CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linux-kernellinux-device-driver
hago
hago

Reputation: 317

setting up a development environment for Linux device driver

I am trying to read the LDD book by Jonathan Corbet, Greg Kroah-Hartman, Alessandro Rubini and implement the sample modules. So to begin with, I tried setting up a development system. Installed Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial. Now, I just created a directory and wrote the hello_world module with a Makefile. Got it built and run it, verified the dmesg logs.

Is that all the development setup? I searched online and found articles where they are asking to download and compile the kernel, use a VM to boot the kernel. What is the reason? Or what am I missing?

Is there any better article which clarifies this?

Thanks hago

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1118

Answers (2)

a.saurabh
a.saurabh

Reputation: 1231

You can try one more way:

  1. If you have native windows, install virtual machine software such as Virtual box. Get your favourite Linux distribution (no bias, just an example - Ubuntu) and install it through Virtual box.

  2. Get the latest kernel (or of your choice) from kernel.org.

  3. Choose the platform you want to build this kernel for. E.g arm64 or x86.

  4. In case you do not have real boards (e.g RPi for arm variant), you can use qemu-arm64 or qemu-x86 to run your compiled kernel. This is also a good option when users do not have the boards.

  5. Another good use case for using qemu for the newbie kernel developers is even they write some modules which crashes, then the qemu instance is crashed so no harm.

I think using qemu is a good option for people who starts to learn kernel programming and also want to try writing some of their modules and do not intend to purchase hardware at this point of time.

Upvotes: 1

Duong
Duong

Reputation: 21

It depends on your target. For your case, you have made a kernel driver for your computer (it run Linux kernel). But if you want to develop a Kernel driver for another target like Rasberry Pi, ARM board, X86-X64 board, ... you must learn to compile, edit Kernel config, boot Kernel image, ... because each target has different kernel versions. You can refer to this training for more detail: https://bootlin.com/training/embedded-linux/

Upvotes: 1

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