Linux Kernel & Device Driver Programming

COP5641 Spring 2013

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References

Textbooks

	Title: Linux Kernel Development (3rd Edition) Author: Robert Love Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional ISBN 978-0672329463 Hard copy available from Amazon.com.
	Title: Linux Device Drivers, 3rd Edition Authors: Jonathan Corbet, Allessandro Rubini & Greg Kroah-Hartman Publisher: O'Reilly ISBN 0-596-00590-3 http://www.lwn.net/Kernel/LDD3

Kernel Debugging and Development Resources

The following resource guides have been put together by members of the Spring 2013 class:

Student Contributor	Tool Name	Synopsis	Notes	Other References
Patrick Tully	ctags	Source code indexer. Indexes source code for fast lookups of methods, variables, structs, macros, etc.	class presentation (pptx)	http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Browsing_programs_with_tags http://ctags.sourceforge.net/ctags.html
Shuanglong Zhang	vim + ctags + cscope	vim - text editor ctags and cscope- generates tags for functions and macros, used for navigating code	class presentation (odp)	http://www.ctags.sourceforge.net http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/cscope/files
Michael Backherms	git	Speedy tool for distributed revision control and source code management	class presentation (pptx)	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_(software) http://git-scm.com/book/en/Getting-Started http://lwn.net/Articles/160191/
Steven Bronson	static analysis tools (Frama-C)	Frama-C is a static analysis tool for C code. Propositions are specified in ACSL (ANSI/ISO C Specification Language). There are a variety of plugins available to handle different aspects of static analysis (value analysis, slicing, etc.).	Installation: 'aptitude install frama-c' -- Install frama-c-gui if you want a GUI. Example: A more accessible example than the one I showed in my presentation is available on their website. Their walkthrough uses GUI features to interactively submit queries about the code. Kernel Notes:You can build the kernel using 'gcc -save-temps' to generate .i files in the source root, then run frama-c on them: frama-c *.i . For programs with a simpler build system, you can use frama-c directly as you would a C compiler (without relying on another compiler to provide pre-processed source files).	home page ACSL description sample program showed in my presentation another example I didn't show a very good presentation they provided, but it assumes some familiarity with theorem provers and axiomatic semantics and moved too quickly for people with no background in it
Britton Dennis	Doxygen	Generates reference manuals in HTML, LATEX, RTF, PostScript, PDF, and man pages. Generates code structure from source files.	class presentation: (pptx), (pdf) Demo: (mpg)	Brief introduction Manual List of projects that use it
Martin Brown	kgdb	Remote gdb for the kernel	class presentation (pdf)	(See slide 23 for complete list)
Ben Buzbee	kexec, kdump, and crash	Tools for analyzing kernel crashes	class presentation (pptx)	Crash whitepaper Tutorial on system setup Man page - kdump Man page - kexec Man page - crash

Linux Kernel

General Interest

The Open Group's Single Unix Specification API search engine. This is the API implemented by Linux and other Unix-like operating systems.
Definition of "cargo cult programming". Cargo cult programming can be a big problem with device driver code.
GCC Inline Assembly Howto. You will run into some bits of assembly code as you read through the architecture-dependent portions of the kernel sources.

Good Books on Operating Systems

Andrew Tanenbaum and Maarten van Steen, Distributed Systems Principles and Paradigms
Mukesh Singhal and Niranjan Shivaratri, Advanced Concepts in Operating Systems
Tanenbaum, Modern Operating Systems (background)
Silberschatz, Galvin, Gagne, Operating System Concepts (background)
Gary Nutt, Operating Systems: A Modern Perspective (background)
Gary Nutt, Kernel Projects for Linux (background)
Kernighan, Ritchie, The C Programming Language (background)
Maxwell, Linux Core Kernel Commentary (background)