Device Driver Interfaces

Device Driver Interfaces

A network driver uses the methods and facilities of other kernel-level device drivers, as described in Part III, "Kernel-Level Drivers" of this book. A network driver is compiled and linked like other drivers, configured using the same configuration files, and loaded into the kernel by lboot like other drivers.

However, other device drivers support the UNIX filesystem, transferring data in response to calls to their pfxread(), pfxwrite(), or pfxstrategy() entry points. This is not the case with a network driver; it supports protocol stacks, and it transfers data in response to calls from the ifnet interface.

Note: If you are working on a network device driver that uses DMA and that can be used in a Challenge or Onyx system, you should read Appendix B, "Challenge DMA with Multiple IO4 Boards."