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You're reading from Mastering Embedded Linux Programming Harness the power of Linux to create versatile and robust embedded solutions

Product type Paperback

Published in Dec 2015

Publisher Packt

ISBN-13 9781784392536

Length 418 pages

Edition 1st Edition

Tools

Linux

Concepts

System Programming

Author (1):

Chris Simmonds

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Table of Contents (16) Chapters

Preface

1. Starting Out FREE CHAPTER

2. Learning About Toolchains

3. All About Bootloaders

4. Porting and Configuring the Kernel

5. Building a Root Filesystem

6. Selecting a Build System

7. Creating a Storage Strategy

8. Introducing Device Drivers

9. Starting up - the init Program

10. Learning About Processes and Threads

11. Managing Memory

12. Debugging with GDB

13. Profiling and Tracing

14. Real-time Programming

Index

Accessing flash memory from Linux

Raw NOR and NAND flash memory is handled by the memory technology device sub-system, or MTD, which provides basic interfaces to read, erase, and write blocks of flash memory. In the case of NAND flash, there are functions to handle the OOB area and to identify bad blocks.

For managed flash, you need drivers to handle the particular hardware interface. MMC/SD cards and eMMC use the mmcblk driver; CompactFlash and hard drives use the SCSI Disk driver, sd. USB flash drives use the usb_storage driver together with the sd driver.

Memory technology devices

The memory technology devices (MTD), sub-system was started by David Woodhouse in 1999 and has been extensively developed over the intervening years. In this section, I will concentrate on the way it handles the two main technologies, NOR and NAND flash.

MTD consists of three layers: a core set of functions, a set of drivers for various types of chips, and user-level drivers that present the flash memory as a...