Identifyng device major and minor numbers

We will write a simple rule to launch a script when a USB device is added and when it is removed from the running system. Save the file and close it. Then as root, tell systemd-udevd to reload the rules files this also reloads other databases such as the kernel module index , by running. First of all the file scripts. For more information on how to write udev rules and manage udev, consult the udev and udevadm manual entries respectively, by running:. It ensures that devices are configured as soon as they are plugged in and discovered.

It propagates information about a processed device or changes to its state, to user space. TecMint is the fastest growing and most trusted community site for any kind of Linux Articles, Guides and Books on the web. Millions of people visit TecMint!

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If you like what you are reading, please consider buying us a coffee or 2 as a token of appreciation. We are thankful for your never ending support. Tags: udevadm command examples. View all Posts. Aaron Kili is a Linux and F. S enthusiast, an upcoming Linux SysAdmin, web developer, and currently a content creator for TecMint who loves working with computers and strongly believes in sharing knowledge.

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linux - The role of major and minor numbers in device driver - Stack Overflow

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Learn Basics of Udev in Linux The udev daemon, systemd-udevd or systemd-udevd. List Block Devices in Linux. We pass the device name as a string value of the name parameter this string can also pass the name of a module if it registers a single device. Here you can see the 2. A pointer to an unimplemented function can simply be set to be zero. After that, the system will take care of the implementation of the function and make it behave normally.

In our case, we'll just implement the read function. Correspondingly, after it's created, we'll need to fill it statically. Here you can see how this is done:. We transform the macro into the pointer to the module structure of the required module. When the lifetime of the driver expires, this global variable will revoke the registration of the device file.

We've already listed and mentioned almost all functions, and the last one is the printk function.

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This is the only difference between the printk function and the printf library function. The printk function forms a string, which we write to the circular buffer, where the klog daemon reads it and sends it to the system log. The implementation of the printk function allows it to be called from anywhere in the kernel. The worst case scenario is the overflow of the circular buffer, meaning that the oldest message is not recorded in the log. The next step is writing a function for reverting the registration of the device file.

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The major device number is the first parameter of this function, followed by a string containing the device name. The function we're going to write will read characters from a device. This file structure allows us to get necessary information about the file with which we're working, details on private data related to this current file, and so on. The data that has been read is allocated to the user space using the second parameter, which is a buffer.


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The number of bytes for reading is defined in the third parameter, and we start reading the bytes from a certain offset defined in the fourth parameter. After executing the function, the number of bytes that have been successfully read must be returned, after which the offset must be refreshed. The user allocates a special buffer in the user-mode address space.

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And the other action that the read function must perform is to copy the information to this buffer. The address to which a pointer from that space points and the address in the kernel address space may have different values. That's why we cannot simply dereference the pointer. Its name speaks for itself: it simply copies specific data from the kernel buffer to the buffer allocated in the user space.

In addition, it also verifies if a pointer is valid and if the buffer size is large enough. Thus, errors in the driver can be processed relatively easily. First of all, this function must receive three pointers as parameters: a pointer to the buffer, a pointer to the data source, and a pointer to the number of bytes for copying. As we've mentioned, an error returns a value other than zero, and in the case of successful execution, the value will be zero.

It has another useful application that allows us to analyze if the code uses pointers from the address space correctly; this is done using the sparse analyzer, which performs analysis of static code. This tutorial contains only an example of a Linux driver programming without an actual device. If you don't need anything other than strings of text to be returned after reading a device file, then this will be enough. After we've written the code for the driver, it's time to build it and see if it works as we expect.

In the earlier kernel versions such as 2. Fortunately, these times are long gone and the process is much simpler now. Today, much of the work is done by the makefile: it starts the kernel build system and provides the kernel with the information about the components required to build the module. A module built from a single source file requires a single string in the makefile. After creating this file, you need only to initiate the kernel build system:. Now it's time to prepare the module build system. To build the first module, execute the following command from the folder where the build system is located:.