Linux Hardware Management
2010 Kryazhev Sergey
Agenda
• Traditional UNIX h/w support
• UDEV
• HAL
• What's next ???
Devices on UNIX
UNIX isolates user and applications from
hardware.
Under UNIX almost every hardware device treated
as a file (Device file).
Device file allows software to interact with device
driver using standart system calls.
/dev directory contains device files.
Devices on UNIX
Device files:
• Character devices. Relate to devices through
which the system transmits data one character
at a time.
/dev/ttyS0
• Block devices. Relate to devices through which
the system moves data in the form of blocks.
/dev/sda
o Pseudo devices. Do not have correspond
physical devices.
/dev/null
Devices on UNIX
Each device file has major and minor numbers.
• Major number identifies the device driver.
• Minor number identifies a particular device.
brw-r----- 1 root disk 8, 0 Май 14 2008 hda
brw-r----- 1 root disk 8, 1 Май 14 2008 hda1
crw-rw---- 1 root uucp 4, 64 Май 14 2008 ttyS0
crw-rw---- 1 root uucp 4, 65 Май 14 2008 ttyS1
Devices on UNIX
How to create device file ?
mknod filename [b] [c] major minor
How to find major number ?
/proc/devices - list of character and block devices
sorted by major number
Minor number ???
Depends on particular driver.
Static /dev issues
• Two many device files
• Deficiency of the major and minor numbers
• Ambiguity
devfs
devfs is a specific implementation of a device
file system on Unix-like operating systems,
used for presenting device files.
Totally in kernel.
Present on Linux till 2.6.15
UDEV
udev - userspace device management
udev provides a dynamic device directory containing
only the files for actually present devices.
Runs as a daemon udevd
udev creates device files according to naming rules.
/lib/udev/rules.d (/etc/udev/rules.d/)
UDEV
Receives directly from the kernel using netlink interface.
Uses sysfs (/sys directory) to get device attributes.
UDEV
How to write naming rule file?
There are two kind of keys, match and assignment keys.
Examples:
KERNEL=="sd[0-9]*",NAME="flash/%n"
KERNEL=="sd[a-z]",PROGRAM="check_cd.sh %M %m",
NAME="%c{1}", SYMLINK="cdrom"
KERNEL=="lp*", SUBSYSTEMS=="usb",
ATTRS{idVendor}=="03f0", ATTRS{product}=="hp
LaserJet 1000", SYMLINK+="hplj1000-%n", RUN+="/
usr/sbin/hplj1000"
D-Bus
• A message bus system (IPC)
• Language independent (C/C++, Python,
Perl, etc)
• Simple way for applications to talk to one
• Provides a system and session bus
D-Bus
Acts as a user-space daemon (bus).
Bus types:
• system
• session
Message types:
• Method calls
• Responces
• Signals
D-Bus
• Service(Application) are found by name
org.gnome.Rhytmbox
• A service can export multiple objects
/org/gnome/Rhytmbox
• Each object implements at least one interface
org.gnome.Rhythmbox.Player
• Interface provides methods
next()
HAL
Hardware Abstraction Layer for UNIX-like
systems.
• A library for enumerating the physical hardware in a
system
• A toolkit for enumerating the physical and logical
devices in a system
• A platform for discovering and configuring hardware
HAL
• HAL is a daemon responsible for discovering,
enumerating and access to hardware on the
computer.
• It aims to allow desktop applications to discover and
use the hardware of the host system through a
simple, portable and abstract API
• Applications communicate with HAL through the
D-Bus IPC mechanism.
HAL
On a formal level, a device object is comprised by
• UDI
This is an identifier, the Unique Device Identifer, that is unique
for a device object , no other device object can have the same UDI
at the same time.
• Properties
Each device object got a set of properties which are key/value
pairs. The key is an ASCII string while the value.
UDI = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/disk1'
|---block.device /dev/sda1
|---block.is_volume 1
|---info.capabilities volume,block
|---volume.label WORK `
|---volume.uuid 0717-AD77
HAL
HAL
Device Information Files (.fdi files) - mechanism
for associating information with devices.
How to use HAL ?
• DBUS
• libHal
HAL hardware management overview
HAL Deprecation.
HAL is in maintenance mode - no new
features are added.
All future development focuses on
• Software/DeviceKit-disks
• Software/DeviceKit-power
• NetworkManager
• PulseAudio
• udev
DeviceKit
DeviceKit – a better HAL
•Designed to deliver same features as HAL
•Provide a D-Bus based API
•Parallel installable with HAL
Another DBUS object
org.freedesktop.DeviceKit
DeviceKit
DeviceKit-disks
Storage Subsystem Daemon
• DeviceKit-disks
• Consumes udev information
• Started on demand
• High-level API w/ progress reporting
Mount, Unmount, Eject, Poll, Fsck
Partitioning, Formatting, FS Label
ATA SMART monitoring
MD-RAID (Create, Start/Stop, Check, …)
Drive spindown
DeviceKit-disks
Comments ???
