Project Description

Standard UNIX and Linux systems come with a few special files like /dev/zero, which returns nothing but zeros when it is read, and /dev/random, which returns random bytes. In this project, you will write a device driver to create a new device, /dev/e which returns the digits of everyone’s second favorite irrational number: e.

How It Will Work

For this project we will need to create three parts: the device driver, the special file /dev/e, and a test program to convince ourselves it works. The good news is that I have provided a function that will generate the first N digits of e for you. Your job is then to make a device driver, and a simple program named e_digits that takes two command-line arguments of which digits of e to return (start to end, zero indexed):

Implementation

Our device driver will be a character device (although it could be a block device since we can access individual bytes of e by address) that will implement a read function and return the appropriate substring of e back to the user.

Installation and Example

1. On thot.cs.pitt.edu, login and cd to your /u/SysLab/USERNAME directory.
2. tar xvfz ../shared/hello_dev.tar.gz
3. cd hello_dev
4. Open the Makefile with the editor of your choice. (E.g., pico Makefile)
5. We need to setup the path to compile against the proper version of the kernel. To do this, change the line:

KDIR  := /lib/modules/$(shell uname -r)/build

to

KDIR  := /u/SysLab/shared/linux-2.6.23.1

6. Build the kernel object. The ARCH=i386 is important because we are building a 32-bit kernel on a 64-bit machine.

7. Download and launch QEMU. For Windows users, you can just double click the qemu-win.bat that is supplied in the zipfile available on my website. Mac users should download and install Q.app and use the tty.qcow2 disk image provided in the main zipfile. Linux users are left to install qemu as appropriate.
8. When Linux boots under QEMU login using the root/root account (username/password).
9. We now need to download the kernel module you just built into the kernel using scp:

10. Load the driver using insmod:

11. We now need to make the device file in /dev. First, we need to find the MAJOR and MINOR numbers that identify the new device:

12. The output should be a number like 10:63. The 10 is the MAJOR and the 63 is the MINOR.
13. We use mknod to make a special file. The name will be hello and it is a character device. The 10 and the 63 correspond to the MAJOR and MINOR numbers we discovered above (if different, use the ones you saw.)

14. We can now read the data out of /dev/hello with a simple call to cat:

15. You should see “Hello, world!” which came from the driver. We can clean up by removing the device and unloading the module:

What to Do Next

The code for the example we went through comes from:

http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2007/07/05/devhelloworld-a-simple-introduction-to-device-drivers-under-linux.html?page=2

Read that while going through the source to get an idea of what the Module is doing. Start with the third section entitled “Hello, World! Using /dev/hello_world” and read up until the author starts describing udev rules; we are not using udev under QEMU.

When you have an idea of what is going on, make a new directory under your /u/SysLab/USERNAME directory called e_driver:

Copy and rename the hello_dev.c from the example, and copy over the Makefile. Edit the Makefile to build your new file. Change all the references of “hello” to “e_driver”.

The e generating function can be copied from the /u/SysLab/shared directory:

Your job is to make a read function that returns the appropriate substring of e back (starting at *ppos and stretching out count digits. Notice that the e.h code will give you all the digits from 2718 until some maximum you specify. You’ll need to make this work.

Building the Driver

To build any changes you have made, on thot in your e_driver directory, simply:

If you want to force a rebuild of everything you may want to remove the object files first:

Copying the Files to QEMU

From QEMU, you will need to download the driver that you just built.  Use scp to download the driver to a home directory (/root/ if root):

Loading the Driver into the Kernel in QEMU

As root (either by logging in or via su):

Making the /dev/e Device

Like in the example, we’ll need to determine the MAJOR and MINOR numbers for this particular driver.

and use those numbers to make the /dev/e file:

Unloading the Driver from the Kernel in QEMU

As root (either by logging in or via su):

Then you can remove the /dev/e file:

Implementing and Building the e_digit Program

Since thot is a 64-bit machine and QEMU emulates a 32-bit machine, we should build with the –m32 flag:

Running e_digit

We cannot run our e_digit program on thot.cs.pitt.edu because its kernel does not have the device driver loaded. However, we can test the program under QEMU once we have installed the new driver. We first need to download e_digit using scp as we did for the driver. However, we can just run it from our home directory without any installation necessary.

File Backups

One of the major contributions the university provides for the AFS filesystem is nightly backups. However, the /u/SysLab/ partition is not part of AFS space. Thus, any files you modify under your personal directory in /u/SysLab/ are not backed up. If there is a catastrophic disk failure, all of your work will be irrecoverably lost. As such, it is my recommendation that you:

Backup all the files you change under /u/SysLab to your ~/private/ directory frequently!

Loss of work not backed up is not grounds for an extension. You have been warned.

 

Hints and Notes

• printk() is the version of printf() you can use for debugging messages from the kernel.
• In the driver, you can use some standard C functions, but not all. They must be part of the kernel to work.
• In the e_digit program, you may use any of the C standard library functions.
• As root, typing poweroff in QEMU will shut it down cleanly.
• If the module crashes, it may become impossible to delete the file you created with mkdev in /dev. If that happens, just grab a new disk image and start over. It’s why we’re developing in a virtual machine as opposed to a real one.

Requirements and Submission

You need to submit:

• Your e_driver.c file and the Makefile
• Your well-commented e_digit program’s source

Make a tar.gz file named USERNAME-project4.tar.gz

Then copy your file to:

~jrmst106/submit/449/