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Writing Device Drivers     Oracle Solaris 11.1 Information Library
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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

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

Oracle Solaris Consoles and the Kernel Terminal Emulator

x86 Platform Console Communication

SPARC Platform Console Communication

Console Visual I/O Interfaces

I/O Control Interfaces

Polled I/O Interfaces

Video Mode Change Callback Interface

Implementing the Visual I/O Interfaces in Console Frame Buffer Drivers

VIS_DEVINIT

VIS_DEFINI

VIS_CONSDISPLAY

VIS_CONSCOPY

VIS_CONSCURSOR

VIS_PUTCMAP

VIS_GETCMAP

Implementing Polled I/O in Console Frame Buffer Drivers

Frame Buffer Specific Configuration Module

The X Window System Frame Buffer Specific DDX Module

Developing, Testing, and Debugging Console Frame Buffer Drivers

Testing the I/O Control Interfaces

Testing the Polled I/O Interfaces

Testing the Video Mode Change Callback Function

Additional Suggestions for Testing Console Frame Buffer Drivers

E.  pci.conf File

Index

Implementing Polled I/O in Console Frame Buffer Drivers

The polled I/O interfaces are implemented as functions in the driver and are called directly by the kernel terminal emulator. The driver passes the address of its polled I/O entry points to the terminal emulator during the execution of the VIS_DEVINIT ioctl command. The VIS_DEVINIT command is initiated by the terminal emulator.

The vis_polledio structure is shown in the following code.

typedef void * vis_opaque_arg_t;

struct vis_polledio {
      struct vis_polledio_arg *arg;
      void    (*display)(vis_opaque_arg_t, struct vis_consdisplay *);
      void    (*copy)(vis_opaque_arg_t, struct vis_conscopy *);
      void    (*cursor)(vis_opaque_arg_t, struct vis_conscursor *);
};

The polled I/O interfaces provide the same functionality as the VIS_CONSDISPLAY, VIS_CONSCOPY, and VIS_CONSCURSOR ioctl interfaces. The polled I/O interfaces should follow the same steps that are described above for the respective ioctl commands. The polled I/O interfaces must very strictly adhere to the additional restrictions that are described in the remainder of this section.

The polled I/O interfaces are called only when the operating system is quiesced and in standalone mode. The system enters standalone mode whenever the user enters OpenBoot PROM or enters the kmdb debugger, or when the system panics. Only one CPU and one thread are active. All other CPUs and threads are stopped. Timesharing, DDI interrupts, and system services are turned off.

Standalone mode severely restricts driver functionality but simplifies driver synchronization requirements. For example, a user application cannot access the console frame buffer driver by way of the driver's memory mappings from within a polled I/O routine.

In standalone mode, the console frame buffer driver must not perform any of the following actions:

These restrictions are not difficult to obey since the polled I/O functions are relatively simple operations. For example, when working with the rendering engine, the console frame buffer driver can poll a bit in the device rather than wait for an interrupt. The driver can use pre-allocated memory to render blit data. DDI or LDI interfaces should not be needed.