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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE book PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.1.2//EN"
"http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.1.2/docbookx.dtd" []>
<book id="USBDeviceDriver">
<bookinfo>
<title>Writing USB Device Drivers</title>
<authorgroup>
<author>
<firstname>Greg</firstname>
<surname>Kroah-Hartman</surname>
<affiliation>
<address>
<email>greg@kroah.com</email>
</address>
</affiliation>
</author>
</authorgroup>
<copyright>
<year>2001-2002</year>
<holder>Greg Kroah-Hartman</holder>
</copyright>
<legalnotice>
<para>
This documentation is free software; you can redistribute
it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public
License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later
version.
</para>
<para>
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be
useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied
warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
See the GNU General Public License for more details.
</para>
<para>
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public
License along with this program; if not, write to the Free
Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston,
MA 02111-1307 USA
</para>
<para>
For more details see the file COPYING in the source
distribution of Linux.
</para>
<para>
This documentation is based on an article published in
Linux Journal Magazine, October 2001, Issue 90.
</para>
</legalnotice>
</bookinfo>
<toc></toc>
<chapter id="intro">
<title>Introduction</title>
<para>
The Linux USB subsystem has grown from supporting only two different
types of devices in the 2.2.7 kernel (mice and keyboards), to over 20
different types of devices in the 2.4 kernel. Linux currently supports
almost all USB class devices (standard types of devices like keyboards,
mice, modems, printers and speakers) and an ever-growing number of
vendor-specific devices (such as USB to serial converters, digital
cameras, Ethernet devices and MP3 players). For a full list of the
different USB devices currently supported, see Resources.
</para>
<para>
The remaining kinds of USB devices that do not have support on Linux are
almost all vendor-specific devices. Each vendor decides to implement a
custom protocol to talk to their device, so a custom driver usually needs
to be created. Some vendors are open with their USB protocols and help
with the creation of Linux drivers, while others do not publish them, and
developers are forced to reverse-engineer. See Resources for some links
to handy reverse-engineering tools.
</para>
<para>
Because each different protocol causes a new driver to be created, I have
written a generic USB driver skeleton, modeled after the pci-skeleton.c
file in the kernel source tree upon which many PCI network drivers have
been based. This USB skeleton can be found at drivers/usb/usb-skeleton.c
in the kernel source tree. In this article I will walk through the basics
of the skeleton driver, explaining the different pieces and what needs to
be done to customize it to your specific device.
</para>
</chapter>
<chapter id="basics">
<title>Linux USB Basics</title>
<para>
If you are going to write a Linux USB driver, please become familiar with
the USB protocol specification. It can be found, along with many other
useful documents, at the USB home page (see Resources). An excellent
introduction to the Linux USB subsystem can be found at the USB Working
Devices List (see Resources). It explains how the Linux USB subsystem is
structured and introduces the reader to the concept of USB urbs, which
are essential to USB drivers.
</para>
<para>
The first thing a Linux USB driver needs to do is register itself with
the Linux USB subsystem, giving it some information about which devices
the driver supports and which functions to call when a device supported
by the driver is inserted or removed from the system. All of this
information is passed to the USB subsystem in the usb_driver structure.
The skeleton driver declares a usb_driver as:
</para>
<programlisting>
static struct usb_driver skel_driver = {
.name = "skeleton",
.probe = skel_probe,
.disconnect = skel_disconnect,
.fops = &skel_fops,
.minor = USB_SKEL_MINOR_BASE,
.id_table = skel_table,
};
</programlisting>
<para>
The variable name is a string that describes the driver. It is used in
informational messages printed to the system log. The probe and
disconnect function pointers are called when a device that matches the
information provided in the id_table variable is either seen or removed.
</para>
<para>
The fops and minor variables are optional. Most USB drivers hook into
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