Linux Device Drivers Development

Device Driver Basis

A driver is a piece of software whose aim is to control and manage a particular hardware device, hence the name device driver. From an operating system point of view, drivers can be either in the kernel space (running in privileged mode) or in the user space (with lower privileges). This book only deals with kernel space drivers, especially Linux kernel drivers. Our definition is that a device driver exposes the functionality of the hardware to user programs.

This book's aim is not to teach you how to become a Linux guru—I'm not even one at all—but there are some concepts you should understand prior to writing a device driver. C programming skills are mandatory; you should at least be familiar with pointers. You should ...