View Source: DeviceDriver - Waikato Linux Users Group

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A small piece of [Software] that lets the OperatingSystem communicate with a specific piece of [Hardware].

[DeviceDriver]s have caused considerable soul-searching in the OpenSource world as they are the lowest level, most platform dependent pieces of software in many systems and many [Hardware] makers only provide [Binary] [DeviceDriver]s for their [Hardware] in order to avoid giving the competition insights into how the hardware works.

[DeviceDriver]s are represented in the FileSystem under <tt>/dev</tt>. They get put here by mknod(1), DevFs or [UDev]. The current preferred method is [UDev].

A DeviceDriver is either for a BlockDevice or a CharacterDevice and has a major and a minor device number. The device numbers are preassigned and listed in the LinuxKernel source in <tt>Documentation/devices.txt</tt>

13 pages link to DeviceDriver:

BinaryDriver
Module
pci/10de:0150
pci/104c:9066
KernelSpace
Video4Linux
Driver
CharacterDevice
Benq3300/4300ScannerSetup
TheHurd
NonDisclosureAgreement
BlockDevice
TFTPInstallHowto

Last edited on Friday, September 23, 2005 4:02:57 pm by IanMcDonald

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