Linux Device Drivers, Second Edition

Quick Reference

This section provides a reference for the concepts introduced in this chapter. It also explains the role of each header file that a driver needs to include. The lists of fields in the net_device and sk_buff structures, however, are not repeated here.

#include <linux/netdevice.h>

This header hosts the definitions of struct net_device and struct net_device_stats, and includes a few other headers that are needed by network drivers.

int register_netdev(struct net_device *dev); , void unregister_netdev(struct net_device *dev);

Register and unregister a network device.

SET_MODULE_OWNER(struct net_device *dev);

This macro will store a pointer to the current module in the device structure (or in any structure with an owner field, actually); it is used to enable the networking subsystem to manage the module’s use count.

netif_start_queue(struct net_device *dev); , netif_stop_queue(struct net_device *dev); , netif_wake_queue(struct net_device *dev);

These functions control the passing of packets to the driver for transmission. No packets will be transmitted until netif_start_queue has been called. netif_stop_queue suspends transmission, and netif_wake_queue restarts the queue and pokes the network layer to restart transmitting packets.

void netif_rx(struct sk_buff *skb);

This function can be called (including at interrupt time) to notify the kernel that a packet has been received and encapsulated into a socket buffer.

#include <linux/if.h>

Included ...