Linux Driver Project

Linux Driver Project

[Rabee Al-Maqabi]

Hi,

I am looking for not yet supported piece of hardware to write a driver for
it. anyone can help?

Regards,
Rabee Al-Maqabi
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Linux Driver Project

[Javier Martinez Canillas]

On Wed, Apr 25, 2012 at 11:19 AM, Rabee Al-Maqabi
<rabee.almaqabi@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am looking for not yet supported piece of hardware to write a driver for
> it. anyone can help?
>
> Regards,
> Rabee Al-Maqabi

Hi Rabee,

Linux Device Drivers 3rd edition (LDD3) is a great book to learn how
to write Linux device drivers. The best thing about this book is that
teaches how to write device drivers for memory-based virtual devices,
which mean that you don't need any special hardware to run the example
drivers on your computer.

Fortunately the Linux internal API is not stable and that allows us to
improve the kernel every day. But this has the side effect that any
documentation about the Linux kernel quickly becomes obsolete.

A long time ago I updated the LDD3 examples so they could be compiled
and used on newer kernels, this was for academic purposes so my
students would be able to use that code.

Sadly I haven't had any time to update to more recent kernels so if
you want to work on Linux device drivers you can fork my tree [1] and
make the drivers work on recent kernels, I know that many people would
be happy (specially students).

[1]: https://github.com/martinezjavier/ldd3

Best regards,

-- 
Javier Mart?nez Canillas
(+34) 682 39 81 69
Barcelona, Spain

Linux Driver Project

[Rabee Al-Maqabi]

On Wed, Apr 25, 2012 at 8:26 PM, Javier Martinez Canillas <
martinez.javier@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 25, 2012 at 11:19 AM, Rabee Al-Maqabi
> <rabee.almaqabi@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I am looking for not yet supported piece of hardware to write a driver
> for
> > it. anyone can help?
> >
> > Regards,
> > Rabee Al-Maqabi
>
> Hi Rabee,
>
> Linux Device Drivers 3rd edition (LDD3) is a great book to learn how
> to write Linux device drivers. The best thing about this book is that
> teaches how to write device drivers for memory-based virtual devices,
> which mean that you don't need any special hardware to run the example
> drivers on your computer.
>
> Fortunately the Linux internal API is not stable and that allows us to
> improve the kernel every day. But this has the side effect that any
> documentation about the Linux kernel quickly becomes obsolete.
>
> A long time ago I updated the LDD3 examples so they could be compiled
> and used on newer kernels, this was for academic purposes so my
> students would be able to use that code.
>
> Sadly I haven't had any time to update to more recent kernels so if
> you want to work on Linux device drivers you can fork my tree [1] and
> make the drivers work on recent kernels, I know that many people would
> be happy (specially students).
>
> [1]: https://github.com/martinezjavier/ldd3
>
> Best regards,
>
> --
> Javier Mart?nez Canillas
> (+34) 682 39 81 69
> Barcelona, Spain
>

Hi Javier,

Thank you for your reply. Linux Device Drivers is indeed a great book. I
have read it in addition to Understanding the Linux Kernel and I have
experimented with my Linux box. At this point, I would like to have a
real-world experience and write a driver for a piece of hardware not yet
supported.

Best regards,

--
Rabee Al-Maqabi
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Linux Driver Project

[Javier Martinez Canillas]

On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 8:59 AM, Rabee Al-Maqabi
<rabee.almaqabi@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 25, 2012 at 8:26 PM, Javier Martinez Canillas
> <martinez.javier@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 25, 2012 at 11:19 AM, Rabee Al-Maqabi
>> <rabee.almaqabi@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > I am looking for not yet supported piece of hardware to write a driver
>> > for
>> > it. anyone can help?
>> >
>> > Regards,
>> > Rabee Al-Maqabi
>>
>> Hi Rabee,
>>
>> Linux Device Drivers 3rd edition (LDD3) is a great book to learn how
>> to write Linux device drivers. The best thing about this book is that
>> teaches how to write device drivers for memory-based virtual devices,
>> which mean that you don't need any special hardware to run the example
>> drivers on your computer.
>>
>> Fortunately the Linux internal API is not stable and that allows us to
>> improve the kernel every day. But this has the side effect that any
>> documentation about the Linux kernel quickly becomes obsolete.
>>
>> A long time ago I updated the LDD3 examples so they could be compiled
>> and used on newer kernels, this was for academic purposes so my
>> students would be able to use that code.
>>
>> Sadly I haven't had any time to update to more recent kernels so if
>> you want to work on Linux device drivers you can fork my tree [1] and
>> make the drivers work on recent kernels, I know that many people would
>> be happy (specially students).
>>
>> [1]: https://github.com/martinezjavier/ldd3
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> --
>> Javier Mart?nez Canillas
>> (+34) 682 39 81 69
>> Barcelona, Spain
>
>
> Hi Javier,
>
> Thank you for your reply. Linux Device Drivers is indeed a great book. I
> have read it in addition to Understanding the Linux Kernel and I have
> experimented with my Linux box. At this point, I would like to have a
> real-world experience and write a driver for a piece of hardware not yet
> supported.
>
> Best regards,
>
> --
> Rabee Al-Maqabi

Ok, in that case you can buy an IGEPv2 board
(http://www.isee.biz/products/processor-boards/igepv2-board) from
Spaniard company ISEE.

ISEE manufactures very powerful System-on-Chip ARM OMAP3 based boards.

They don't use the mainline kernel but instead have their own forked
v2.3.37 kernel and their own first stage bootloader (igep-x-loader).
ISEE code can be found here: http://git.isee.biz/

So a great project could be give complete support to this board on the
mainline kernel. IGEPv2 is one of the boards that Linaro uses as a
reference for OMAP3 to test their kernels and rootfs images.

I own one of these boards an in my free time I hack both the kernel
and the U-boot bootloader to properly support the IGEPv2, but  there
is a lot of work to do and I found everytime more hard to find free
time to work on this.

So if you want to join me on this project it would be great :-)

Best regards,

-- 
Javier Mart?nez Canillas
(+34) 682 39 81 69
Barcelona, Spain

Linux Driver Project

[Bjørn Mork]

Rabee Al-Maqabi <rabee.almaqabi@gmail.com> writes:

> Thank you for your reply. Linux Device Drivers is indeed a great book. I
> have read it in addition to Understanding the Linux Kernel and I have
> experimented with my Linux box. At this point, I would like to have a
> real-world experience and write a driver for a piece of hardware not yet
> supported.

How about a fingerprint scanner?  If you've got a modern laptop then
chances are good that you already own such a device.  And it's
most likely unsupported.  Some might say that's because it's useless :-)

Otherwise I'd recommend looking through your box of unused devices.  No
need to go out and buy anything if all you want is to write some
driver. 

Or see
http://www.linuxdriverproject.org/foswiki/bin/view/Main/DriversNeeded
if you are open to buying some new device for this project.

You won't find any datasheets or any other documentation, though...
Manufacturers smart enough to provide documentation usually get drivers
written for their devices in no time.  But some still hold it to
themselves.  Go figure.


Bj?rn

Linux Driver Project

[Bjørn Mork]

Bj?rn Mork <bjorn@mork.no> writes:

> How about a fingerprint scanner?  If you've got a modern laptop then
> chances are good that you already own such a device.  And it's
> most likely unsupported.  Some might say that's because it's useless :-)

Sorry, please ignore this.  I should have read
http://www.linuxdriverproject.org/foswiki/bin/view/Main/NoLinuxDriverNeeded
first.


Bj?rn