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13. Individual Modules

In this chapter, I document individual LKMs. Where possible, I do this by reference to more authoritative documentation for the particular LKM (probably maintained by the same person who maintains the LKM code).

13.1. Executable Interpreters

You must have at least one executable interpreter bound into the base kernel, because in order to load an executable interpreter LKM, you have to run an executable and something has to interpret that executable.

That one bound-in executable interpreter is almost certainly the ELF interpreter, since virtually all executables in a Linux system are ELF.

Historical note: Before ELF existed on Linux (c. 1995), the normal executable format was a.out. For a while, part ELF/part a.out systems were common. Some still exist.

13.2. Block Device Drivers

13.2.1. floppy: floppy disk driver

This is the device driver for floppy disks. You need this in order to access a floppy disk in any way.

This LKM is documented in the file README.fd in the linux/drivers/block directory of the Linux source tree. For detailed up to date information refer directly to this file.

Note that if you boot (or might boot) from a floppy disk or with a root filesystem on a floppy disk, you must have this driver bound into the base kernel, because your system will need it before it has a chance to insert the LKM.

Example:
  
  modprobe floppy 'floppy="daring two_fdc 0,thinkpad 0x8,fifo_depth"'

There is only one LKM parameter: floppy. But it contains many subparameters. The reason for this unusual parameter format is to be consistent with the way you would specify the same things in the kernel boot parameters if the driver were bound into the base kernel.

The value of floppy is a sequence of blank-delimited words. Each of those words is one of the following sequences of comma-delimited words:

asus_pci

Sets the bit mask of allowed drives to allow only units 0 and 1. Obsolete, as this is the default setting anyways

daring

Tells the floppy driver that you have a well behaved floppy controller. This allows more efficient and smoother operation, but may fail on certain controllers. This may speed up certain operations.

0,daring

Tells the floppy driver that your floppy controller should be used with caution.

one_fdc

Tells the floppy driver that you have only floppy controller (default).

address,two_fdc

Tells the floppy driver that you have two floppy controllers. The second floppy controller is assumed to be at address. This option is not needed if the second controller is at address 0x370, and if you use the 'cmos' option

two_fdc

Like above, but with default address

thinkpad

Tells the floppy driver that you have an IBM Thinkpad model notebook computer. Thinkpads use an inverted convention for the disk change line.

0,thinkpad

Tells the floppy driver that you don't have a Thinkpad.

nodma

Tells the floppy driver not to use DMA for data transfers. This is needed on HP Omnibooks, which don't have a workable DMA channel for the floppy driver. This option is also useful if you frequently get "Unable to allocate DMA memory" messages. Indeed, DMA memory needs to be continuous in physical memory, and is thus harder to find, whereas non-DMA buffers may be allocated in virtual memory. However, I advise against this if you have an FDC without a FIFO (8272A or 82072). 82072A and later are OK). You also need at least a 486 to use nodma. If you use nodma mode, I suggest you also set the FIFO threshold to 10 or lower, in order to limit the number of data transfer interrupts.

If you have a FIFO-able FDC, the floppy driver automatically falls back on non DMA mode if it can't find any DMA-able memory. If you want to avoid this, explicitly specify "yesdma".

omnibook

Same as nodma.

yesdma

Tells the floppy driver that a workable DMA channel is available (the default).

nofifo

Disables the FIFO entirely. This is needed if you get "Bus master arbitration error" messages from your Ethernet card (or from other devices) while accessing the floppy.

fifo

Enables the FIFO (default)

threshold,fifo_depth

Sets the FIFO threshold. This is mostly relevant in DMA mode. If this is higher, the floppy driver tolerates more interrupt latency, but it triggers more interrupts (i.e. it imposes more load on the rest of the system). If this is lower, the interrupt latency should be lower too (faster processor). The benefit of a lower threshold is fewer interrupts.

To tune the fifo threshold, switch on over/underrun messages using 'floppycontrol --messages'. Then access a floppy disk. If you get a huge amount of "Over/Underrun - retrying" messages, then the fifo threshold is too low. Try with a higher value, until you only get an occasional Over/Underrun.

The value must be between 0 and 0xf, inclusive.

As you insert and remove the LKM to try different values, remember to redo the 'floppycontrol --messages' every time you insert the LKM. You shouldn't normally have to tune the fifo, because the default (0xa) is reasonable.

drive,type,cmos

Sets the CMOS type of drive to type. This is mandatory if you have more than two floppy drives (only two can be described in the physical CMOS), or if your BIOS uses non-standard CMOS types. The CMOS types are:

(Note: there are two valid types for ED drives. This is because 5 was initially chosen to represent floppy tapes, and 6 for ED drives. AMI ignored this, and used 5 for ED drives. That's why the floppy driver handles both)

unexpected_interrupts

Print a warning message when an unexpected interrupt is received. (default behavior)

no_unexpected_interrupts

Don't print a message when an unexpected interrupt is received. This is needed on IBM L40SX laptops in certain video modes. (There seems to be an interaction between video and floppy. The unexpected interrupts only affect performance, and can safely be ignored.)

L40SX

Same as no_unexpected_interrupts.

broken_dcl

Don't use the disk change line, but assume that the disk was changed whenever the device node is reopened. Needed on some boxes where the disk change line is broken or unsupported. This should be regarded as a stopgap measure, indeed it makes floppy operation less efficient due to unneeded cache flushings, and slightly more unreliable. Please verify your cable, connection and jumper settings if you have any DCL problems. However, some older drives, and also some laptops are known not to have a DCL.

debug

Print debugging messages

messages

Print informational messages for some operations (disk change notifications, warnings about over and underruns, and about autodetection)

silent_dcl_clear

Uses a less noisy way to clear the disk change line (which doesn't involve seeks). Implied by daring.

nr,irq

Tells the driver to expect interrupts on IRQ nr instead of the conventional IRQ 6.

nr,dma

Tells the driver to use DMA channel nr instead of the conventional DMA channel 2.

slow

Use PS/2 stepping rate: PS/2 floppies have much slower step rates than regular floppies. It's been recommended that take about 1/4 of the default speed in some more extreme cases.

mask,allowed_drive_mask

Sets the bitmask of allowed drives to mask. By default, only units 0 and 1 of each floppy controller are allowed. This is done because certain non-standard hardware (ASUS PCI motherboards) mess up the keyboard when accessing units 2 or 3. This option is somewhat obsoleted by the 'cmos' option.

all_drives

Sets the bitmask of allowed drives to all drives. Use this if you have more than two drives connected to a floppy controller.

13.2.5. rd: ramdisk device driver

A ramdisk is a block device whose storage is composed of system memory (real memory; not virtual). You can use it like a very fast disk device and also in circumstances where you need a device, but don't have traditional hardware devices to play with.

A common example of the latter is for a rescue system -- a system you use to diagnose and repair your real system. Since you don't want to mess with your real disks, you run off ramdisks. You might load data into these ramdisks from external media such as floppy disks.

Sometimes, you have your boot loader (e.g. lilo) create a ramdisk and load it with data (perhaps from a floppy disk). Of course, if you do this, you cannot use the LKM version of the ramdisk driver because the driver will have to be in the kernel at boot time.

A ramdisk is actually conceptually simple in Linux. Disk devices operate through memory because of the buffer cache. The only difference with a ramdisk is that you never actually get past the buffer cache to a real device. This is because with a ramdisk, 1) when you first access a particular block, Linux just assumes it is all zeroes; and 2) the device's buffer cache blocks are never written to the device, ergo never stolen for use with other devices. This means reads and writes are always to the buffer cache and never reach the device.

There is additional information about ramdisks in the file Documentation/ramdisk.txt in the Linux source tree.

Example:
  modprobe rd

There are no module parameters that you can supply to the LKM, but if you bind the module into the base kernel, there are kernel parameters you can pass to it. See BootPrompt-HOWTO.

13.3. SCSI Drivers

Detailed information about SCSI drivers is in SCSI-2.4-HOWTO.

Linux's SCSI function is implemented in three layers, and there are LKMs for all of them.

In the middle is the mid-level driver or SCSI core. This consists of the scsi_mod LKM. It does all those things that are common among SCSI devices regardless of what SCSI adapter you use and what class of device (disk, scanner, CD-ROM drive, etc.) it is.

There is a low-level driver for each kind of SCSI adapter -- typically, a different driver for each brand. For example, the low-level driver for Advansys adapters (made by the company which is now Connect.com) is named advansys. (If you are comparing ATA (aka IDE) and SCSI disk devices, this is a major difference -- ATA is simple and standard enough that one driver works with all adapters from all companies. SCSI is less standard and as a result you should have less confidence in any particular adapter being perfectly compatible with your system).

High-level drivers present to the rest of the kernel an interface appropriate to a certain class of devices. The SCSI high-level driver for tape devices, st, for example, has ioctls to rewind. The high-level SCSI driver for CD-ROM drives, sr, does not.

Note that you rarely need a high-level driver specific to a certain brand of device. At this level, there is little room for one brand to be distinguishable from another.

One SCSI high-level driver that deserves special mention is sg. This driver, called the "SCSI generic" driver, is a fairly thin layer that presents a rather raw representation of the SCSI mid-level driver to the rest of the kernel. User space programs that operate through the SCSI generic driver (because they access device special files whose major number is the one registered by sg (to wit, 21)) have a detailed understanding of SCSI protocols, whereas user space programs that operate through other SCSI high-level drivers typically don't even know what SCSI is. SCSI-Programming-HOWTO has complete documentation of the SCSI generic driver.

The layering order of the SCSI modules belies the way the LKMs depend upon each other and the order in which they must be loaded. You always load the mid-level driver first and unload it last. The low-level and high-level drivers can be loaded and unloaded in any order after that, and they hook themselves into and establish dependency on the mid-level driver at both ends. If you don't have a complete set, you will get a "device not found" error when you try to access a device.

Most SCSI low-level (adapter) drivers don't have LKM parameters; they do generally autoprobe for card settings. If your card responds to some unconventional port address you must bind the driver into the base kernel and use kernel "command line" options. See BootPrompt-HOWTO. Or you can twiddle The Source and recompile.

Many SCSI low-level drivers have documentation in the drivers/scsi directory in the Linux source tree, in files called README.*.

13.4. Network Device Drivers

13.4.10. baycom: BAYCOM AX.25 amateur radio driver

This is a driver for Baycom style simple amateur radio modems that connect to either a serial interface or a parallel interface. The driver works with the ser12 and par96 designs.

For more information, see http://www.baycom.org/~tom.

Example:
modprobe baycom modem=1 iobase=0x3f8 irq=4 options=1

Parameters:

major

major number the driver should use; default 60

modem

modem type of the first channel (minor 0):

1

ser12

2

par96/par97

iobase

base address of the port the driver is to drive. Common values are for ser12 0x3f8, 0x2f8, 0x3e8, 0x2e8 and for par96/par97 0x378, 0x278, 0x3bc.

irq

IRQ the driver is to service. Common values are 3 and 4 for ser12 and 7 for for par96/par97.

options

0

use hardware DCD

1

use software DCD

13.4.11. strip: STRIP (Metricom starmode radio IP) driver

STRIP is a radio protocol developed for the MosquitoNet project to send Internet traffic using Metricom radios. Metricom radios are small, battery powered, 100kbit/sec packet radio transceivers, about the size and weight of a wireless telephone. (You may also have heard them called "Metricom modems" but we avoid the term "modem" because it misleads many people into thinking that you can plug a Metricom modem into a phone line and use it as a modem.) You can use STRIP on any Linux machine with a serial port, although it is obviously most useful for people with laptop computers.

Example:
modprobe strip

There are no module parameters.

13.5. CDROM Device Drivers

13.6. Filesystem Drivers

13.6.10. smbfs: SMB filesystem driver

SMBFS is a filesystem type which has an SMB protocol interface. This is the protocol Windows for Workgroups, Windows NT or Lan Manager use to talk to each other. SMBFS was inspired by Samba, the program written by Andrew Tridgell that turns any unix host into a file server for DOS or Windows clients. See ftp://nimbus.anu.edu.au/pub/tridge/samba/ for this interesting program suite and lots of more information on SMB and NetBIOS over TCP/IP. There you also find explanation for concepts like netbios name or share.

To use SMBFS, you need a special mount program, which can be found in the ksmbfs package, found on ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/system/Filesystems/smbfs.

Example:
modprobe smbfs

There are no module parameters

13.7. Miscellaneous Device Driver

13.8. Serial Device Drivers

13.9. Parallel Device Drivers

13.10. Bus Mouse Device Drivers

13.11. Tape Device Drivers

For SCSI tape device drivers, see Section 13.3. There are no LKMs for QIC-02 tape devices, but there is a device driver you can bind into the base kernel.

13.12. Watchdog Timers

13.13. Sound Device Drivers

Configuring sound is a complex task. Read the files in directory Documention/sound in the Linux source tree.

Example:
modprobe sound

Option: dma_buffsize=32768




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