Advanced Device Drivers

Summary by Bruce Alan Wynn

In order to continue in the tradition of an operating system for the masses by the masses, Linux provides a common interface for writing device drivers. Programmers who wish to create new device drivers can use this interface and create a new device driver reasonably quickly.

In this presentation, Alessandro discussed the Linux device driver interface components. Using fragments of a simple device driver, Alessandro explained how to create functions and tie them in as methods to this driver interface.

In addition to the hooks for synchronous and asynchronous I/O, Alessandro described methods of creating and using task queues and kernel timers.

Much of the information presented can also be found in a series of articles Alessandro co-authored with Georg Zezchwitz. This five-part series can be found in the Linux Journal, issues 23 (March 1996) through 28 (August 1996). Alessandro has also just completed a book, Writing Linux Device Drivers, available from O'Reilly and Associates.

Originally published in ;login: Vol. 22, No.2, April 1997.