The I2C bus helps you monitor the health of your system. Here's how to develop a driver that will get you all the hardware info you need to know.
In the June and August 2003 issues of Linux Journal, my column covered the Linux kernel driver model, and the I2C subsystem was used as an example. This month, we discuss what the I2C subsystem does and how to write a driver for it.
I2C is the name for a two-wire serial bus protocol originally developed by Phillips. It commonly is used in embedded systems so different components can communicate; PC motherboards use I2C to talk to different sensor chips. Those sensors typically report back fan speeds, processor temperatures and a whole raft of system hardware information. The protocol also is used in some RAM chips to report information about the DIMM itself back to the operating system.
The I2C kernel code has lived outside of the main kernel tree for much of its development life—it originally was written back in the 2.0 days. The 2.4 kernel contains a bit of I2C support, mainly for some video drivers. With the 2.6 kernel, a large portion of the I2C code has made it into the main kernel tree, thanks to the effort of a number of kernel developers who changed the interfaces to be more acceptable to the kernel community. A few drivers still live only in the external CVS tree and have not been moved into the main kernel.org tree, but it is only a matter of time before they, too, are ported.
The I2C kernel code is broken up into a number of logical pieces: the I2C core, I2C bus drivers, I2C algorithm drivers and I2C chip drivers. We ignore how the I2C core operates in this article and focus instead on how to write a bus and algorithm driver. In Part II, we will cover how to write an I2C chip driver.
An I2C bus driver is described by a struct named i2c_adapter, which is defined in the include/linux/i2c.h file. Only the following fields need to be set up by the bus driver:
struct module *owner; —set to the value (THIS_MODULE) that allows the proper module reference counting.
unsigned int class; —the type of I2C class devices that this driver supports. Usually this is set to the value I2C_ADAP_CLASS_SMBUS.
struct i2c_algorithm *algo; —a pointer to the struct i2c_algorithm structure that describes the way data is transferred through this I2C bus controller. More information on this structure is provided below.
char name[I2C_NAME_SIZE]; —set to a descriptive name of the I2C bus driver. This value shows up in the sysfs filename associated with this I2C adapter.
The code below comes from an example I2C adapter driver called tiny_i2c_adap.c, available from the Linux Journal FTP site [ftp.linuxjournal.com/pub/lj/listings/issue116/7136.tgz] and shows how the struct i2c_adapter is set up:
static struct i2c_adapter tiny_adapter = {
.owner = THIS_MODULE,
.class = I2C_ADAP_CLASS_SMBUS,
.algo = &tiny_algorithm,
.name = "tiny adapter",
};
To register this I2C adapter, the driver calls the function i2c_add_adapter with a pointer to the struct i2c_adapter:
retval = i2c_add_adapter(&tiny_adapter);
If the I2C adapter lives on a type of device that has a struct device associated with it, such as a PCI or USB device, then before the call to i2c_add_adapter, the adapter device's parent pointer should be set to that device. This pointer configuration can be seen in the following line from the drivers/i2c/busses/i2c-piix4.c driver:
/* set up sysfs linkage to our parent device */ piix4_adapter.dev.parent = &dev->dev;
If this parent pointer is not set up, the I2C adapter is positioned on the legacy bus and shows up in the sysfs tree at /sys/devices/legacy. Here is what happens to our example driver when it is registered:
$ tree /sys/devices/legacy/
/sys/devices/legacy/
|-- detach_state
|-- floppy0
| |-- detach_state
| `-- power
| `-- state
|-- i2c-0
| |-- detach_state
| |-- name
| `-- power
| `-- state
`-- power
`-- state
As discussed in the previous kernel driver model columns, the I2C adapter also shows up in the /sys/class/i2c-adapter directory:
$ tree /sys/class/i2c-adapter/
/sys/class/i2c-adapter/
`-- i2c-0
|-- device -> ../../../devices/legacy/i2c-0
`-- driver -> ../../../bus/i2c/drivers/i2c_adapter
To unregister an I2C adapter, the driver should call the function i2c_del_adapter with a pointer to the struct i2c_adapter, like this:
i2c_del_adapter(&tiny_adapter);
An I2C algorithm is used by the I2C bus driver to talk to the I2C bus. Most I2C bus drivers define their own I2C algorithms and use them, as they are tied closely to how the bus driver talks to that specific type of hardware. For some classes of I2C bus drivers, a number of I2C algorithm drivers already have been written. Examples of these are ITE adapters found in drivers/i2c/i2c-algo-ite.c, IBM PPC 405 adapters found in drivers/i2c/i2c-algo-ibm_ocp.c and a generic I2C bit shift algorithm found in drivers/i2c/i2c-algo-bit.c. All of these already written algorithms have their own functions with which an I2C bus driver needs to register to use. For more information on these, please see all of the drivers/i2c/i2c-algo-*.c files in the kernel tree.
For our example driver, we are going to create our own I2C algorithm driver. An algorithm driver is defined by a struct i2c_algorithm structure and is defined in the include/linux/i2c.h file. Here is a description of some of the commonly used fields:
char name[32];: the name of the algorithm.
unsigned int id;: description of the type of algorithm this structure defines. These different types are defined in the include/linux/i2c-id.h file and start with the characters I2C_ALGO_.
int (*master_xfer)(struct i2c_adapter *adap,struct i2c_msg msgs[], int num);: a function pointer to be set if this algorithm driver can do I2C direct-level accesses. If it is set, this function is called whenever an I2C chip driver wants to communicate with the chip device. If it is set to NULL, the smbus_xfer function is used instead.
int (*smbus_xfer) (struct i2c_adapter *adap, u16 addr, unsigned short flags, char read_write, u8 command, int size, union i2c_smbus_data *data);: a function pointer to be set if this algorithm driver can do SMB bus accesses. Most PCI-based I2C bus drivers are able to do this, and they should set this function pointer. If it is set, this function is called whenever an I2C chip driver wants to communicate with the chip device. If it is set to NULL, the master_xfer function is used instead.
u32 (*functionality) (struct i2c_adapter *);: a function pointer called by the I2C core to determine what kind of reads and writes the I2C adapter driver can do.
In our example I2C adapter driver, the i2c_adapter structure referenced the tiny_algorithm variable. That structure is defined as the following:
static struct i2c_algorithm tiny_algorithm = {
.name = "tiny algorithm",
.id = I2C_ALGO_SMBUS,
.smbus_xfer = tiny_access,
.functionality = tiny_func,
};
The tiny_func function is small and tells the I2C core what types of I2C messages this algorithm can support. For this driver, we want to be able to support a few different I2C message types:
static u32 tiny_func(struct i2c_adapter *adapter)
{
return I2C_FUNC_SMBUS_QUICK |
I2C_FUNC_SMBUS_BYTE |
I2C_FUNC_SMBUS_BYTE_DATA |
I2C_FUNC_SMBUS_WORD_DATA |
I2C_FUNC_SMBUS_BLOCK_DATA;
}
All of the different I2C message types are defined in include/linux/i2c.h and start with the characters I2C_FUNC_.
The tiny_access function is called when an I2C client driver wants to talk to the I2C bus. Our example function is quite simple; it merely logs all of the requests the I2C chip driver makes to the syslog and reports success back to the caller. This log allows you to see all of the different addresses and data types that an I2C chip driver may request. The implementation looks like:
static s32 tiny_access(struct i2c_adapter *adap,
u16 addr,
unsigned short flags,
char read_write,
u8 command,
int size,
union i2c_smbus_data *data)
{
int i, len;
dev_info(&adap->dev, "%s was called with the "
"following parameters:\n",
__FUNCTION__);
dev_info(&adap->dev, "addr = %.4x\n", addr);
dev_info(&adap->dev, "flags = %.4x\n", flags);
dev_info(&adap->dev, "read_write = %s\n",
read_write == I2C_SMBUS_WRITE ?
"write" : "read");
dev_info(&adap->dev, "command = %d\n",
command);
switch (size) {
case I2C_SMBUS_PROC_CALL:
dev_info(&adap->dev,
"size = I2C_SMBUS_PROC_CALL\n");
break;
case I2C_SMBUS_QUICK:
dev_info(&adap->dev,
"size = I2C_SMBUS_QUICK\n");
break;
case I2C_SMBUS_BYTE:
dev_info(&adap->dev,
"size = I2C_SMBUS_BYTE\n");
break;
case I2C_SMBUS_BYTE_DATA:
dev_info(&adap->dev,
"size = I2C_SMBUS_BYTE_DATA\n");
if (read_write == I2C_SMBUS_WRITE)
dev_info(&adap->dev,
"data = %.2x\n", data->byte);
break;
case I2C_SMBUS_WORD_DATA:
dev_info(&adap->dev,
"size = I2C_SMBUS_WORD_DATA\n");
if (read_write == I2C_SMBUS_WRITE)
dev_info(&adap->dev,
"data = %.4x\n", data->word);
break;
case I2C_SMBUS_BLOCK_DATA:
dev_info(&adap->dev,
"size = I2C_SMBUS_BLOCK_DATA\n");
if (read_write == I2C_SMBUS_WRITE) {
dev_info(&adap->dev, "data = %.4x\n",
data->word);
len = data->block[0];
if (len < 0)
len = 0;
if (len > 32)
len = 32;
for (i = 1; i <= len; i++)
dev_info(&adap->dev,
"data->block[%d] = %x\n",
i, data->block[i]);
}
break;
}
return 0;
}
Now that the tiny_i2c_adap driver is built and loaded, what can it do? On its own, it cannot do anything. An I2C bus driver needs an I2C client driver in order to do anything besides sit in the sysfs tree. So, if the lm75 I2C client driver is loaded, it tries to use the tiny_i2c_adap driver to find the chip for which it was written:
$ modprobe lm75
$ tree /sys/bus/i2c/
/sys/bus/i2c/
|-- devices
| |-- 0-0048 -> ../../../devices/legacy/i2c-0/0-0048
| |-- 0-0049 -> ../../../devices/legacy/i2c-0/0-0049
| |-- 0-004a -> ../../../devices/legacy/i2c-0/0-004a
| |-- 0-004b -> ../../../devices/legacy/i2c-0/0-004b
| |-- 0-004c -> ../../../devices/legacy/i2c-0/0-004c
| |-- 0-004d -> ../../../devices/legacy/i2c-0/0-004d
| |-- 0-004e -> ../../../devices/legacy/i2c-0/0-004e
| `-- 0-004f -> ../../../devices/legacy/i2c-0/0-004f
`-- drivers
|-- i2c_adapter
`-- lm75
|-- 0-0048 -> ../../../../devices/legacy/i2c-0/0-0048
|-- 0-0049 -> ../../../../devices/legacy/i2c-0/0-0049
|-- 0-004a -> ../../../../devices/legacy/i2c-0/0-004a
|-- 0-004b -> ../../../../devices/legacy/i2c-0/0-004b
|-- 0-004c -> ../../../../devices/legacy/i2c-0/0-004c
|-- 0-004d -> ../../../../devices/legacy/i2c-0/0-004d
|-- 0-004e -> ../../../../devices/legacy/i2c-0/0-004e
`-- 0-004f -> ../../../../devices/legacy/i2c-0/0-004f
Because the tiny_i2c_adap driver responds with a success to every read and write request it is asked to accomplish, the lm75 I2C chip driver thinks it has found an lm75 chip at every known possible I2C address for this chip. This abundance of addresses is why I2C devices 0-0048 through 0-004f have been created. If we look at the directory for one of these devices, the sensor files for this chip driver are shown:
$ tree /sys/devices/legacy/i2c-0/0-0048/ /sys/devices/legacy/i2c-0/0-0048/ |-- detach_state |-- name |-- power | `-- state |-- temp_input |-- temp_max `-- temp_min
The detach_state file and power directory is created by the kernel driver core and is used for power management. It is not created by the lm75 driver. The functions of the other files in this directory are described below.
If we ask the lm75 driver for the current value of temp_max, we receive the following:
$ cat /sys/devices/legacy/i2c-0/0-0048/temp_max 1000
To get that value, the lm75 driver asked the tiny_i2c_adap driver to read some addresses on the I2C bus. This request is shown in the syslog:
$ dmesg i2c_adapter i2c-0: tiny_access was called with the following parameters: i2c_adapter i2c-0: addr = 0048 i2c_adapter i2c-0: flags = 0000 i2c_adapter i2c-0: read_write = read i2c_adapter i2c-0: command = 0 i2c_adapter i2c-0: size = I2C_SMBUS_WORD_DATA i2c_adapter i2c-0: tiny_access was called with the following parameters: i2c_adapter i2c-0: addr = 0048 i2c_adapter i2c-0: flags = 0000 i2c_adapter i2c-0: read_write = read i2c_adapter i2c-0: command = 3 i2c_adapter i2c-0: size = I2C_SMBUS_WORD_DATA i2c_adapter i2c-0: tiny_access was called with the following parameters: i2c_adapter i2c-0: addr = 0048 i2c_adapter i2c-0: flags = 0000 i2c_adapter i2c-0: read_write = read i2c_adapter i2c-0: command = 2 i2c_adapter i2c-0: size = I2C_SMBUS_WORD_DATA
The log file shows that the tiny_access function was called three times. The first command wanted to read a word of data from register 0 out of the device with the address 0048. The second and third reads asked for register 3 and register 2 from the same device. The commands match up with the following code from the drivers/i2c/chips/lm75.c file in the lm75_update_client function:
data->temp_input = lm75_read_value(client,
LM75_REG_TEMP);
data->temp_max = lm75_read_value(client,
LM75_REG_TEMP_OS);
data->temp_hyst = lm75_read_value(client,
LM75_REG_TEMP_HYST);
The lm75_read_value function in that same file contains the following code:
/* All registers are word-sized, except for the
configuration register. LM75 uses a high-byte
first convention, which is exactly opposite to
the usual practice. */
static int lm75_read_value(struct i2c_client
*client, u8 reg)
{
if (reg == LM75_REG_CONF)
return i2c_smbus_read_byte_data(client,
reg);
else
return swap_bytes(
i2c_smbus_read_word_data(client,
reg));
}
Therefore, when the lm75 driver wants to read the value of the max temperature, it calls the lm75_read_value function with the register number, which then calls the I2C core function i2c_smbus_read_word_data. That I2C core function looks up on which I2C bus the client device is, and then it calls the I2C algorithm associated with that specific I2C bus to do the data transfer. This is the method, then, by which our tiny_i2c_adap driver is asked to complete the transfer.
If this same sysfs file is written to, the lm75 driver asks the tiny_i2c_adap driver to write some data to a specific address on the I2C bus in the same way the read was requested. This request also is shown in the syslog:
$ echo 300 > /sys/devices/legacy/i2c-0/0-0048/temp_max $ dmesg i2c_adapter i2c-0: tiny_access was called with the following parameters: i2c_adapter i2c-0: addr = 0048 i2c_adapter i2c-0: flags = 0000 i2c_adapter i2c-0: read_write = write i2c_adapter i2c-0: command = 3 i2c_adapter i2c-0: size = I2C_SMBUS_WORD_DATA i2c_adapter i2c-0: data = 8000
This month we covered the basics of the I2C driver subsystem and explained how to write a simple I2C bus and I2C algorithm driver that work with any existing I2C client driver. The complete driver, dmn-09-i2c-adap.c, is available from the Linux Journal FTP site at ftp.linuxjournal.com/pub/lj/listings/issue116/7136.tgz. In Part II, we will cover how to write an I2C chip driver.
