Add new system call to linux kernel…

This post gives you a deep understanding about system call and a way to add a new system call to Linux kernel.

System call is call to kernel service made using software interrupts. An interrupt is a way to notify kernel about occurrence of some event, and this results in changes in the sequence of instructions that is executed by the CPU. A software interrupt, also referred to as an exception, is an interrupt that originates by software in user mode.  User mode is one of two distinct execution modes of operation for the CPU in Linux. It is a non-privileged mode in which each process starts out. So these processes dose not have privilege to access memory allocated by the kernel.

The kernel is a program that constitutes the core of an operating system, and it has complete control over all resources on the system and everything that occurs on it. When a user mode process wants to use a service provided by the kernel (i.e., access system resources other than the limited memory space that is allocated to the user program), it must switch temporarily into kernel mode, also called system mode, by means of a system call.

Kernel mode has all privileges, including root access permissions. This allows the operating system to perform restricted actions such as accessing hardware devices or the memory management unit. System calls can also be viewed as gateway to kernel through which programs request services from the kernel.

Flow Graph of System call

Above Figure shows the general flow graph of the system call. User application lies in user space and system call body is in kernel space. In the user application the kernel privilege data can accessed by the system call. System call body will start a new kernel thread to serve the user application.

I would like to take you through a sequence of steps in creating your own system call.

1. Editing kernel source code to add system call

2. Compiling modified kernel for x86 machine

3. Building an application to text your system call

Add System Call

Lets install all the dependency packages (libncurses5-dev)

sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev

Then update and install all the upgrade your machine.

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Download kernel source code. Here, i am using the kernel 3.2, there are various other versions are available here. Below command also downloads kernel.

wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.0/linux-3.X.tar.bz2

Extract the tarball to ~/linux-3.x/

sudo tar -xvf linux-3.X.tar.bz2 -C ~/linux-3.x/

Change the directory to ~/linux-3.x/

cd ~/linux-3.x/

Now lets add the system call in the above downloaded kernel.

First, we need to create a new directory in the root of the kernel sources tree. Name of new directory is “new_syscall”. In this directory, we need to create two files.

1. Implementation of our system call itself, hello.c:

The below snippet is the body of system call. Basically, This function is the one which should  called in the kernel space when appropriate system call is invoked from the user space.

Implementation of system call

2. Makefile to build it

After creating the system call, we need to set up the Makefile to build it. Following snippet will show you the contain of Makefile which is used to build our system call.

Makefile for hello.c

This is a very simple Makefile, because the build system of the kernel takes care of most of the work. This concludes the new files that will need to be added to the kernel sources to make a new system call.

There are a few source files in the kernel that will need to be updated in order to add the new system call to be added to the kernel build system. The first, and simplest of these is the root-level Makefile. Find the following line, around line 711 of the root-level Makefile:

core-y := kernel/ mm/ fs/ ipc/ security/ crypto/ block

Add your newly created directory “new_syscall” as shown :

core-y := kernel/ mm/ fs/ ipc/ security/ crypto/ block/ new_syscall/

Now, open the include/linux/syscalls.h file, and add a definition for your new system call.

asmlinkage long sys_hello(void);

This step expose your system call  to other parts of the kernel. While this is not necessary for this simple system call, it is still good practice for when adding a real system call to the kernel.

NOTE: asmlinkage keyword tells your compiler to look on the CPU stack for the function parameters, instead of registers. System calls are services that userspace can call to request the kernel to perform something for them. These functions can not behave like normal functions, where parameters are typically passed by writing to the program stack, but instead they are written to registers. While still in userspace, calling a syscall requires writing certain values to certain registers. The system call number will always be written in eax, while the the rest of the parameters will go into other registers.

At this stage, you simply need to add the name of your system call to arch/x86/include/asm/unistd_32.h. Register the system call symbolic name with the kernel by adding system call number and system call name as below.

#define __NR_setns 346

#define __NR_sys_hello 347 <Add this line >

#ifdef __KERNEL__

#define NR_syscalls 348 <add 1 in total number of system call>

#define

The kernel maintains a list of all registered system calls in the system call table. This table assigns each valid system call a unique system call number which cannot be changed or recycled(which is given in above step). Processes do not refer to system calls by name, but rather by their system call number.

The final file that needs to be updated is the system call table, which resides in arch/x86/kernel/syscall_table_32.S. Add the definition for your new system call, by adding the following:

.long sys_hello

After configuring the systemcall perfectly kernel compilation is done to use system call from user domain.

Compiling modified kernel

Linux kernel can be compiled natively in the Linux environment using the native “gcc” compiler. Make files allow configuration changes using particular make options. The steps involved in compiling the kernel are:

1. Call the make utility within the un-tarred Linux kernel code (in this case Linux-3.2) directory with the required option – menuconfig, defconfig, xconfig, oldconfig and so on. menuconfig is used to edit the text based version of linux. xconfig is used to edit the windows and other GUI tools in KDE system and gconfig is used to edit same but in gnome system. I have used “make oldconfig”, which can configure new kernel as my existing kernel configuration. Before this the directories can be cleaned using the “make mrproper” and “make clean” command.

2. Once the compilation configuration is done use the “make” command to compile the kernel. To compile project, first need to compile each source file into an object file, this in turn needs to be linked with system libraries into the final executable file. This all is done by build system of Linux kernel.

3.  Once the kernel compiles successfully use the make modules and then the make modules_install options to compile and install modules into the kernel. Loadable modules are compiled and installed in the /lib/modules directory

4.  Then use the “make install” command to install the kernel in the /boot partition.

5.  Then switch to the /boot partition and use the “mkinitramfs” command with the –o option to create the RAM disk file as shown mkinitramfs –o initrd.img-<kernel_version_number>. You can get kernel version number by simple typing “uname -a” command on your terminal.

6.  GRUB (GRand Unified Bootloader) is a boot loader package developed to support multiple operating systems/kernel and allow the user to select among them during boot-up. After installing the modules and kernel it is essential to update the grub file to see the installed kernel version in the boot option. So, use “update-grub” command to update the boot entries in the grub file.

Thats it. You have installed new kernel in your system. Now just reboot your system and and select newly compiled kernel from grub selection menu.

Building an application

That’s it ! you have successfully added new system call to the kernel.  For simple testing of the system application program is essential which can call system call. Below application is test application for your system call. This application will invoke __NR_sys_hello from the kernel space using syscall().

Test application for developed system

Compile the program, run it and check the dmesg command to see the “Hello World ! I am your system call.” output. Use below commands to check the output of your system call.

$ gcc hello.c -o hello
$ ./hello 
$ Return Value from syscall is : 0
$ Please check system console(using "dmesg") for system call output. 
 
$ dmesg

Cheers… you have done it !

Make Own LED blinking Driver for Raspberry pi ….

In this post, i am going to explain step by step procedure to make simple driver which can blink led on Linux powered raspberry pi. Raspberry pi is a credit-card sized computer developed by Raspberry pi Foundation ,UK. The Raspberry pi is equipped by Brodcom BCM2835 SoC, which includes an ARM1176JZF-S core clocked with 700 MHz. Raspberry pi was originally shipped with 256 MB of RAM, later upgraded to 512 MB of RAM. This card sized computer uses the SD card for booting and data storing purpose.

This tutorial demonstrates how to develop and debug a basic hardware driver for Raspberry PI. It will demonstrate the following techniques:

• Controlling the BCM2708/BCM2835 peripherals by accessing their hardware registers
• Handling of interrupts in Device driver
• Creating a sysfs device object to provide user-mode control interface

Here, for my setup i am using raspberry pi model-A. I have compiled kernel(with my led blinking driver) for raspberry pi.

Compilation of Linux kernel for Raspberry pi

1. Get the kernel Source  code for here.

2. Get the tools(cross-compiler) from here.

3. Extract both files in your home directory. Here, i have extracted in /home/bhargav/rpi/.

3. Set the environment variable CCPREFIX:
export CCPREFIX= /home/bhargav/rpi/tools-master/arm-bcm2708/arm-bcm2708-linux-gnueabi/bin/arm-bcm2708-linux-gnueabi-

4. Set the environment variable KERNEL_SRC:
export KERNEL_SRC=/home/bhargav/rpi/linux-rpi-3.2.27

5. In KERNEL_SRC: execute “make mrproper” to ensure you have a clean kernel source tree

6. In KERNEL_SRC: execute below command  to configure  kernel source tree for raspberry pi

make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=${CCPREFIX} bcmrpi_defconfig

7. In KERNEL_SRC: execute below compile  kernel source tree for raspberry pi

make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=${CCPREFIX}

This process will give you kernel Image file at < KERNEL_SRC>/arch/arm/boot/  which can be places as kernel.img in boot partition of MMC.

Adding LED blinking device in board file

To add led blinking driver support in your build, you have to register your device in the board file of your board.

Board file for raspberry pi is located at <KERNEL_SRC>/arch/arm/mach-bcm2708/bcm2708.c which includes the subroutines for registering of all devices.

First, you need to add your header file of driver in to <KERNEL_SRC>/include/linux/ directory.

Here i am adding blinkled.h in the same directory. The below image will provide you more details about contain of file.

Header file for led blink driver

Include this header file in board file for raspberry pi. Add the below code in board file.

Defining a device in board file

Here, i am declaring device named “LED_Blink” which has gpio number as a platform data on which it is connected.

Its time to register this declared device. In board file, bcm2708_init is a function which register all the peripherals devices with the kernel.

So, in this function we need to registered our device with the kernel platform bus.  Add the below line in in bcm2708_init function which register our device(“LED_Blink”) with kernel.

This device is added as platform device. I am not going in to much details of platform device, explanation can be found here.

Registration of Device

At this stage we have registered our Led_Blink device to Linux kernel virtual bus. Now its time to write a driver for “Led_Blink” Device.

Writing driver for LED Blinking device

In the driver file, we need to declare one driver and register it with the kernel virtual bus with the same name which we gave to register device(“Led_Blink”). Linux kernel will compare the name of device and driver which is available on virtual bus and call the probe function of same driver. This is the basic concept of platform bus which is explained in the previous post.

Registration of Driver

Here, driver is declared with the  probe and remove function. Important thing is the name of the driver which is same as the device which we declared in device( In board file). Init function is the first function, which will be called on the successfully insertion of driver in the kernel. In our init function we have registered the platform driver to the bus.

On availability of the same device on the bus, kernel will calls the probe function of the same driver. So, after init function, probe will get called by the Kernel subsystem. Basically, probe will do all the initialization of device(GPIO) .

According to the BCM2835 peripheral  manual, the GPIO pins can be controlled by first configuring them as output by writing to one of GPFSELx registers and then writing to GPFSETx/GPFCLRx registers. We will define a structure describing the GPIO registers and provide functions for controlling GPIO pins using it.

Probe routine of LED blink driver

Above snippet shows the body of probe function. In the probe function, there are three impotent things  are done.

1. Configure Pin as GPIO

The below snippet shoes the routines for set pin functionality and set output value of pin.  This functions uses the structure pointer to access the registers of SoC.

Gpio Routines

2. Setup time for On and Off timing of LED

When timer elapse, state of pin will get changed and again timer will be re initialized from timer subroutine. The snipped below shows the body of time handler.

This subroutine causes the blinking of the LED.

Timer handler subroutine

3. Register /sys interface  to change blink period from user domain

Sys interface is used to change the blinking period from user space. From the probe function BlinkLed_attr is registered for sys interface which has only one attribute name “period”.  User can get and set time interval using this interface. s_BlinkPeriod variable is used to store blanking period. The snippet below shows the subroutines for same.

Sys interface routines

You can download full driver code from here.

You have to add this add this module to linux source code. Here are the steps to do that.

Now, its time to compile your tweaked kernel using the steps shows above. Repeat from steps #5.

Enjoy your driver  !!!

Add new module to Linux kernel source code

Kernel modules are pieces of code that can be loaded and unloaded into the kernel upon demand. They extend the

functionality of the kernel without the need to reboot the system. If you want to add your code(module) to a Linux

kernel, the most basic way to do that is to add your source files to the kernel source tree, add entry of your module in

appropriate Makefile and Kconfig file  and recompile the kernel. In fact, the kernel configuration process consists

mainly of choosing which files to include in the kernel to be compiled. All the device drivers are written using these

loadable modules.Let us add a very basic sample kernel module. Add this file to drivers/gpio directory in Linux kernel

source tree.

vim ./drivers/gpio/helloWorld.c helloWorld

helloWorld.c

Now we need to add configuration setting, so that we can add or remove this module from the By the time of Linux

kernel configuration(You can configure it from “make menuconfig”).  To do that add your modules entry in ./driver

/gpio/Kconfig file. Add below codes to ./drivers/gpio/Kconfig file.

vim ./drivers/gpio/Kconfig

Line 1 is the macro with using which our module can be configured.Line 3 states that this option can only be enabled if

CONFIG_ARM is enabled . Next We have to inform kernel to compile hello_world.c when HELLO_WORLD_MODULE

configuration is enabled.Add this to ./drivers/gpio/Makefile.

vim ./drivers/gpio/Makefile

We have successfully added a new module to Linux kernel. Now lets test our new module with Linux kernel.To do that

first we need to give tool chain name to CROSS_COMPILE flag and architecture name to ARCH flag in Linux terminal.

Compilation process

Now configuration menu will appear. Navigate to Device Drivers—>GPIO Support —>Hello World Module  and enable

it. Now start compiling kernel and modules.

Your module will get inserted as a part of kernel.

Enjoy !!!