What Is a Device Driver?

A device driver is a kernel module that is responsible for managing the low-level I/O operations of a hardware device. Device drivers are written with standard interfaces that the kernel can call to interface with a device. Device drivers can also be software-only, emulating a device that exists only in software, such as RAM disks, buses, and pseudo-terminals.

A device driver contains all the device-specific code necessary to communicate with a device. This code includes a standard set of interfaces to the rest of the system. This interface shields the kernel from device specifics just as the system call interface protects application programs from platform specifics. Application programs and the rest of the kernel need little, if any, device-specific code to address the device. In this way, device drivers make the system more portable and easier to maintain.

When the Solaris operating system (Solaris OS) is initialized, devices identify themselves and are organized into the device tree, a hierarchy of devices. In effect, the device tree is a hardware model for the kernel. An individual device driver is represented as a node in the tree with no children. This type of node is referred to as a leaf driver. A driver that provides services to other drivers is called a bus nexus driver and is shown as a node with children. As part of the boot process, physical devices are mapped to drivers in the tree so that the drivers can be located when needed. For more information on how the Solaris OS accommodates devices, see Chapter 2, Solaris Kernel and Device Tree.

Device drivers are classified by how they handle I/O. Device drivers fall into three broad categories:

• Block device drivers – For cases where handling I/O data as asynchronous chunks is appropriate. Typically, block drivers are used to manage devices with physically addressable storage media, such as disks.

• Character device drivers – For devices that perform I/O on a continuous flow of bytes.

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  Note –

  A driver can be both block and character at the same time if you set up two different interfaces to the file system. See Devices as Special Files.

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  Included in the character category are drivers that use the STREAMS model (see below), programmed I/O, direct memory access, SCSI buses, USB, and other network I/O.

• STREAMS device drivers – Subset of character drivers that uses the streamio(7I) set of routines for character I/O within the kernel.