Writing A Unix Device Driver - Janet I. Egan - Thomas J. Teixeira - 1988 - Paperback - Wiley

Here's how to write device drivers for adding disk drives, printers, magnetic tapes, and other peripherals to your UNIX system. Beginning with an overview of how the UNIX system performs I/O functions and a description of how device drivers relate to the hardware I/O architecture, Writing a UNIX Device Driver explains all the run-time operations performed by device drivers. You'll learn how to:

• Incorporate the device driver into the UNIX kernel


• Pass information to and from a driver using system data structures


• Move data between address spaces


• Synchronize execution of driver routines and other kernel and user process code

You'll also learn procedures for developing and testing new device drivers, including how to choose a convenient working directory, use make files, preserve and boot alternative kernel versions, and debug driver code. The appendices describe data structures and kernel I/O routines, as well as detailed listings of the example drivers presented in the book.