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 ???