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author | Linus Torvalds <torvalds@ppc970.osdl.org> | 2005-04-16 18:20:36 -0400 |
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committer | Linus Torvalds <torvalds@ppc970.osdl.org> | 2005-04-16 18:20:36 -0400 |
commit | 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 (patch) | |
tree | 0bba044c4ce775e45a88a51686b5d9f90697ea9d /Documentation/ia64/efirtc.txt |
Linux-2.6.12-rc2v2.6.12-rc2
Initial git repository build. I'm not bothering with the full history,
even though we have it. We can create a separate "historical" git
archive of that later if we want to, and in the meantime it's about
3.2GB when imported into git - space that would just make the early
git days unnecessarily complicated, when we don't have a lot of good
infrastructure for it.
Let it rip!
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1 | EFI Real Time Clock driver | ||
2 | ------------------------------- | ||
3 | S. Eranian <eranian@hpl.hp.com> | ||
4 | March 2000 | ||
5 | |||
6 | I/ Introduction | ||
7 | |||
8 | This document describes the efirtc.c driver has provided for | ||
9 | the IA-64 platform. | ||
10 | |||
11 | The purpose of this driver is to supply an API for kernel and user applications | ||
12 | to get access to the Time Service offered by EFI version 0.92. | ||
13 | |||
14 | EFI provides 4 calls one can make once the OS is booted: GetTime(), | ||
15 | SetTime(), GetWakeupTime(), SetWakeupTime() which are all supported by this | ||
16 | driver. We describe those calls as well the design of the driver in the | ||
17 | following sections. | ||
18 | |||
19 | II/ Design Decisions | ||
20 | |||
21 | The original ideas was to provide a very simple driver to get access to, | ||
22 | at first, the time of day service. This is required in order to access, in a | ||
23 | portable way, the CMOS clock. A program like /sbin/hwclock uses such a clock | ||
24 | to initialize the system view of the time during boot. | ||
25 | |||
26 | Because we wanted to minimize the impact on existing user-level apps using | ||
27 | the CMOS clock, we decided to expose an API that was very similar to the one | ||
28 | used today with the legacy RTC driver (driver/char/rtc.c). However, because | ||
29 | EFI provides a simpler services, not all all ioctl() are available. Also | ||
30 | new ioctl()s have been introduced for things that EFI provides but not the | ||
31 | legacy. | ||
32 | |||
33 | EFI uses a slightly different way of representing the time, noticeably | ||
34 | the reference date is different. Year is the using the full 4-digit format. | ||
35 | The Epoch is January 1st 1998. For backward compatibility reasons we don't | ||
36 | expose this new way of representing time. Instead we use something very | ||
37 | similar to the struct tm, i.e. struct rtc_time, as used by hwclock. | ||
38 | One of the reasons for doing it this way is to allow for EFI to still evolve | ||
39 | without necessarily impacting any of the user applications. The decoupling | ||
40 | enables flexibility and permits writing wrapper code is ncase things change. | ||
41 | |||
42 | The driver exposes two interfaces, one via the device file and a set of | ||
43 | ioctl()s. The other is read-only via the /proc filesystem. | ||
44 | |||
45 | As of today we don't offer a /proc/sys interface. | ||
46 | |||
47 | To allow for a uniform interface between the legacy RTC and EFI time service, | ||
48 | we have created the include/linux/rtc.h header file to contain only the | ||
49 | "public" API of the two drivers. The specifics of the legacy RTC are still | ||
50 | in include/linux/mc146818rtc.h. | ||
51 | |||
52 | |||
53 | III/ Time of day service | ||
54 | |||
55 | The part of the driver gives access to the time of day service of EFI. | ||
56 | Two ioctl()s, compatible with the legacy RTC calls: | ||
57 | |||
58 | Read the CMOS clock: ioctl(d, RTC_RD_TIME, &rtc); | ||
59 | |||
60 | Write the CMOS clock: ioctl(d, RTC_SET_TIME, &rtc); | ||
61 | |||
62 | The rtc is a pointer to a data structure defined in rtc.h which is close | ||
63 | to a struct tm: | ||
64 | |||
65 | struct rtc_time { | ||
66 | int tm_sec; | ||
67 | int tm_min; | ||
68 | int tm_hour; | ||
69 | int tm_mday; | ||
70 | int tm_mon; | ||
71 | int tm_year; | ||
72 | int tm_wday; | ||
73 | int tm_yday; | ||
74 | int tm_isdst; | ||
75 | }; | ||
76 | |||
77 | The driver takes care of converting back an forth between the EFI time and | ||
78 | this format. | ||
79 | |||
80 | Those two ioctl()s can be exercised with the hwclock command: | ||
81 | |||
82 | For reading: | ||
83 | # /sbin/hwclock --show | ||
84 | Mon Mar 6 15:32:32 2000 -0.910248 seconds | ||
85 | |||
86 | For setting: | ||
87 | # /sbin/hwclock --systohc | ||
88 | |||
89 | Root privileges are required to be able to set the time of day. | ||
90 | |||
91 | IV/ Wakeup Alarm service | ||
92 | |||
93 | EFI provides an API by which one can program when a machine should wakeup, | ||
94 | i.e. reboot. This is very different from the alarm provided by the legacy | ||
95 | RTC which is some kind of interval timer alarm. For this reason we don't use | ||
96 | the same ioctl()s to get access to the service. Instead we have | ||
97 | introduced 2 news ioctl()s to the interface of an RTC. | ||
98 | |||
99 | We have added 2 new ioctl()s that are specific to the EFI driver: | ||
100 | |||
101 | Read the current state of the alarm | ||
102 | ioctl(d, RTC_WKLAM_RD, &wkt) | ||
103 | |||
104 | Set the alarm or change its status | ||
105 | ioctl(d, RTC_WKALM_SET, &wkt) | ||
106 | |||
107 | The wkt structure encapsulates a struct rtc_time + 2 extra fields to get | ||
108 | status information: | ||
109 | |||
110 | struct rtc_wkalrm { | ||
111 | |||
112 | unsigned char enabled; /* =1 if alarm is enabled */ | ||
113 | unsigned char pending; /* =1 if alarm is pending */ | ||
114 | |||
115 | struct rtc_time time; | ||
116 | } | ||
117 | |||
118 | As of today, none of the existing user-level apps supports this feature. | ||
119 | However writing such a program should be hard by simply using those two | ||
120 | ioctl(). | ||
121 | |||
122 | Root privileges are required to be able to set the alarm. | ||
123 | |||
124 | V/ References. | ||
125 | |||
126 | Checkout the following Web site for more information on EFI: | ||
127 | |||
128 | http://developer.intel.com/technology/efi/ | ||