File I/O in a Linux kernel module

file-io linux-kernel kernel-module
mipadi picture mipadi · Nov 9, 2008 · Viewed 45.9k times · Source

I'm writing a Linux kernel module that needs to open and read files. What's the best way to accomplish that?

Answer

MBCook picture MBCook · Nov 9, 2008

Can I ask why are you trying to open a file?

I like to follow Linux development (out of curiosity, I'm not a kernel developer, I do Java), and I've seen discussion of this question before. I was able to find a LKML message about this, basically mentioning it's usually a bad idea. I'm almost positive that LWN covered it in the last year, but I'm having trouble finding the article.

If this is a private module (like for some custom hardware and the module won't be distributed) then you can do this, but I'm under the impression that if you are going to submit your code to the mainline then it may not be accepted.

Evan Teran mentioned sysfs, which seems like a good idea to me. If you really need to do harder custom stuff you could always make new ioctrls.

EDIT:

OK, I found the article I was looking for, it's from Linux Journal. It explains why doing this kind of stuff is generally a bad idea, then goes on to tell you exactly how to do it anyway.

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