Modules

• Building and Running Modules
• Setting Up Your Test System
• The Hello World Module
• Kernel Modules Versus Applications
• Compiling and Loading
• The Kernel Symbol Table
• Preliminaries
• Initialization and Shutdown
• Module Parameters
• Doing It in User Space

Data Types in the Kernel

• Use of Standard C Types
• Assigning an Explicit Size to Data Items
• Interface-Specific Types
• Other Portability Issues
• Linked Lists

The Linux Device Model

• Kobjects, Ksets, and Subsystems
• Low-Level Sysfs Operations
• Hotplug Event Generation
• Buses, Devices, and Drivers
• Classes
• Putting It All Together
• Hotplug
• Dealing with Firmware

Memory Mapping and DMA

• Memory Management in Linux
• The mmap Device Operation
• Performing Direct I/O
• Direct Memory Access

Communicating with Hardware

• I/O Ports and I/O Memory
• Using I/O Ports
• An I/O Port Example
• Using I/O Memory

Interrupt Handling

• Preparing the Parallel Port
• Installing an Interrupt Handler
• Implementing a Handler
• Top and Bottom Halves
• Interrupt Sharing
• Interrupt-Driven I/O

Char Drivers

• The Design of scull
• Major and Minor Numbers
• Some Important Data Structures
• Char Device Registration
• open and release
• scull’s Memory Usage
• read and write
• Playing with the New Devices

Block Drivers

• Registration
• The Block Device Operations
• Request Processing

Debugging Techniques

• Debugging Support in the Kernel
• Debugging by Printing
• Debugging by Querying
• Debugging by Watching
• Debugging System Faults
• Debuggers Tools

Concurrency and Race Conditions

• Pitfalls in scull
• Concurrency and Its Management
• Semaphores and Mutexes
• Completions
• Spinlocks
• Locking Traps
• Alternatives to Locking

Time, Delays, and Deferred Work

• Measuring Time Lapses
• Knowing the Current Time
• Delaying Execution
• Kernel Timers
• Tasklet
• Workqueues

Memory Management

• The Real Story of kmalloc
• Lookaside Caches
• get_free_page and Friends
• vmalloc and Friends
• Per-CPU Variables
• Large Buffer processing

Advanced Char Driver Operations

• ioctl
• Blocking I/O
• poll and select
• Asynchronous Notification
• Seeking a Device
• Access Control on a Device File

Network Drivers

• How snull Is Designed
• Connecting to the Kernel
• The net_device Structure
• Opening and Closing
• Packet Transmission
• Packet Reception
• The Interrupt Handler
• Receive Interrupt Mitigation

TTY Drivers

• Small TTY Driver
• tty_driver Function Pointers
• TTY Line Settings
• ioctls
• proc and sysfs Handling of TTY Devices
• The tty_driver Structure
• The tty_operations Structure
• The tty_structStruc