an alias line like:
it knows that the generic identifier refers to the module softdog.o. Next, modprobe looks through the file /lib/modules/version/modules.dep, to see if other modules must be loaded before the requested module may be loaded. This file is created by depmod -a and contains module dependencies. For example, msdos.o requires the fat.o module to be already loaded into the kernel. The requested module has a dependancy on another module if the other module defines symbols (variables or functions) that the requested module uses. Lastly, modprobe uses insmod to first load any prerequisite modules into the kernel, and then the requested module. modprobe directs insmod to /lib/modules/version/[2], the standard directory for modules. insmod is intended to be fairly dumb about the location of modules, whereas modprobe is aware of the default location of modules. So for example, if you wanted to load the msdos module, you'd have to either run:
or just run "modprobe -a msdos". Linux distros provide modprobe, insmod and depmod as a package called modutils or mod-utils. Before finishing this chapter, let's take a quick look at a piece of /etc/modules.conf:
Lines beginning with a '#' are comments. Blank lines are ignored. The path[misc] line tells modprobe to replace the search path for misc modules with the directory /lib/modules/2.4.?/local. As you can see, shell meta characters are honored. The path[net] line tells modprobe to look for net modules in the directory ~p/mymodules, however, the "keep" directive preceding the path[net] directive tells modprobe to add this directory to the standard search path of net modules as opposed to replacing the standard search path, as we did for the misc modules. The alias line says to load in eepro.o whenever kmod requests that the generic identifier `eth0' be loaded. You won't see lines like "alias block-major-2 floppy" in /etc/modules.conf because modprobe already knows about the standard drivers which will be used on most systems. Now you know how modules get into the kernel. There's a bit more to the story if you want to write your own modules which depend on other modules (we calling this `stacking modules'). But this will have to wait for a future chapter. We have a lot to cover before addressing this relatively high-level issue. 1.2.1. Before We BeginBefore we delve into code, there are a few issues we need to cover. Everyone's system is different and everyone has their own groove. Getting your first "hello world" program to compile and load correctly can sometimes be a trick. Rest assured, after you get over the initial hurdle of doing it for the first time, it will be smooth sailing thereafter. 1.2.1.1. ModversioningA module compiled for one kernel won't load if you boot a different kernel unless you enable CONFIG_MODVERSIONS in the kernel. We won't go into module versioning until later in this guide. Until we cover modversions, the examples in the guide may not work if you're running a kernel with modversioning turned on. However, most stock Linux distro kernels come with it turned on. If you're having trouble loading the modules because of versioning errors, compile a kernel with modversioning turned off. 1.2.1.2. Using XIt is highly recommended that you type in, compile and load all the examples this guide discusses. It's also highly recommended you do this from a console. You should not be working on this stuff in X. Modules can't print to the screen like printf() can, but they can log information and warnings, which ends up being printed on your screen, but only on a console. If you insmod a module from an xterm, the information and warnings will be logged, but only to your log files. You won't see it unless you look through your log files. To have immediate access to this information, do all your work from console. 1.2.1.3. Compiling Issues and Kernel VersionVery often, Linux distros will distribute kernel source that has been patched in various non-standard ways, which may cause trouble. A more common problem is that some Linux distros distribute incomplete kernel headers. You'll need to compile your code using various header files from the Linux kernel. Murphy's Law states that the headers that are missing are exactly the ones that you'll need for your module work. To avoid these two problems, I highly recommend that you download, compile and boot into a fresh, stock Linux kernel which can be downloaded from any of the Linux kernel mirror sites. See the Linux Kernel HOWTO for more details. Ironically, this can also cause a problem. By default, gcc on your system may look for the kernel headers in their default location rather than where you installed the new copy of the kernel (usually in /usr/src/. This can be fixed by using gcc's -I switch. Chapter 2. Hello World2.1. Hello, World (part 1): The Simplest ModuleWhen the first caveman programmer chiseled the first program on the walls of the first cave computer, it was a program to paint the string `Hello, world' in Antelope pictures. Roman programming textbooks began with the `Salut, Mundi' program. I don't know what happens to people who break with this tradition, but I think it's safer not to find out. We'll start with a series of hello world programs that demonstrate the different aspects of the basics of writing a kernel module. Here's the simplest module possible. Don't compile it yet; we'll cover module compilation in the next section. Example 2-1. hello-1.c
Kernel modules must have at least two functions: a "start" (initialization) function called init_module() which is called when the module is insmoded into the kernel, and an "end" (cleanup) function called cleanup_module() which is called just before it is rmmoded. Actually, things have changed starting with kernel 2.3.13. You can now use whatever name you like for the start and end functions of a module, and you'll learn how to do this in Section 2.3. In fact, the new method is the preferred method. However, many people still use init_module() and cleanup_module() for their start and end functions. Typically, init_module() either registers a handler for something with the kernel, or it replaces one of the kernel functions with its own code (usually code to do something and then call the original function). The cleanup_module() function is supposed to undo whatever init_module() did, so the module can be unloaded safely. Lastly, every kernel module needs to include linux/module.h. We needed to include linux/kernel.h only for the macro expansion for the printk() log level, KERN_ALERT, which you'll learn about in Section 2.1.1. 2.1.1. Introducing printk()Despite what you might think, printk() was not meant to communicate information to the user, even though we used it for exactly this purpose in hello-1! It happens to be a logging mechanism for the kernel, and is used to log information or give warnings. Therefore, each printk() statement comes with a priority, which is the <1> and KERN_ALERT you see. There are 8 priorities and the kernel has macros for them, so you don't have to use cryptic numbers, and you can view them (and their meanings) in linux/kernel.h. If you don't specify a priority level, the default priority, DEFAULT_MESSAGE_LOGLEVEL, will be used. Take time to read through the priority macros. The header file also describes what each priority means. In practise, don't use number, like <4>. Always use the macro, like KERN_WARNING. If the priority is less than int console_loglevel, the message is printed on your current terminal. If both syslogd and klogd are running, then the message will also get appended to /var/log/messages, whether it got printed to the console or not. We use a high priority, like KERN_ALERT, to make sure the printk() messages get printed to your console rather than just logged to your logfile. When you write real modules, you'll want to use priorities that are meaningful for the situation at hand. 2.2. Compiling Kernel ModulesKernel modules need to be compiled with certain gcc options to make them work. In addition, they also need to be compiled with certain symbols defined. This is because the kernel header files need to behave differently, depending on whether we're compiling a kernel module or an executable. You can define symbols using gcc's -D option, or with the #define preprocessor command. We'll cover what you need to do in order to compile kernel modules in this section.
We use gcc's -isystem option instead of -I because it tells gcc to surpress some "unused variable" warnings that -W -Wall causes when you include module.h. By using -isystem under gcc-3.0, the kernel header files are treated specially, and the warnings are surpressed. If you instead use -I (or even -isystem under gcc 2.9x), the "unused variable" warnings will be printed. Just ignore them if they do. So, let's look at a simple Makefile for compiling a module named hello-1.c: Example 2-2. Makefile for a basic kernel module
As an exercise to the reader, compile hello-1.c and insert it into the kernel with insmod ./hello-1.o (ignore anything you see about tainted kernels; we'll cover that shortly). Neat, eh? All modules loaded into the kernel are listed in /proc/modules. Go ahead and cat that file to see that your module is really a part of the kernel. Congratulations, you are now the author of Linux kernel code! When the novelty wares off, remove your module from the kernel by using rmmod hello-1. Take a look at /var/log/messages just to see that it got logged to your system logfile. Here's another exercise to the reader. See that comment above the return statement in init_module()? Change the return value to something non-zero, recompile and load the module again. What happens? 2.3. Hello World (part 2)As of Linux 2.4, you can rename the init and cleanup functions of your modules; they no longer have to be called init_module() and cleanup_module() respectively. This is done with the module_init() and module_exit() macros. These macros are defined in linux/init.h. The only caveat is that your init and cleanup functions must be defined before calling the macros, otherwise you'll get compilation errors. Here's an example of this technique: Example 2-3. hello-2.c
So now we have two real kernel modules under our belt. With productivity as high as ours, we should have a high powered Makefile. Here's a more advanced Makefile which will compile both our modules at the same time. It's optimized for brevity and scalability. If you don't understand it, I urge you to read the makefile info pages or the GNU Make Manual. Example 2-4. Makefile for both our modules
As an exercise to the reader, if we had another module in the same directory, say hello-3.c, how would you modify this Makefile to automatically compile that module? 2.4. Hello World (part 3): The __init and __exit MacrosThis demonstrates a feature of kernel 2.2 and later. Notice the change in the definitions of the init and cleanup functions. The __init macro causes the init function to be discarded and its memory freed once the init function finishes for built-in drivers, but not loadable modules. If you think about when the init function is invoked, this makes perfect sense. There is also an __initdata which works similarly to __init but for init variables rather than functions. The __exit macro causes the omission of the function when the module is built into the kernel, and like __exit, has no effect for loadable modules. Again, if you consider when the cleanup function runs, this makes complete sense; built-in drivers don't need a cleanup function, while loadable modules do. These macros are defined in linux/init.h and serve to free up kernel memory. When you boot your kernel and see something like Freeing unused kernel memory: 236k freed, this is precisely what the kernel is freeing. Example 2-5. hello-3.c
By the way, you may see the directive "__initfunction()" in drivers written for Linux 2.2 kernels:
This macro served the same purpose as __init, but is now very deprecated in favor of __init. I only mention it because you might see it modern kernels. As of 2.4.18, there are 38 references to __initfunction(), and of 2.4.20, there are 37 references. However, don't use it in your own code. 2.5. Hello World (part 4): Licensing and Module DocumentationIf you're running kernel 2.4 or later, you might have noticed something like this when you loaded the previous example modules:
In kernel 2.4 and later, a mechanism was devised to identify code licensed under the GPL (and friends) so people can be warned that the code is non open-source. This is accomplished by the MODULE_LICENSE() macro which is demonstrated in the next piece of code. By setting the license to GPL, you can keep the warning from being printed. This license mechanism is defined and documented in linux/module.h. Similarly, MODULE_DESCRIPTION() is used to describe what the module does, MODULE_AUTHOR() declares the module's author, and MODULE_SUPPORTED_DEVICE() declares what types of devices the module supports. These macros are all defined in linux/module.h and aren't used by the kernel itself. They're simply for documentation and can be viewed by a tool like objdump. As an exercise to the reader, try grepping through linux/drivers to see how module authors use these macros to document their modules. Example 2-6. hello-4.c
2.6. Passing Command Line Arguments to a ModuleModules can take command line arguments, but not with the argc/argv you might be used to. To allow arguments to be passed to your module, declare the variables that will take the values of the command line arguments as global and then use the MODULE_PARM() macro, (defined in linux/module.h) to set the mechanism up. At runtime, insmod will fill the variables with any command line arguments that are given, like ./insmod mymodule.o myvariable=5. The variable declarations and macros should be placed at the beginning of the module for clarity. The example code should clear up my admittedly lousy explanation. The MODULE_PARM() macro takes 2 arguments: the name of the variable and its type. The supported variable types are "b": single byte, "h": short int, "i": integer, "l": long int and "s": string, and the integer types can be signed as usual or unsigned. Strings should be declared as "char *" and insmod will allocate memory for them. You should always try to give the variables an initial default value. This is kernel code, and you should program defensively. For example:
Arrays are supported too. An integer value preceding the type in MODULE_PARM will indicate an array of some maximum length. Two numbers separated by a '-' will give the minimum and maximum number of values. For example, an array of shorts with at least 2 and no more than 4 values could be declared as:
A good use for this is to have the module variable's default values set, like an port or IO address. If the variables contain the default values, then perform autodetection (explained elsewhere). Otherwise, keep the current value. This will be made clear later on. Lastly, there's a macro function, MODULE_PARM_DESC(), that is used to document arguments that the module can take. It takes two parameters: a variable name and a free form string describing that variable. Example 2-7. hello-5.c
I would recommend playing around with this code:
2.7. Modules Spanning Multiple FilesSometimes it makes sense to divide a kernel module between several source files. In this case, you need to:
Here's an example of such a kernel module. Example 2-8. start.c
The next file: Example 2-9. stop.c
And finally, the makefile: Example 2-10. Makefile for a multi-filed module
Chapter 3. Preliminaries3.1. Modules vs Programs3.1.1. How modules begin and endA program usually begins with a main() function, executes a bunch of instructions and terminates upon completion of those instructions. Kernel modules work a bit differently. A module always begin with either the init_module or the function you specify with module_init call. This is the entry function for modules; it tells the kernel what functionality the module provides and sets up the kernel to run the module's functions when they're needed. Once it does this, entry function returns and the module does nothing until the kernel wants to do something with the code that the module provides. All modules end by calling either cleanup_module or the function you specify with the module_exit call. This is the exit function for modules; it undoes whatever entry function did. It unregisters the functionality that the entry function registered. Every module must have an entry function and an exit function. Since there's more than one way to specify entry and exit functions, I'll try my best to use the terms `entry function' and `exit function', but if I slip and simply refer to them as init_module and cleanup_module, I think you'll know what I mean. 3.1.2. Functions available to modulesProgrammers use functions they don't define all the time. A prime example of this is printf(). You use these library functions which are provided by the standard C library, libc. The definitions for these functions don't actually enter your program until the linking stage, which insures that the code (for printf() for example) is available, and fixes the call instruction to point to that code. Kernel modules are different here, too. In the hello world example, you might have noticed that we used a function, printk() but didn't include a standard I/O library. That's because modules are object files whose symbols get resolved upon insmod'ing. The definition for the symbols comes from the kernel itself; the only external functions you can use are the ones provided by the kernel. If you're curious about what symbols have been exported by your kernel, take a look at /proc/ksyms. One point to keep in mind is the difference between library functions and system calls. Library functions are higher level, run completely in user space and provide a more convenient interface for the programmer to the functions that do the real work---system calls. System calls run in kernel mode on the user's behalf and are provided by the kernel itself. The library function printf() may look like a very general printing function, but all it really does is format the data into strings and write the string data using the low-level system call write(), which then sends the data to standard output. Would you like to see what system calls are made by printf()? It's easy! Compile the following program:
with gcc -Wall -o hello hello.c. Run the exectable with strace hello. Are you impressed? Every line you see corresponds to a system call. strace[3] is a handy program that gives you details about what system calls a program is making, including which call is made, what its arguments are what it returns. It's an invaluable tool for figuring out things like what files a program is trying to access. Towards the end, you'll see a line which looks like write(1, "hello", 5hello). There it is. The face behind the printf() mask. You may not be familiar with write, since most people use library functions for file I/O (like fopen, fputs, fclose). If that's the case, try looking at man 2 write. The 2nd man section is devoted to system calls (like kill() and read(). The 3rd man section is devoted to library calls, which you would probably be more familiar with (like cosh() and random()). You can even write modules to replace the kernel's system calls, which we'll do shortly. Crackers often make use of this sort of thing for backdoors or trojans, but you can write your own modules to do more benign things, like have the kernel write Tee hee, that tickles! everytime someone tries to delete a file on your system. 3.1.3. User Space vs Kernel SpaceA kernel is all about access to resources, whether the resource in question happens to be a video card, a hard drive or even memory. Programs often compete for the same resource. As I just saved this document, updatedb started updating the locate database. My vim session and updatedb are both using the hard drive concurrently. The kernel needs to keep things orderly, and not give users access to resources whenever they feel like it. To this end, a CPU can run in different modes. Each mode gives a different level of freedom to do what you want on the system. The Intel 80386 architecture has 4 of these modes, which are called rings. Unix uses only two rings; the highest ring (ring 0, also known as `supervisor mode' where everything is allowed to happen) and the lowest ring, which is called `user mode'. Recall the discussion about library functions vs system calls. Typically, you use a library function in user mode. The library function calls one or more system calls, and these system calls execute on the library function's behalf, but do so in supervisor mode since they are part of the kernel itself. Once the system call completes its task, it returns and execution gets transfered back to user mode. 3.1.4. Name SpaceWhen you write a small C program, you use variables which are convenient and make sense to the reader. If, on the other hand, you're writing routines which will be part of a bigger problem, any global variables you have are part of a community of other peoples' global variables; some of the variable names can clash. When a program has lots of global variables which aren't meaningful enough to be distinguished, you get namespace pollution. In large projects, effort must be made to remember reserved names, and to find ways to develop a scheme for naming unique variable names and symbols. When writing kernel code, even the smallest module will be linked against the entire kernel, so this is definitely an issue. The best way to deal with this is to declare all your variables as static and to use a well-defined prefix for your symbols. By convention, all kernel prefixes are lowercase. If you don't want to declare everything as static, another option is to declare a symbol table and register it with a kernel. We'll get to this later. The file /proc/ksyms holds all the symbols that the kernel knows about and which are therefore accessible to your modules since they share the kernel's codespace. 3.1.5. Code spaceMemory management is a very complicated subject---the majority of O'Reilly's `Understanding The Linux Kernel' is just on memory management! We're not setting out to be experts on memory managements, but we do need to know a couple of facts to even begin worrying about writing real modules. If you haven't thought about what a segfault really means, you may be surprised to hear that pointers don't actually point to memory locations. Not real ones, anyway. When a process is created, the kernel sets aside a portion of real physical memory and hands it to the process to use for its executing code, variables, stack, heap and other things which a computer scientist would know about[4]. This memory begins with $0$ and extends up to whatever it needs to be. Since the memory space for any two processes don't overlap, every process that can access a memory address, say 0xbffff978, would be accessing a different location in real physical memory! The processes would be accessing an index named 0xbffff978 which points to some kind of offset into the region of memory set aside for that particular process. For the most part, a process like our Hello, World program can't access the space of another process, although there are ways which we'll talk about later. The kernel has its own space of memory as well. Since a module is code which can be dynamically inserted and removed in the kernel (as opposed to a semi-autonomous object), it shares the kernel's codespace rather than having its own. Therefore, if your module segfaults, the kernel segfaults. And if you start writing over data because of an off-by-one error, then you're trampling on kernel code. This is even worse than it sounds, so try your best to be careful. By the way, I would like to point out that the above discussion is true for any operating system which uses a monolithic kernel[5]. There are things called microkernels which have modules which get their own codespace. The GNU Hurd and QNX Neutrino are two examples of a microkernel. 3.1.6. Device DriversOne class of module is the device driver, which provides functionality for hardware like a TV card or a serial port. On unix, each piece of hardware is represented by a file located in /dev named a device file which provides the means to communicate with the hardware. The device driver provides the communication on behalf of a user program. So the es1370.o sound card device driver might connect the /dev/sound device file to the Ensoniq IS1370 sound card. A userspace program like mp3blaster can use /dev/sound without ever knowing what kind of sound card is installed. 3.1.6.1. Major and Minor NumbersLet's look at some device files. Here are device files which represent the first three partitions on the primary master IDE hard drive:
Notice the column of numbers separated by a comma? The first number is called the device's major number. The second number is the minor number. The major number tells you which driver is used to access the hardware. Each driver is assigned a unique major number; all device files with the same major number are controlled by the same driver. All the above major numbers are 3, because they're all controlled by the same driver. The minor number is used by the driver to distinguish between the various hardware it controls. Returning to the example above, although all three devices are handled by the same driver they have unique minor numbers because the driver sees them as being different pieces of hardware. Devices are divided into two types: character devices and block devices. The difference is that block devices have a buffer for requests, so they can choose the best order in which to respond to the requests. This is important in the case of storage devices, where it's faster to read or write sectors which are close to each other, rather than those which are further apart. Another difference is that block devices can only accept input and return output in blocks (whose size can vary according to the device), whereas character devices are allowed to use as many or as few bytes as they like. Most devices in the world are character, because they don't need this type of buffering, and they don't operate with a fixed block size. You can tell whether a device file is for a block device or a character device by looking at the first character in the output of ls -l. If it's `b' then it's a block device, and if it's `c' then it's a character device. The devices you see above are block devices. Here are some character devices (the serial ports):
If you want to see which major numbers have been assigned, you can look at /usr/src/linux/Documentation/devices.txt. When the system was installed, all of those device files were created by the mknod command. To create a new char device named `coffee' with major/minor number 12 and 2, simply do mknod /dev/coffee c 12 2. You don't have to put your device files into /dev, but it's done by convention. Linus put his device files in /dev, and so should you. However, when creating a device file for testing purposes, it's probably OK to place it in your working directory where you compile the kernel module. Just be sure to put it in the right place when you're done writing the device driver. I would like to make a few last points which are implicit from the above discussion, but I'd like to make them explicit just in case. When a device file is accessed, the kernel uses the major number of the file to determine which driver should be used to handle the access. This means that the kernel doesn't really need to use or even know about the minor number. The driver itself is the only thing that cares about the minor number. It uses the minor number to distinguish between different pieces of hardware. By the way, when I say `hardware', I mean something a bit more abstract than a PCI card that you can hold in your hand. Look at these two device files:
By now you can look at these two device files and know instantly that they are block devices and are handled by same driver (block major 2). You might even be aware that these both represent your floppy drive, even if you only have one floppy drive. Why two files? One represents the floppy drive with 1.44 MB of storage. The other is the same floppy drive with 1.68 MB of storage, and corresponds to what some people call a `superformatted' disk. One that holds more data than a standard formatted floppy. So here's a case where two device files with different minor number actually represent the same piece of physical hardware. So just be aware that the word `hardware' in our discussion can mean something very abstract. Chapter 4. Character Device Files4.1. Character Device Drivers4.1.1. The file_operations StructureThe file_operations structure is defined in linux/fs.h, and holds pointers to functions defined by the driver that perform various operations on the device. Each field of the structure corresponds to the address of some function defined by the driver to handle a requested operation. For example, every character driver needs to define a function that reads from the device. The file_operations structure holds the address of the module's function that performs that operation. Here is what the definition looks like for kernel 2.4.2:
Some operations are not implemented by a driver. For example, a driver that handles a video card won't need to read from a directory structure. The corresponding entries in the file_operations structure should be set to NULL. There is a gcc extension that makes assigning to this structure more convenient. You'll see it in modern drivers, and may catch you by surprise. This is what the new way of assigning to the structure looks like:
However, there's also a C99 way of assigning to elements of a structure, and this is definitely preferred over using the GNU extension. The version of gcc I'm currently using, 2.95, supports the new C99 syntax. You should use this syntax in case someone wants to port your driver. It will help with compatibility:
The meaning is clear, and you should be aware that any member of the structure which you don't explicitly assign will be initialized to NULL by gcc. A pointer to a struct file_operations is commonly named fops. 4.1.2. The file structureEach device is represented in the kernel by a file structure, which is defined in linux/fs.h. Be aware that a file is a kernel level structure and never appears in a user space program. It's not the same thing as a FILE, which is defined by glibc and would never appear in a kernel space function. Also, its name is a bit misleading; it represents an abstract open `file', not a file on a disk, which is represented by a structure named inode. A pointer to a struct file is commonly named filp. You'll also see it refered to as struct file file. Resist the temptation. Go ahead and look at the definition of file. Most of the entries you see, like struct dentry aren't used by device drivers, and you can ignore them. This is because drivers don't fill file directly; they only use structures contained in file which are created elsewhere. 4.1.3. Registering A DeviceAs discussed earlier, char devices are accessed through device files, usually located in /dev[6]. The major number tells you which driver handles which device file. The minor number is used only by the driver itself to differentiate which device it's operating on, just in case the driver handles more than one device. Adding a driver to your system means registering it with the kernel. This is synonymous with assigning it a major number during the module's initialization. You do this by using the register_chrdev function, defined by linux/fs.h.
where unsigned int major is the major number you want to request, const char *name is the name of the device as it'll appear in /proc/devices and struct file_operations *fops is a pointer to the file_operations table for your driver. A negative return value means the registertration failed. Note that we didn't pass the minor number to register_chrdev. That's because the kernel doesn't care about the minor number; only our driver uses it. Now the question is, how do you get a major number without hijacking one that's already in use? The easiest way would be to look through Documentation/devices.txt and pick an unused one. That's a bad way of doing things because you'll never be sure if the number you picked will be assigned later. The answer is that you can ask the kernel to assign you a dynamic major number. If you pass a major number of 0 to register_chrdev, the return value will be the dynamically allocated major number. The downside is that you can't make a device file in advance, since you don't know what the major number will be. There are a couple of ways to do this. First, the driver itself can print the newly assigned number and we can make the device file by hand. Second, the newly registered device will have an entry in /proc/devices, and we can either make the device file by hand or write a shell script to read the file in and make the device file. The third method is we can have our driver make the the device file using the mknod system call after a successful registration and rm during the call to cleanup_module. 4.1.4. Unregistering A DeviceWe can't allow the kernel module to be rmmod'ed whenever root feels like it. If the device file is opened by a process and then we remove the kernel module, using the file would cause a call to the memory location where the appropriate function (read/write) used to be. If we're lucky, no other code was loaded there, and we'll get an ugly error message. If we're unlucky, another kernel module was loaded into the same location, which means a jump into the middle of another function within the kernel. The results of this would be impossible to predict, but they can't be very positive. Normally, when you don't want to allow something, you return an error code (a negative number) from the function which is supposed to do it. With cleanup_module that's impossible because it's a void function. However, there's a counter which keeps track of how many processes are using your module. You can see what it's value is by looking at the 3rd field of /proc/modules. If this number isn't zero, rmmod will fail. Note that you don't have to check the counter from within cleanup_module because the check will be performed for you by the system call sys_delete_module, defined in linux/module.c. You shouldn't use this counter directly, but there are macros defined in linux/modules.h which let you increase, decrease and display this counter:
It's important to keep the counter accurate; if you ever do lose track of the correct usage count, you'll never be able to unload the module; it's now reboot time, boys and girls. This is bound to happen to you sooner or later during a module's development. 4.1.5. chardev.cThe next code sample creates a char driver named chardev. You can cat its device file (or open the file with a program) and the driver will put the number of times the device file has been read from into the file. We don't support writing to the file (like echo "hi" > /dev/hello), but catch these attempts and tell the user that the operation isn't supported. Don't worry if you don't see what we do with the data we read into the buffer; we don't do much with it. We simply read in the data and print a message acknowledging that we received it. Example 4-1. chardev.c
4.1.6. Writing Modules for Multiple Kernel VersionsThe system calls, which are the major interface the kernel shows to the processes, generally stay the same across versions. A new system call may be added, but usually the old ones will behave exactly like they used to. This is necessary for backward compatibility -- a new kernel version is not supposed to break regular processes. In most cases, the device files will also remain the same. On the other hand, the internal interfaces within the kernel can and do change between versions. The Linux kernel versions are divided between the stable versions (n.$<$even number$>$.m) and the development versions (n.$<$odd number$>$.m). The development versions include all the cool new ideas, including those which will be considered a mistake, or reimplemented, in the next version. As a result, you can't trust the interface to remain the same in those versions (which is why I don't bother to support them in this book, it's too much work and it would become dated too quickly). In the stable versions, on the other hand, we can expect the interface to remain the same regardless of the bug fix version (the m number). There are differences between different kernel versions, and if you want to support multiple kernel versions, you'll find yourself having to code conditional compilation directives. The way to do this to compare the macro LINUX_VERSION_CODE to the macro KERNEL_VERSION. In version a.b.c of the kernel, the value of this macro would be $2^{16}a+2^{8}b+c$. Be aware that this macro is not defined for kernel 2.0.35 and earlier, so if you want to write modules that support really old kernels, you'll have to define it yourself, like: Example 4-2. some title
Of course since these are macros, you can also use #ifndef KERNEL_VERSION to test the existence of the macro, rather than testing the version of the kernel. Chapter 5. The /proc File System5.1. The /proc File SystemIn Linux there is an additional mechanism for the kernel and kernel modules to send information to processes --- the /proc file system. Originally designed to allow easy access to information about processes (hence the name), it is now used by every bit of the kernel which has something interesting to report, such as /proc/modules which has the list of modules and /proc/meminfo which has memory usage statistics. The method to use the proc file system is very similar to the one used with device drivers --- you create a structure with all the information needed for the /proc file, including pointers to any handler functions (in our case there is only one, the one called when somebody attempts to read from the /proc file). Then, init_module registers the structure with the kernel and cleanup_module unregisters it. The reason we use proc_register_dynamic[7] is because we don't want to determine the inode number used for our file in advance, but to allow the kernel to determine it to prevent clashes. Normal file systems are located on a disk, rather than just in memory (which is where /proc is), and in that case the inode number is a pointer to a disk location where the file's index-node (inode for short) is located. The inode contains information about the file, for example the file's permissions, together with a pointer to the disk location or locations where the file's data can be found. Because we don't get called when the file is opened or closed, there's no where for us to put MOD_INC_USE_COUNT and MOD_DEC_USE_COUNT in this module, and if the file is opened and then the module is removed, there's no way to avoid the consequences. In the next chapter we'll see a harder to implement, but more flexible, way of dealing with /proc files which will allow us to protect against this problem as well. Example 5-1. procfs.c
Chapter 6. Using /proc For Input6.1. Using /proc For InputSo far we have two ways to generate output from kernel modules: we can register a device driver and mknod a device file, or we can create a /proc file. This allows the kernel module to tell us anything it likes. The only problem is that there is no way for us to talk back. The first way we'll send input to kernel modules will be by writing back to the /proc file. Because the proc filesystem was written mainly to allow the kernel to report its situation to processes, there are no special provisions for input. The struct proc_dir_entry doesn't include a pointer to an input function, the way it includes a pointer to an output function. Instead, to write into a /proc file, we need to use the standard filesystem mechanism. In Linux there is a standard mechanism for file system registration. Since every file system has to have its own functions to handle inode and file operations[8], there is a special structure to hold pointers to all those functions, struct inode_operations, which includes a pointer to struct file_operations. In /proc, whenever we register a new file, we're allowed to specify which struct inode_operations will be used for access to it. This is the mechanism we use, a struct inode_operations which includes a pointer to a struct file_operations which includes pointers to our module_input and module_output functions. It's important to note that the standard roles of read and write are reversed in the kernel. Read functions are used for output, whereas write functions are used for input. The reason for that is that read and write refer to the user's point of view --- if a process reads something from the kernel, then the kernel needs to output it, and if a process writes something to the kernel, then the kernel receives it as input. Another interesting point here is the module_permission function. This function is called whenever a process tries to do something with the /proc file, and it can decide whether to allow access or not. Right now it is only based on the operation and the uid of the current user (as available in current, a pointer to a structure which includes information on the currently running process), but it could be based on anything we like, such as what other processes are doing with the same file, the time of day, or the last input we received. The reason for put_user and get_user is that Linux memory (under Intel architecture, it may be different under some other processors) is segmented. This means that a pointer, by itself, does not reference a unique location in memory, only a location in a memory segment, and you need to know which memory segment it is to be able to use it. There is one memory segment for the kernel, and one of each of the processes. The only memory segment accessible to a process is its own, so when writing regular programs to run as processes, there's no need to worry about segments. When you write a kernel module, normally you want to access the kernel memory segment, which is handled automatically by the system. However, when the content of a memory buffer needs to be passed between the currently running process and the kernel, the kernel function receives a pointer to the memory buffer which is in the process segment. The put_user and get_user macros allow you to access that memory. Example 6-1. procfs.c
Chapter 7. Talking To Device Files7.1. Talking to Device Files (writes and IOCTLs)}Device files are supposed to represent physical devices. Most physical devices are used for output as well as input, so there has to be some mechanism for device drivers in the kernel to get the output to send to the device from processes. This is done by opening the device file for output and writing to it, just like writing to a file. In the following example, this is implemented by device_write. This is not always enough. Imagine you had a serial port connected to a modem (even if you have an internal modem, it is still implemented from the CPU's perspective as a serial port connected to a modem, so you don't have to tax your imagination too hard). The natural thing to do would be to use the device file to write things to the modem (either modem commands or data to be sent through the phone line) and read things from the modem (either responses for commands or the data received through the phone line). However, this leaves open the question of what to do when you need to talk to the serial port itself, for example to send the rate at which data is sent and received. The answer in Unix is to use a special function called ioctl (short for Input Output ConTroL). Every device can have its own ioctl commands, which can be read ioctl's (to send information from a process to the kernel), write ioctl's (to return information to a process), [9] both or neither. The ioctl function is called with three parameters: the file descriptor of the appropriate device file, the ioctl number, and a parameter, which is of type long so you can use a cast to use it to pass anything. [10] The ioctl number encodes the major device number, the type of the ioctl, the command, and the type of the parameter. This ioctl number is usually created by a macro call (_IO, _IOR, _IOW or _IOWR --- depending on the type) in a header file. This header file should then be included both by the programs which will use ioctl (so they can generate the appropriate ioctl's) and by the kernel module (so it can understand it). In the example below, the header file is chardev.h and the program which uses it is ioctl.c. If you want to use ioctls in your own kernel modules, it is best to receive an official ioctl assignment, so if you accidentally get somebody else's ioctls, or if they get yours, you'll know something is wrong. For more information, consult the kernel source tree at Documentation/ioctl-number.txt. Example 7-1. chardev.c
Example 7-2. chardev.h
Example 7-3. ioctl.c
|