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man pages section 9: DDI and DKI Driver Entry Points     Oracle Solaris 11.1 Information Library
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Preface

Introduction

Intro(9E)

Driver Entry Points

Intro

- overview of device driver interfaces and introduction to driver entry points

Description

This page provides an overview of device driver interfaces and all of the Section 9 man pages (9E, 9F, 9P, and 9S). This overview is followed by an introduction to Section 9E, the driver entry-point routines.

Overview of Device Driver Interfaces

Section 9 provides reference information needed to write device drivers for the Solaris operating environment. It describes the interfaces provided by the Device Driver Interface and the Driver-Kernel Interface (DDI/DKI).

Porting

Software is usually considered portable if it can be adapted to run in a different environment more cheaply than it can be rewritten. The new environment may include a different processor, operating system, and even the language in which the program is written, if a language translator is available. Likewise the new environment might include multiple processors. More often, however, software is ported between environments that share an operating system, processor, and source language. The source code is modified to accommodate the differences in compilers or processors or releases of the operating system.

In the past, device drivers did not port easily for one or more of the following reasons:

Operating systems are periodically reissued to customers as a way to improve performance, fix bugs, and add new features. This is probably the most common threat to compatibility encountered by developers responsible for maintaining software. Another common problem is upgrading hardware. As new hardware is developed, customers occasionally decide to upgrade to faster, more capable computers of the same family. Although they may run the same operating system as those being replaced, architecture-specific code may prevent the software from porting.

Scope of Interfaces

Although application programs have all of the porting problems mentioned, developers attempting to port device drivers have special challenges. Before describing the DDI/DKI, it is necessary to understand the position of device drivers in operating systems.

Device drivers are kernel modules that control data transferred to and received from peripheral devices but are developed independently from the rest of the kernel. If the goal of achieving complete freedom in modifying the kernel is to be reconciled with the goal of binary compatibility with existing drivers, the interaction between drivers and the kernel must be rigorously regulated. This driver/kernel service interface is the most important of the three distinguishable interfaces for a driver, summarized as follows:

Scope of the DDI/DKI

The primary goal of the DDI/DKI is to facilitate both source and binary portability across successive releases of the operating systems on a particular machine. In addition, it promotes source portability across implementations of UNIX on different machines, and applies only to implementations based on System V Release 4. The DDI/DKI consists of several sections:

To achieve the goal of source and binary compatibility, the functions, routines, and structures specified in the DDI/DKI must be used according to these rules.

Audience

Section 9 is for software engineers responsible for creating, modifying, or maintaining drivers that run on this operating system and beyond. It assumes that the reader is familiar with system internals and the C programming language.

PCMCIA Standard

The PC Card 95 Standard is listed under the SEE ALSO heading in some Section 9 reference pages. This refers to documentation published by the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA) and the Japan Electronic Industry Development Association (JEIDA).

How to Use Section 9

Section 9 is divided into the following subsections:

9E

Driver Entry Points – contains reference pages for all driver entry point routines.

9F

Kernel Functions – contains reference pages for all driver support routines.

9P

Driver Properties – contains reference pages for driver properties.

9S

Data Structures – contains reference pages for driver-related structures.

Compatibility Note

Sun Microsystem's implementation of the DDI/DKI was designed to provide binary compatibility for third-party device drivers across currently supported hardware platforms across minor releases of the operating system. However, unforeseen technical issues may force changes to the binary interface of the DDI/DKI. We cannot therefore promise or in any way assure that DDI/DKI-compliant device drivers will continue to operate correctly on future releases.

Introduction to Section 9E

Section 9E describes the entry-point routines a developer can include in a device driver. These are called entry-point because they provide the calling and return syntax from the kernel into the driver. Entry-points are called, for instance, in response to system calls, when the driver is loaded, or in response to STREAMS events.

Kernel functions usable by the driver are described in section 9F.

In this section, reference pages contain the following headings:

Overview of Driver Entry-Point Routines and Naming Conventions

By convention, a prefix string is added to the driver routine names. For a driver with the prefix prefix, the driver code may contain routines named prefixopen, prefixclose, prefixread, prefixwrite, and so forth. All global variables associated with the driver should also use the same prefix.

All routines and data should be declared as static.

Every driver MUST include <sys/ddi.h> and <sys/sunddi.h>, in that order, and after all other include files.

The following table summarizes the STREAMS driver entry points described in this section.

Routine
Type
put
DDI/DKI
srv
DDI/DKI

The following table summarizes the driver entry points described in this section.

Routine
Type
_fini
Solaris DDI
_info
Solaris DDI
_init
Solaris DDI
aread
Solaris DDI
attach
Solaris DDI
awrite
Solaris DDI
chpoll
DDI/DKI
close
DDI/DKI
detach
Solaris DDI
devmap
Solaris DDI
devmap_access
Solaris DDI
devmap_contextmgt
Solaris DDI
devmap_dup
Solaris DDI
devmap_map
Solaris DDI
devmap_unmap
Solaris DDI
dump
Solaris DDI
getinfo
Solaris DDI
identify
Solaris DDI
ioctl
DDI/DKI
ks_update
Solaris DDI
mapdev_access
Solaris DDI
mapdev_dup
Solaris DDI
mapdev_free
Solaris DDI
mmap
DKI only
open
DDI/DKI
power
Solaris DDI
print
DDI/DKI
probe
Solaris DDI
prop_op
Solaris DDI
read
DDI/DKI
segmap
DKI only
strategy
DDI/DKI
tran_abort
Solaris DDI
tran_destroy_pkt
Solaris DDI
tran_dmafree
Solaris DDI
tran_getcap
Solaris DDI
tran_init_pkt
Solaris DDI
tran_reset
Solaris DDI
tran_reset_notify
Solaris DDI
tran_setcap
Solaris DDI
tran_start
Solaris DDI
tran_sync_pkt
Solaris DDI
tran_tgt_free
Solaris DDI
tran_tgt_init
Solaris DDI
tran_tgt_probe
Solaris DDI
write
DDI/DKI

The following table lists the error codes returned by a driver routine when it encounters an error. The error values are listed in alphabetic order and are defined in sys/errno.h. In the driver open(9E), close(9E), ioctl(9E), read(9E), and write(9E) routines, errors are passed back to the user by calling bioerror(9F) to set b_flags to the proper error code. In the driver strategy(9E) routine, errors are passed back to the user by setting the b_error member of the buf(9S) structure to the error code. For STREAMS ioctl routines, errors should be sent upstream in an M_IOCNAK message. For STREAMS read() and write() routines, errors should be sent upstream in an M_ERROR message. The driver print routine should not return an error code because the function that it calls, cmn_err(9F), is declared as void (no error is returned).

Error Value
Error Description
EAGAIN
Kernel resources, such as the buf structure or cache memory, are not available at this time (device may be busy, or the system resource is not available). This is used in open, ioctl, read, write, and strategy.
EFAULT
An invalid address has been passed as an argument; memory addressing error. This is used in open, close, ioctl, read, write, and strategy.
EINTR
Sleep interrupted by signal. This is used in open, close, ioctl, read, write, and strategy.
EINVAL
An invalid argument was passed to the routine. This is used in open, ioctl, read, write, and strategy.
EIO
A device error occurred; an error condition was detected in a device status register (the I/O request was valid, but an error occurred on the device). This is used in open, close, ioctl, read, write, and strategy.
ENXIO
An attempt was made to access a device or subdevice that does not exist (one that is not configured); an attempt was made to perform an invalid I/O operation; an incorrect minor number was specified. This is used in open, close, ioctl, read, write, and strategy.
EPERM
A process attempting an operation did not have required permission. This is used in open, ioctl, read, write, and strategy.
EROFS
An attempt was made to open for writing a read-only device. This is used in open.

The table below cross references error values to the driver routines from which the error values can be returned.

open
close
ioctl
read, write and strategy
EAGAIN
EFAULT
EAGAIN
EAGAIN
EFAULT
EINTR
EFAULT
EFAULT
EINTR
EIO
EINTR
EINTR
EINVAL
ENXIO
EINVAL
EINVAL
EIO
EIO
EIO
ENXIO
ENXIO
ENXIO
EPERM
EPERM
EROFS

See Also

Intro(9F), Intro(9S)