Hello I am working on an embedded linux device with a usb port that uses the g_ether driver for usb networking.
When the usb plug is connected the dmesg output is:
g_ether gadget: full speed config #2: RNDIS
When the usb cable is unplugged no message is written to dmesg.
Using C how can I listen for the connect/disconnect events?
The embedded linux OS does not have any extras. There is no dbus daemon or hotplug helper script. I am not even sure if these would of been helpful.
If you want everything in your single process, you'll have to use libudev to either get events from udevd or directly from the kernel.
Seeing that it might be a problem to use libudev in your application (lack of documentation?), an alternative is to use the udevadm program, which can:
report device events after being processed by udevd (udevadm monitor --udev --property),
report devive events directly from the kernel (udevadm monitor --kernel --property), and
dump udevd's database of current devices (but not the kernel's!) (udevadm info --query all --export-db)
udevadm is part of the udev package, but shouldn't need udevd if you only use it to report kernel events. You can use it by having your process spawn it and parse its standard output (but you'll have to launch it via stdbuf -o L ).
Either way, it'll probably be a lot of work. I've already implemented a lot of this in my NCD programming language, including monitoring of USB devices. You might want to take a look at NCD; it's useful for a lot of configuration tasks, and handles hotplugging well. For example, this NCD program will print USB device events to standard output:
process main {
sys.watch_usb() watcher;
println(watcher.event_type, " ", watcher.devname, " ", watcher.vendor_id, ":", watcher.model_id);
watcher->nextevent();
}
This will make NCD print something like that (with an initial added event for any USB device that was already plugged in):
added /dev/bus/usb/002/045 0409:0059
added /dev/bus/usb/002/046 046d:c313
added /dev/bus/usb/002/047 046d:c03e
added /dev/bus/usb/002/048 0557:2008
removed /dev/bus/usb/002/048 0557:2008
You can also use NCD just for this, and parse this standard output - which is much easier to work with than messing with udevadm directly.
Note that NCD itself uses udevadm, and it does require udevd to be running; but why is that a problem anyway? (with some work this dependency could be removed)
You can use libudev or parse udevadm output as #Ambroz Bizjak suggested. Although, I advise against adding an additional process (stdbuf) and language (NCD), just to parse udevadm's output.
A step between plain libudev and parsing output is modifying the udevadm sources. This solution reduces the needed resources and skips the parsing process altogether. When you look at the udev package, you will find the sources for udevd and udevadm in the udev directory.
There, you have the main routine in udevadm.c and the source for udevadm monitor in udevadm-monitor.c. Every event received will be printed through print_device(). This is where you insert your code.
If you're tight on memory, you can strip off unneeded code for control, info, settle, test-builtin, test and trigger. On my system (Ubuntu 12.04), this reduces the size of udevadm by about 75%.
Unfortunately, there is no udev event produced on connect/disconnect on gadget side, so it is almost impossible to monitor these events.
You could monitor kernel messages (dmesg). It seems to be a stupid idea. Or watch some files in sysfs. Maybe the better way is kernel patching.
update: I do not understand why this answer have got many negative votes.
Maybe some people mix USB host part (which produces UDEV events on device plug/unplug) and USB device/gadget part (which doesn't produce such events)
If your linux host works as a gadget (USB device which is connected to some USB host) there is no good way to catch plug/unplug events.
Proof: message by Greg Kroah-Hartman
another copy if previous link is down
Related
I like to ask: do applications like Apache Webserver on Linux, Wireshark, and software like network tools and other real world applications that have to do work with network connection, do they need kernel module, If no then is it to what extent a normal practice that applications do have kernel module. Like when I install some application then kernel module installs with it. I know when I enable IIS server from windows, specific kernel module do get enabled that does IIS work. (don't know why that OS does not implement raw sockets api so developer can use)
My question: Some time ago I was trying to make tcp server using raw socket and found that it was something not that easy since kernel does all sorts of things like (correct me if I am wrong)
Checking for spoofed packets
adding its own headers info inside packets
So I am about to Make an application that does following things in kernel
Configuring NIC card like reading card registers and reporting back
shutting down Network Interface
Starting Network interface
Reading packets from DMA RX and reporting average number of packets received to detect DOS attacks and if detects DOS then shutting down specific Interface/ like reporting counter for packets
And the Application will just act as a command controller. Like a user can use the application to make changes specified in above 4 points.
So I like to ask you is it common practice for applications to have a kernel module and why this is a resorted option if someone like to choose embedded kernel module in applications,
Above things are for learning purposes.
No. Linux programs very rarely have kernel modules. Kernel modules are normally for hardware device drivers.
If a program does need a certain kernel module, it will tell you to install the module yourself. It won't include a copy of the module.
It sounds like you want to make your own driver that replaces the normal driver for your network card. It's possible, but nobody does it. If you want to shut down or start up a network interface, there is already a way to do that without writing your own kernel module. If you want to count the packets, there's already a way to do that. If you want to see all the packets, there's already a way to do that.
There's no way to read card registers already - that's because every card has different registers. But whatever you want to do with those registers, there's probably a way to do it already.
I would like to write a FreeBSD kernel module that could accept some arbitrary interrupts and upon receiving these interrupt, output some data to an arbitrary device. Currently, I'm facing several issues:
How would I acquire interrupts through a specific IRQ? On Linux there is the request_irq() call but it seems there's no similar API for FreeBSD... Say, I want to be able to detect all the keyboard interrupt through my kernel module (the keyboard is on irq1), how would I do that? (On Linux it is possible through calling free_irq(1, NULL) and request_irq(1, ...), correct me if I'm wrong though).
Is it possible at all to write to a device file under /dev through a kernel module? I've read the question Example for reading text files in FreeBSD kernel module; following this example I was able to do read/write on regular files, but not a device file under /dev (the "device" was a pseudo "echo device", the classical one used in char device examples). I was able to open the file though.
I do understand that it is considered as a bad practice to do file I/O's in kernel, but I could not think any other way... If anyone has a better solution please tell me. (i.e. write to a device through its device_t node?)
The reason I was doing this in a kernel is that I really need all interrupts to be hit, and running it in the user space has the risk of missing interrupts due to kernel threads preempting user threads (the interrupts could come very frequent).
I would also appreciate if anyone could provide me with some other ideas on how to implement this program (basically, the idea is a kernel module that could do the job of a microcontroller...)
You can register an IRQ handler with bus_setup_intr.
Normally, what one would do in this situation is to have a driver collect the interrupts and any other useful data, and export it through a device, and then a (real-time maybe?) process in user-space can read from one device, do whatever it needs to do, and write to the other device.
I am writing a block device driver for linux.
It is crucial to support unsafe removal (like usb unplug). In other words, I want to be able to shut down the block device without creating memory leaks / crashes even while applications hold open files or performing IO on my device or if it is mounted with file system.
Surely unsafe removal would possibly corrupt the data which is stored on the device, but that is something the customers are willing to accept.
Here is the basics steps I have done:
Upon unsafe removal, block device spawns a zombie which will automatically fail all new IO requests, ioctls, etc. The zombie substitutes make_request function and changes other function pointers so kernel would not need the original block device.
Block device waits for all IO which is running now (and use my internal resources) to complete
It does del_gendisk(); however this does not really free's kernel resources because they are still used.
Block device frees itself.
The zombie keeps track of the amount of opens() and close() on the block device and when last close() occurs it automatically free() itself
Result - I am not leaking the blockdevice, request queue, gen disk, etc.
However this is a very difficult mechanism which requires a lot of code and is extremely prone to race conditions. I am still struggling with corner cases, per_cpu counting of io's and occasional crashes
My questions: Is there a mechanism in the kernel which already does that? I searched manuals, literature, and countless source code examples of block device drivers, ram disks and USB drivers but could not find a solution. I am sure, that I am not the first one to encounter this problem.
Edited:
I learned from the answer below, by Dave S about the hot-plug mechanism but it does not help me. I need a solution of how to safely shut down the driver and not how to notify the kernel that driver was shut down.
Example of one problem:
blk_queue_make_request() registers a function through which my block devices serves IO. In that function I increment per_cpu counters to know how many IO's are in flight by each cpu. However there is a race condition of function being called but counter was not increased yet, so my device thinks there are 0 IO's, releases the resources and then IO comes and crashes the system. Hotplug will not assist me with this problem as far as I understand
About a decade ago I used hotplugging on a software driver project to safely add/remove an external USB disk drive which interfaced to an embedded Linux driven Set-top Box.
For your project you will also need to write a hot plug. A hotplug is a program which is used by the kernel to notify user mode software when some significant (usually hardware-related) events take place. An example is when a USB device has just been plugged in or removed.
From Linux 2.6 kernel onwards, hotplugging has been integrated with the driver model core so that any bus or class can report hotplug events when devices are added or removed.
In the kernel tree, /usr/src/linux/Documentation/usb/hotplug.txt has basic information about USB Device Driver API support for hotplugging.
See also this link, and GOOGLE as well for examples and documentation.
http://linux-hotplug.sourceforge.net/
Another very helpful document which discusses hotplugging with block devices can be found here:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/pending/hotplug.txt
This document also gives a good example of illustrating hotplug events handling:
Below is a table of the main variables you should be aware of:
Hotplug event variables:
Every hotplug event should provide at least the following variables:
ACTION
The current hotplug action: "add" to add the device, "remove" to remove it.
The 2.6.22 kernel can also generate "change", "online", "offline", and
"move" actions.
DEVPATH
Path under /sys at which this device's sysfs directory can be found.
SUBSYSTEM
If this is "block", it's a block device. Anything other subsystem is
either a char device or does not have an associated device node.
The following variables are also provided for some devices:
MAJOR and MINOR
If these are present, a device node can be created in /dev for this device.
Some devices (such as network cards) don't generate a /dev node.
DRIVER
If present, a suggested driver (module) for handling this device. No
relation to whether or not a driver is currently handling the device.
INTERFACE and IFINDEX
When SUBSYSTEM=net, these variables indicate the name of the interface
and a unique integer for the interface. (Note that "INTERFACE=eth0" could
be paired with "IFINDEX=2" because eth0 isn't guaranteed to come before lo
and the count doesn't start at 0.)
FIRMWARE
The system is requesting firmware for the device.
If the driver is creating device it could be possible to suddenly delete it:
echo 1 > /sys/block/device-name/device/delete where device-name may be sde, for example,
or
echo 1 > /sys/class/scsi_device/h:c:t:l/device/delete, where h is the HBA number, c is the channel on the HBA, t is the SCSI target ID, and l is the LUN.
In my case, it perfectly simulates scenarios for crushing writes and recovery of data from journaling.
Normally to safely remove device more steps is needed so deleting device is a pretty drastic event for data and could be useful for testing :)
please consider this:
https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/5/html/online_storage_reconfiguration_guide/removing_devices
http://www.sysadminshare.com/2012/09/add-remove-single-disk-device-in-linux.html
I'm working with a USB device in Linux and have written a library to control this device.
Without going in to TOO many details, the device uses a standard UART protocol, so all I have to do is open a serial connection with open, configure the relevant parameters like baud rate, stop bit, parity, etc, etc, and start bit-banging registers.
The library works fine, however, it its hard coded to assume that this device is /dev/ttyUSB0. That is, this is what I pass to open. If open fails, I exit.
What I would like to do is detect that this device is present, regardless if it's /dev/ttyUSB0, /dev/ttyUSB1, etc. And even detect if there are multiple of these devices connected.
I can write code to poll certain registers on the device that will return serial number, product ID, etc, so I can detect that what is on the other end of the USB is indeed my device... but how can I find a list of connected USB devices, again, in native C?
OR is there a more elegant way of doing this, such as interfacing with it's kernel module, or something? I can provide the USB driver it actually uses, but I'm sort of lost when looking through the code.
Thanks for any insight.
The elegant method is to use udev to create a descriptive symlink for your device when it is connected. Add a line something like this to /etc/udev/rules.d
SUBSYSTEM=="tty",ENV{ID_MODEL}=="My_FlowMeter_Model",ENV{ID_USB_INTERFACE_NUM}=="00",SYMLINK+="flowmeter",RUN+="/bin/su pi -c /home/pi/record-flowmeter.sh
That's a very slightly modified version of an actual udev rule my research group uses to collect data from USB devices connected to battery-powered Raspberry Pi boxes. It also runs a script automatically, which has commands like
stty -F /dev/flowmeter 500000 -ixon -echo -icanon
If you want to know the "real" device filename, you could do readlink /dev/flowmeter. But for most uses you can just use the link: fd = open("/dev/flowmeter"); (or pass it as an argument to your program)
Naturally you should replace flowmeter with a short name for your own device, as well as updating the ID_MODEL based on the output from lsusb.
Multiple devices are a bit more complicated, but there are plenty of examples of udev rules out there.
On Linux, the information you are looking for is in the /sys filesystem, specifically under /sys/bus/usb/devices. From there you will need to search the filesystem to find your device.
For example, I just plugged a USB-serial dongle into my Linux (kernel version 2.6.35) and the device appeared under /sys/bus/usb/devices/2.1-8. Here, I am able to find that this is my device by vendorId:deviceId by checking the files idVendor and idProduct. Here, there is a directory named 2.1-8:1:0 which contains a directory named ttyUSB0.
Obviously, to find your device you will need code (or a shell script using find) to scan the directory tree, looking for the right entries.
I borrowed from this gentleman in order to request the signal strength of a wireless connection on my device. I would also like to use ioctl to get the operstate and whether or not there's up/down stream information flowing over the connection.
Basically, I'm attempting to modernize the look of this device, adding to it real-time status icons of link operability, quality, and activity. Originally, I was using popen() to cat and parse /proc/net/wireless and /sys/class/net/wlan0/operstate. The only issue was that occasionally that would fail (I assume because the OS had locked the file) so it was causing crashes.
So, my questions are two:
One, can I use ioctl in a way similar to the one described in the link above to monitor the operstate and connection activity? The information I could find pertaining to this was only for ifreq, not iwreq.
Two, it occurred to me while writing this that I should probably just have the kernel telling my application when the status of the wireless device changes, shouldn't I? I can't imagine various desktops' system trays have polling loops in them.
Actual Two: is there a way to have the kernel feed information into my application about operstate, link quality, and link activity in real-time?
Thank you in advance. =)