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Writing Device Drivers     Oracle Solaris 11.1 Information Library
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Document Information

Preface

Part I Designing Device Drivers for the Oracle Solaris Platform

1.  Overview of Oracle Solaris Device Drivers

2.  Oracle Solaris Kernel and Device Tree

3.  Multithreading

4.  Properties

5.  Managing Events and Queueing Tasks

6.  Driver Autoconfiguration

7.  Device Access: Programmed I/O

8.  Interrupt Handlers

9.  Direct Memory Access (DMA)

10.  Mapping Device and Kernel Memory

11.  Device Context Management

12.  Power Management

13.  Hardening Oracle Solaris Drivers

14.  Layered Driver Interface (LDI)

Part II Designing Specific Kinds of Device Drivers

15.  Drivers for Character Devices

16.  Drivers for Block Devices

Block Driver Structure Overview

File I/O

Block Device Autoconfiguration

Controlling Device Access

open() Entry Point (Block Drivers)

close() Entry Point (Block Drivers)

strategy() Entry Point

buf Structure

bp_mapin Structure

Synchronous Data Transfers (Block Drivers)

Asynchronous Data Transfers (Block Drivers)

Checking for Invalid buf Requests

Enqueuing the Request

Starting the First Transfer

Handling the Interrupting Device

dump() and print() Entry Points

dump() Entry Point (Block Drivers)

print() Entry Point (Block Drivers)

Disk Device Drivers

Disk ioctls

Disk Performance

17.  SCSI Target Drivers

18.  SCSI Host Bus Adapter Drivers

19.  Drivers for Network Devices

20.  USB Drivers

21.  SR-IOV Drivers

Part III Building a Device Driver

22.  Compiling, Loading, Packaging, and Testing Drivers

23.  Debugging, Testing, and Tuning Device Drivers

24.  Recommended Coding Practices

Part IV Appendixes

A.  Hardware Overview

B.  Summary of Oracle Solaris DDI/DKI Services

C.  Making a Device Driver 64-Bit Ready

D.  Console Frame Buffer Drivers

E.  pci.conf File

Index

File I/O

A file system is a tree-structured hierarchy of directories and files. Some file systems, such as the UNIX File System (UFS), reside on block-oriented devices. File systems are created by format(1M) and newfs(1M).

When an application issues a read(2) or write(2) system call to an ordinary file on the UFS file system, the file system can call the device driver strategy(9E) entry point for the block device on which the file system resides. The file system code can call strategy(9E) several times for a single read(2) or write(2) system call.

The file system code determines the logical device address, or logical block number, for each ordinary file block. A block I/O request is then built in the form of a buf(9S) structure directed at the block device. The driver strategy(9E) entry point then interprets the buf(9S) structure and completes the request.