Press Release
July 9, 2001
"Linux Device Drivers" updated for Linux 2.4
Sebastopol, CA--Anyone who has ever tried to plug a peripheral into a
Linux box knows the importance of device drivers. This is an exciting,
but largely undocumented, area of Linux development necessary for
anyone who wants to support computer peripherals under the Linux
operating system or develop new hardware and run it under Linux.
"Writing device drivers is both easier and harder these days," says
Jonathan Corbet coauthor of the new, second edition of
Linux Device
Drivers (O'Reilly, US $39.95). "It is easier in that a lot of the
basic kernel subsystems have been redesigned to work in a more simple
and safe way. The interfaces for access to system buses and setting up
DMA operations, for example, are much cleaner and easier to use. The
quality of the debugging tools is improving as well. But the need to
deal with concurrency and locking adds a distinct challenge. Avoiding
race conditions and other concurrency-related bugs is tremendously
difficult, and tracking down this type of bug is no fun. Fine-grained
locking brings a great deal of complexity, but without it, scaling the
kernel to large systems is difficult if not impossible."
Linux Device
Drivers reveals information that previously has been
shared only by word of mouth or in cryptic source code comments, on how
to write drivers for a wide range of devices.
Version 2.4 of the Linux kernel includes significant changes to device
drivers, simplifying many activities, but providing subtle new features
that can make a driver both more efficient and more flexible. The
second edition of this classic book thoroughly covers these changes, as
well as new processors and buses. "Perhaps the biggest change in
version 2.4--one that will affect every driver author--is the
incorporation of fine-grained locking in the kernel," says Corbet. "In
2.0, everything was protected by the 'big kernel lock,' and device
drivers had no need to deal with concurrency on SMP systems. Version
2.2 had split that up somewhat, but it's only in 2.4 that locking has,
in many cases, been pushed down into the driver level itself. Any
device driver that is not written with SMP in mind is not correct in
2.4."
You don't have to be a kernel hacker to understand and enjoy this book;
all you need is an understanding of C and some background in Unix
system calls. Drivers for character devices, block devices, and network
interfaces are all described in step-by-step form and are illustrated
with full-featured examples that show driver design issues, which can
be executed without special hardware. Major changes in the second
edition include discussions of symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) and
locking, new CPUs, and recently supported buses. For those who are
curious about how an operating system does its job, this book provides
insights into address spaces, asynchronous events, and I/O.
Online Resources:
Linux Device
Drivers, 2nd Edition
By Alessandro Rubini & Jonathan Corbet
2nd Edition July 2001
0-59600-008-1, 586 pages, $39.95
order@oreilly.com
About O'Reilly
O'Reilly Media spreads the knowledge of innovators through its books, online services, magazines, and conferences. Since 1978, O'Reilly Media has been a chronicler and catalyst of cutting-edge development, homing in on the technology trends that really matter and spurring their adoption by amplifying "faint signals" from the alpha geeks who are creating the future. An active participant in the technology community, the company has a long history of advocacy, meme-making, and evangelism.
Return to: O'Reilly Press Room
|
Recent Press Releases
Press Release Archive »
Resources
Press Contacts
Corporate
Sara Winge
800/998-9938 x7109
Media Relations - North America
Sara Peyton
800/998-9938 x7118
Media Relations - Germany
Corina Pahrmann
+49-221-973160-22
Media Relations - Japan
Kenji Watari
+81-3-3356-5227
Media Relations - United Kingdom
Josette Garcia
+44 (0)1252-721284
Media Relations - Conferences
Maureen Jennings
800/998-9938 x7083
|
