Linux kernel, Software

Linux block device driver

My article about character devices is quite popular, so I decided to write something about another big class of devices in Linux – block devices. This type of device is used to access various storage hardware types – hard disks, SSD, etc. Here I want to describe blk-mq based devices in modern (>= 5.0) Linux kernels and a previous type…

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Linux kernel, Linux system development, Software

C++ in Linux kernel

Linux kernel is written in C (and in Assembly in platform-specific portions) language. C language is the only language allowed to write kernel modules. And there is no problem in most cases. But sometimes, some stranger things may be required. Let’s see how to use C++ for the Linux kernel modules.

Linux system development

Simple Linux character device driver

A character device is one of the simplest ways to communicate with a module in the Linux kernel. These devices are presented as special files in a /dev directory and support direct reading and writing of any data, byte by byte, like a stream. Actually, most of the pseudo-devices in /dev are character devices: serial ports, modems, sound, and video…

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Allsky camera, Electronics, Linux system development

Connecting HTU21D temperature/humidity sensor to the Raspberry PI using simple C i2c interface

Previously in my projects, I’m always used well-known DHT22 (AM2302) temperature/humidity sensors. But I found that these sensors are not very stable and subject to hung. In my case, this device is worked for about two weeks and then stops responding until the power is rebooted. This is absolutely unacceptable on some distant and autonomous devices. After some googling, I…

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Linux kernel, Linux system development, Networking

Monitoring Linux networking state using netlink

Once in my work, I needed to monitor all changes in the Linux networking subsystem: adding or deleting IP addresses, routes, etc. Maybe the best way to do this is to use socket-based Netlink technology. Using Netlink, we can “subscribe” to some network-related notifications from the kernel. It’s also possible to send commands to the network stack and change the…

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