Linux is a unified kernel that is widely used to develop embedded systems. As Linux has turned out to be one of the most popular operating systems worldwide, the interest in developing proprietary device drivers has also increased. Device drivers play a critical role in how the system performs and ensure that the device works in the manner intended. By exploring several examples on the development of character devices, the technique of managing a device tree, and how to use other kernel internals, such as interrupts, kernel timers, and wait queue, you’ll be able to add proper management for custom peripherals to your embedded system.
You’ll begin by installing the Linux kernel and then configuring it. Once you have installed the system, you will learn to use different kernel features and character drivers. You will also cover interrupts in-depth and understand how you can manage them. Later, you will explore the kernel internals required for developing applications. As you approach the concluding chapters, you will learn to implement advanced character drivers and also discover how to write important Linux device drivers.
By the end of this book, you will be equipped with the skills you need to write a custom character driver and kernel code according to your requirements.
Become familiar with the latest kernel releases (4.19/5.x) running on the ESPRESSOBin devkit, an ARM 64-bit machine
Download, configure, modify, and build kernel sources
Add and remove a device driver or a module from the kernel
Understand how to implement character drivers to manage different kinds of computer peripherals
Get well-versed with kernel helper functions and objects that can be used to build kernel applications
Gain comprehensive insights into managing custom hardware with Linux from both the kernel and user space
With a recipe based approach this book gives you practical recipes on character drivers and related kernel internals. It shows you how to start writing Linux device drivers and tools to understand, debug or modify them.