Driver Development Books?
Hello, I have what may seem to be a silly question, but I cannot find any other decent resources on the web. . The problem that I am having right now is that I have a fairly nice graphics card which, for the moment is only supported on Windows Operating systems, and old 2.4 Linux kernels. So far there has not been much positive outlook in porting the drivers to *BSD or any of the 2.6 kernels that I know of, let alone 64-bit drivers for non-Win OSes. So I guess that makes my question fairly simple then; I know that driver code is written in C (which I am learning currently) but thats about all I know. I'm probably not far off when I say that I need more to go on. Yet, from looking at Amazon.com I have not been able to find any books on writing driver code, which is really frustrating. One of my security related books, Rootkits, tells me about how to write drivers for a completely different reason so I know a bit more about how they work but again the code involved does not interface hardware to the OS, just injects a custom application. The other tool that I will probably use is Jungo, which is a nice-looking application which automates a skeletal version of the driver you need, but again, I would not know how to fill it out. Any help is appreciated. -Pete Rootkits Book Homepage -- http://www.rootkit.com/ Jungo WinDriver -- http://www.jungo.com/windriver.html ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Driver Development Books?
From: Pete [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue Oct 11 11:47:28 CDT 2005 To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Driver Development Books? Hello, I have what may seem to be a silly question, but I cannot find any other decent resources on the web. . The problem that I am having right now is that I have a fairly nice graphics card which, for the moment is only supported on Windows Operating systems, and old 2.4 Linux kernels. So far there has not been much positive outlook in porting the drivers to *BSD or any of the 2.6 kernels that I know of, let alone 64-bit drivers for non-Win OSes. The video cards usually have nothing to do with the kernel itself. Their drivers are in the X Window system. Probably the easiest fix is to just install an older version (3.x probably) of XFree86 on your machine. So I guess that makes my question fairly simple then; I know that driver code is written in C (which I am learning currently) but thats about all Well, you usually need a bit more expertise than learning currently to write drivers. I know. I'm probably not far off when I say that I need more to go on. Yet, from looking at Amazon.com I have not been able to find any books on writing driver code, which is really frustrating. Searching for device driver turns up a lot of books on Amazon. For the system-specific details look in the online FreeBSD Device Driver Writer's guide (part of the Handbook if I remember correctly). Anyway, for the graphical cards it's not what you need. The graphical drivers are running in user space as a part of X server. Writing them is a completely different story and I don't think there are any manuals. Just look at the code of the other drivers and do the same. -SB ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Driver Development Books?
On 10/11/05, Pete [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello, I have what may seem to be a silly question, but I cannot find any other decent resources on the web. . The problem that I am having right now is that I have a fairly nice graphics card which, for the moment is only supported on Windows Operating systems, and old 2.4 Linux kernels. So far there has not been much positive outlook in porting the drivers to *BSD or any of the 2.6 kernels that I know of, let alone 64-bit drivers for non-Win OSes. So I guess that makes my question fairly simple then; I know that driver code is written in C (which I am learning currently) but thats about all I know. I'm probably not far off when I say that I need more to go on. Yet, from looking at Amazon.com I have not been able to find any books on writing driver code, which is really frustrating. One of my security related books, Rootkits, tells me about how to write drivers for a completely different reason so I know a bit more about how they work but again the code involved does not interface hardware to the OS, just injects a custom application. The other tool that I will probably use is Jungo, which is a nice-looking application which automates a skeletal version of the driver you need, but again, I would not know how to fill it out. Any help is appreciated. -Pete I started porting a pseudo driver from OpenBSD and had the same issues. You could find more info here: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/arch-handbook/index.html http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/arch-handbook/newbus-api.html http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/arch-handbook/driverbasics-char.html#AEN8703 And this come in very handy: FreeBSD Source Code Tour: http://snapshots.jp.freebsd.org/tour/ A nice website provided by Robert Watson (Thanks!!!): http://fxr.watson.org/ Looking at existing code is also good, like the simple led driver by phk@ There was also a thread where John Baldwin described the parts of a driver but I can't seem to find it. -- Joao Barros ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Driver Development Books?
Pete wrote: Hello, I have what may seem to be a silly question, but I cannot find any other decent resources on the web. . The problem that I am having right now is that I have a fairly nice graphics card which, for the moment is only supported on Windows Operating systems, and old 2.4 Linux kernels. So far there has not been much positive outlook in porting the drivers to *BSD or any of the 2.6 kernels that I know of, let alone 64-bit drivers for non-Win OSes. So I guess that makes my question fairly simple then; I know that driver code is written in C (which I am learning currently) but thats about all I know. I'm probably not far off when I say that I need more to go on. Yet, from looking at Amazon.com I have not been able to find any books on writing driver code, which is really frustrating. One of my security related books, Rootkits, tells me about how to write drivers for a completely different reason so I know a bit more about how they work but again the code involved does not interface hardware to the OS, just injects a custom application. The other tool that I will probably use is Jungo, which is a nice-looking application which automates a skeletal version of the driver you need, but again, I would not know how to fill it out. Any help is appreciated. -Pete There are indeed no books that I know of on the subject of writing drivers for any *BSD, let alone FreeBSD. For the last year I've wanted to sit down and write such a book, but the amount of time needed to do this is daunting. Anyways, there were a couple of articles published back around 2000 on DeamonNews that covered some basic information on writing kernel modules, and they are likely still available via the various web search engines. For more detailed information, you'll need to dig into the kernel source code, look for appropriate manual pages, and ask questions. There are a number of really good people on this list that try to answer most questions like this, so don't be afraid to ask. Scott ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Driver Development Books?
In message: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Scott Long [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: : For more detailed information, you'll need : to dig into the kernel source code, look for appropriate manual pages, : and ask questions. There are a number of really good people on this : list that try to answer most questions like this, so don't be afraid to : ask. There's also a [EMAIL PROTECTED] which is specifically for questions about writing drivers. Warner ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Driver Development Books?
Sangwoo Shim wrote: 2005/10/12, Scott Long [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Pete wrote: Hello, I have what may seem to be a silly question, but I cannot find any other decent resources on the web. . The problem that I am having right now is that I have a fairly nice graphics card which, for the moment is only supported on Windows Operating systems, and old 2.4 Linux kernels. So far there has not been much positive outlook in porting the drivers to *BSD or any of the 2.6 kernels that I know of, let alone 64-bit drivers for non-Win OSes. So I guess that makes my question fairly simple then; I know that driver code is written in C (which I am learning currently) but thats about all I know. I'm probably not far off when I say that I need more to go on. Yet, from looking at Amazon.com I have not been able to find any books on writing driver code, which is really frustrating. One of my security related books, Rootkits, tells me about how to write drivers for a completely different reason so I know a bit more about how they work but again the code involved does not interface hardware to the OS, just injects a custom application. The other tool that I will probably use is Jungo, which is a nice-looking application which automates a skeletal version of the driver you need, but again, I would not know how to fill it out. Any help is appreciated. -Pete There are indeed no books that I know of on the subject of writing drivers for any *BSD, let alone FreeBSD. [snip] For me, following book was quite helpful: Embedded FreeBSD cookbook, by Paul Cevoli ISBN: 1589950046 It tells about basic kernel data structure for driver writing. One of the best aspect of this book is that it shows you real code for real device (a simple PCI device). Moreover, it was quite easy to read. Although it focuses on FreeBSD 4.X. For those who want some _introduction_ for the FreeBSD driver writing, I would like to recommend this. Regard, Sangwoo Shim Ah, didn't know about that book. Yes, that sounds like a good foundation, though some aspects of drivers in 5.x and beyond are vastly different than in 4.x and prior, particularly concerning synchronization and interrupt behaviour. The next step is to talk about the different driver APIs and infrastructure, as well as debugging guides. Scott ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Driver Development Books?
2005/10/12, Scott Long [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Pete wrote: Hello, I have what may seem to be a silly question, but I cannot find any other decent resources on the web. . The problem that I am having right now is that I have a fairly nice graphics card which, for the moment is only supported on Windows Operating systems, and old 2.4 Linux kernels. So far there has not been much positive outlook in porting the drivers to *BSD or any of the 2.6 kernels that I know of, let alone 64-bit drivers for non-Win OSes. So I guess that makes my question fairly simple then; I know that driver code is written in C (which I am learning currently) but thats about all I know. I'm probably not far off when I say that I need more to go on. Yet, from looking at Amazon.com I have not been able to find any books on writing driver code, which is really frustrating. One of my security related books, Rootkits, tells me about how to write drivers for a completely different reason so I know a bit more about how they work but again the code involved does not interface hardware to the OS, just injects a custom application. The other tool that I will probably use is Jungo, which is a nice-looking application which automates a skeletal version of the driver you need, but again, I would not know how to fill it out. Any help is appreciated. -Pete There are indeed no books that I know of on the subject of writing drivers for any *BSD, let alone FreeBSD. [snip] For me, following book was quite helpful: Embedded FreeBSD cookbook, by Paul Cevoli ISBN: 1589950046 It tells about basic kernel data structure for driver writing. One of the best aspect of this book is that it shows you real code for real device (a simple PCI device). Moreover, it was quite easy to read. Although it focuses on FreeBSD 4.X. For those who want some _introduction_ for the FreeBSD driver writing, I would like to recommend this. Regard, Sangwoo Shim ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Driver Development Books?
Hi, re: The problem that I am having right now is that I have a fairly nice graphics card which, for the moment is only supported on Windows Operating systems, and old 2.4 Linux kernels. Someone mentioned X drivers; current X drivers are dynamically loaded into the X server, which runs in user-space, not in the FreeBSD kernel. The X server has its own ELF loader to load modules and drivers. This approach allows X drivers to be independent of OS. There is some documentation on writing X drivers at: http://cvsweb.xfree86.org/cvsweb/xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/doc/DESIGN (Click on the (download) link at the top of the page) For a walk through writing a driver, see Section 20 at the end, Some notes about writing a driver. Alternatively, access http://cvs.freedesktop.org/xorg/xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/doc/ and select DESIGN, etc.. FreeBSD currently uses x.org (cvs.freedesktop.org), but the DESIGN doc is probably similar. The design doc has a lot of good background and conceptual material, enough to enable reading of real X drivers, which are the real definition of how things work. Although the mechanics of writting (or modifying) an X driver are very easy (almost trivial), if you have never worked with C or drivers before, expect a steep learing curve... probably starting by rebuilding X from source would be a good first step. - bruce ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
