Linux Device Drivers Development

Out of the tree

Before you can build an external module, you need to have a complete and precompiled kernel source tree. The kernel source tree version must be the same as the kernel you'll load and use your module with. There are two ways to obtain a prebuilt kernel version:

• Build it by yourself (discussed earlier)
• Install the linux-headers-* package from your distribution repository

 sudo apt-get update
 sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r)  

This will install only headers, not the whole source tree. Headers will then be installed in /usr/src/linux-headers-$(uname -r). On my computer, it is /usr/src/linux-headers-4.4.0-79-generic/. There will be a symlink, /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/build, pointing to the previously installed headers. ...