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-rw-r--r--Documentation/filesystems/sysfs.txt142
1 files changed, 88 insertions, 54 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/sysfs.txt b/Documentation/filesystems/sysfs.txt
index 4598ef7b622..b35a64b82f9 100644
--- a/Documentation/filesystems/sysfs.txt
+++ b/Documentation/filesystems/sysfs.txt
@@ -2,8 +2,10 @@
sysfs - _The_ filesystem for exporting kernel objects.
Patrick Mochel <mochel@osdl.org>
+Mike Murphy <mamurph@cs.clemson.edu>
-10 January 2003
+Revised: 16 August 2011
+Original: 10 January 2003
What it is:
@@ -21,7 +23,8 @@ interface.
Using sysfs
~~~~~~~~~~~
-sysfs is always compiled in. You can access it by doing:
+sysfs is always compiled in if CONFIG_SYSFS is defined. You can access
+it by doing:
mount -t sysfs sysfs /sys
@@ -36,10 +39,12 @@ userspace. Top-level directories in sysfs represent the common
ancestors of object hierarchies; i.e. the subsystems the objects
belong to.
-Sysfs internally stores the kobject that owns the directory in the
-->d_fsdata pointer of the directory's dentry. This allows sysfs to do
-reference counting directly on the kobject when the file is opened and
-closed.
+Sysfs internally stores a pointer to the kobject that implements a
+directory in the sysfs_dirent object associated with the directory. In
+the past this kobject pointer has been used by sysfs to do reference
+counting directly on the kobject whenever the file is opened or closed.
+With the current sysfs implementation the kobject reference count is
+only modified directly by the function sysfs_schedule_callback().
Attributes
@@ -57,19 +62,20 @@ values of the same type.
Mixing types, expressing multiple lines of data, and doing fancy
formatting of data is heavily frowned upon. Doing these things may get
-you publically humiliated and your code rewritten without notice.
+you publicly humiliated and your code rewritten without notice.
An attribute definition is simply:
struct attribute {
char * name;
- mode_t mode;
+ struct module *owner;
+ umode_t mode;
};
-int sysfs_create_file(struct kobject * kobj, struct attribute * attr);
-void sysfs_remove_file(struct kobject * kobj, struct attribute * attr);
+int sysfs_create_file(struct kobject * kobj, const struct attribute * attr);
+void sysfs_remove_file(struct kobject * kobj, const struct attribute * attr);
A bare attribute contains no means to read or write the value of the
@@ -80,22 +86,20 @@ a specific object type.
For example, the driver model defines struct device_attribute like:
struct device_attribute {
- struct attribute attr;
- ssize_t (*show)(struct device * dev, char * buf);
- ssize_t (*store)(struct device * dev, const char * buf);
+ struct attribute attr;
+ ssize_t (*show)(struct device *dev, struct device_attribute *attr,
+ char *buf);
+ ssize_t (*store)(struct device *dev, struct device_attribute *attr,
+ const char *buf, size_t count);
};
-int device_create_file(struct device *, struct device_attribute *);
-void device_remove_file(struct device *, struct device_attribute *);
+int device_create_file(struct device *, const struct device_attribute *);
+void device_remove_file(struct device *, const struct device_attribute *);
It also defines this helper for defining device attributes:
-#define DEVICE_ATTR(_name, _mode, _show, _store) \
-struct device_attribute dev_attr_##_name = { \
- .attr = {.name = __stringify(_name) , .mode = _mode }, \
- .show = _show, \
- .store = _store, \
-};
+#define DEVICE_ATTR(_name, _mode, _show, _store) \
+struct device_attribute dev_attr_##_name = __ATTR(_name, _mode, _show, _store)
For example, declaring
@@ -104,7 +108,7 @@ static DEVICE_ATTR(foo, S_IWUSR | S_IRUGO, show_foo, store_foo);
is equivalent to doing:
static struct device_attribute dev_attr_foo = {
- .attr = {
+ .attr = {
.name = "foo",
.mode = S_IWUSR | S_IRUGO,
},
@@ -122,7 +126,7 @@ show and store methods of the attribute owners.
struct sysfs_ops {
ssize_t (*show)(struct kobject *, struct attribute *, char *);
- ssize_t (*store)(struct kobject *, struct attribute *, const char *);
+ ssize_t (*store)(struct kobject *, struct attribute *, const char *, size_t);
};
[ Subsystems should have already defined a struct kobj_type as a
@@ -137,18 +141,22 @@ calls the associated methods.
To illustrate:
+#define to_dev(obj) container_of(obj, struct device, kobj)
#define to_dev_attr(_attr) container_of(_attr, struct device_attribute, attr)
-#define to_dev(d) container_of(d, struct device, kobj)
-static ssize_t
-dev_attr_show(struct kobject * kobj, struct attribute * attr, char * buf)
+static ssize_t dev_attr_show(struct kobject *kobj, struct attribute *attr,
+ char *buf)
{
- struct device_attribute * dev_attr = to_dev_attr(attr);
- struct device * dev = to_dev(kobj);
- ssize_t ret = 0;
+ struct device_attribute *dev_attr = to_dev_attr(attr);
+ struct device *dev = to_dev(kobj);
+ ssize_t ret = -EIO;
if (dev_attr->show)
- ret = dev_attr->show(dev, buf);
+ ret = dev_attr->show(dev, dev_attr, buf);
+ if (ret >= (ssize_t)PAGE_SIZE) {
+ print_symbol("dev_attr_show: %s returned bad count\n",
+ (unsigned long)dev_attr->show);
+ }
return ret;
}
@@ -161,10 +169,11 @@ To read or write attributes, show() or store() methods must be
specified when declaring the attribute. The method types should be as
simple as those defined for device attributes:
- ssize_t (*show)(struct device * dev, char * buf);
- ssize_t (*store)(struct device * dev, const char * buf);
+ssize_t (*show)(struct device *dev, struct device_attribute *attr, char *buf);
+ssize_t (*store)(struct device *dev, struct device_attribute *attr,
+ const char *buf, size_t count);
-IOW, they should take only an object and a buffer as parameters.
+IOW, they should take only an object, an attribute, and a buffer as parameters.
sysfs allocates a buffer of size (PAGE_SIZE) and passes it to the
@@ -176,8 +185,10 @@ implementations:
Recall that an attribute should only be exporting one value, or an
array of similar values, so this shouldn't be that expensive.
- This allows userspace to do partial reads and seeks arbitrarily over
- the entire file at will.
+ This allows userspace to do partial reads and forward seeks
+ arbitrarily over the entire file at will. If userspace seeks back to
+ zero or does a pread(2) with an offset of '0' the show() method will
+ be called again, rearmed, to fill the buffer.
- On write(2), sysfs expects the entire buffer to be passed during the
first write. Sysfs then passes the entire buffer to the store()
@@ -192,16 +203,19 @@ implementations:
Other notes:
+- Writing causes the show() method to be rearmed regardless of current
+ file position.
+
- The buffer will always be PAGE_SIZE bytes in length. On i386, this
is 4096.
- show() methods should return the number of bytes printed into the
- buffer. This is the return value of snprintf().
+ buffer. This is the return value of scnprintf().
-- show() should always use snprintf().
+- show() should always use scnprintf().
-- store() should return the number of bytes used from the buffer. This
- can be done using strlen().
+- store() should return the number of bytes used from the buffer. If the
+ entire buffer has been used, just return the count argument.
- show() or store() can always return errors. If a bad value comes
through, be sure to return an error.
@@ -214,15 +228,18 @@ Other notes:
A very simple (and naive) implementation of a device attribute is:
-static ssize_t show_name(struct device *dev, struct device_attribute *attr, char *buf)
+static ssize_t show_name(struct device *dev, struct device_attribute *attr,
+ char *buf)
{
- return snprintf(buf, PAGE_SIZE, "%s\n", dev->name);
+ return scnprintf(buf, PAGE_SIZE, "%s\n", dev->name);
}
-static ssize_t store_name(struct device * dev, const char * buf)
+static ssize_t store_name(struct device *dev, struct device_attribute *attr,
+ const char *buf, size_t count)
{
- sscanf(buf, "%20s", dev->name);
- return strnlen(buf, PAGE_SIZE);
+ snprintf(dev->name, sizeof(dev->name), "%.*s",
+ (int)min(count, sizeof(dev->name) - 1), buf);
+ return count;
}
static DEVICE_ATTR(name, S_IRUGO, show_name, store_name);
@@ -243,6 +260,7 @@ The top level sysfs directory looks like:
block/
bus/
class/
+dev/
devices/
firmware/
net/
@@ -269,6 +287,11 @@ fs/ contains a directory for some filesystems. Currently each
filesystem wanting to export attributes must create its own hierarchy
below fs/ (see ./fuse.txt for an example).
+dev/ contains two directories char/ and block/. Inside these two
+directories there are symlinks named <major>:<minor>. These symlinks
+point to the sysfs directory for the given device. /sys/dev provides a
+quick way to lookup the sysfs interface for a device from the result of
+a stat(2) operation.
More information can driver-model specific features can be found in
Documentation/driver-model/.
@@ -288,19 +311,21 @@ The following interface layers currently exist in sysfs:
Structure:
struct device_attribute {
- struct attribute attr;
- ssize_t (*show)(struct device * dev, char * buf);
- ssize_t (*store)(struct device * dev, const char * buf);
+ struct attribute attr;
+ ssize_t (*show)(struct device *dev, struct device_attribute *attr,
+ char *buf);
+ ssize_t (*store)(struct device *dev, struct device_attribute *attr,
+ const char *buf, size_t count);
};
Declaring:
-DEVICE_ATTR(_name, _str, _mode, _show, _store);
+DEVICE_ATTR(_name, _mode, _show, _store);
Creation/Removal:
-int device_create_file(struct device *device, struct device_attribute * attr);
-void device_remove_file(struct device * dev, struct device_attribute * attr);
+int device_create_file(struct device *dev, const struct device_attribute * attr);
+void device_remove_file(struct device *dev, const struct device_attribute * attr);
- bus drivers (include/linux/device.h)
@@ -310,7 +335,7 @@ Structure:
struct bus_attribute {
struct attribute attr;
ssize_t (*show)(struct bus_type *, char * buf);
- ssize_t (*store)(struct bus_type *, const char * buf);
+ ssize_t (*store)(struct bus_type *, const char * buf, size_t count);
};
Declaring:
@@ -331,7 +356,8 @@ Structure:
struct driver_attribute {
struct attribute attr;
ssize_t (*show)(struct device_driver *, char * buf);
- ssize_t (*store)(struct device_driver *, const char * buf);
+ ssize_t (*store)(struct device_driver *, const char * buf,
+ size_t count);
};
Declaring:
@@ -340,7 +366,15 @@ DRIVER_ATTR(_name, _mode, _show, _store)
Creation/Removal:
-int driver_create_file(struct device_driver *, struct driver_attribute *);
-void driver_remove_file(struct device_driver *, struct driver_attribute *);
+int driver_create_file(struct device_driver *, const struct driver_attribute *);
+void driver_remove_file(struct device_driver *, const struct driver_attribute *);
+
+Documentation
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+The sysfs directory structure and the attributes in each directory define an
+ABI between the kernel and user space. As for any ABI, it is important that
+this ABI is stable and properly documented. All new sysfs attributes must be
+documented in Documentation/ABI. See also Documentation/ABI/README for more
+information.