Device driver
Operating systems |
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Common features |
In computing, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer or automaton.[1] A driver provides a software interface to hardware devices, enabling operating systems and other computer programs to access hardware functions without needing to know precise details about the hardware being used.
A driver communicates with the device through the
Drivers are hardware dependent and operating-system-specific. They usually provide the interrupt handling required for any necessary asynchronous time-dependent hardware interface.[2]
Purpose
The main purpose of device drivers is to provide abstraction by acting as a translator between a hardware device and the applications or operating systems that use it.[1] Programmers can write higher-level application code independently of whatever specific hardware the end-user is using. For example, a high-level application for interacting with a serial port may simply have two functions for "send data" and "receive data". At a lower level, a device driver implementing these functions would communicate to the particular serial port controller installed on a user's computer. The commands needed to control a 16550 UART are much different from the commands needed to control an FTDI serial port converter, but each hardware-specific device driver abstracts these details into the same (or similar) software interface.
Development
Writing a device driver requires an in-depth understanding of how the hardware and the software works for a given
The task of writing drivers thus usually falls to
Apple has an open-source framework for developing drivers on macOS, called I/O Kit.
In
Microsoft Windows .sys files and Linux .ko files can contain loadable device drivers. The advantage of loadable device drivers is that they can be loaded only when necessary and then unloaded, thus saving kernel memory.
Privilege levels
Depending on the operating system, device drivers may be permitted to run at various different privilege levels. The choice of which level of privilege the drivers are in is largely decided by the type of kernel an operating system uses. An operating system which uses a monolithic kernel, such as the Linux kernel, will typically run device drivers with the same privilege as all other kernel objects. By contrast, a system designed around microkernel, such as Minix, will place drivers as processes independent from the kernel but that use the it for essential input-output functionalities and to pass messages between user programs and each other.[5] On
The most common mechanism for segregating memory into various privilege levels is via
Applications
Because of the diversity of modern[update] hardware and operating systems, drivers operate in many different environments.
- Printers
- Video adapters
- Network cards
- Sound cards
- PC chipsets
- Local buses of various sorts—in particular, for bus masteringon modern systems
- Low-bandwidth I/O buses of various sorts (for pointing devices such as mice, keyboards, etc.)
- )
- Implementing support for different file systems
- Image scanners
- Digital cameras
- Digital terrestrial television tuners
- Radio frequency communication transceiver adapters for wireless personal area networks as used for short-distance and low-rate wireless communication in home automation, (such as example Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Thread, Zigbee, and Z-Wave).
- IrDA adapters
Common levels of abstraction for device drivers include:
- For hardware:
- Interfacing directly
- Writing to or reading from a device control register
- Using some higher-level interface (e.g. Video BIOS)
- Using another lower-level device driver (e.g. file system drivers using disk drivers)
- Simulating work with hardware, while doing something entirely different[9]
- For software:
- Allowing the operating system direct access to hardware resources
- Implementing only primitives
- Implementing an interface for non-driver software (e.g. TWAIN)
- Implementing a language, sometimes quite high-level (e.g. PostScript)
So choosing and installing the correct device drivers for given hardware is often a key component of computer system configuration.[10]
Virtual device drivers
Virtual device drivers represent a particular variant of device drivers. They are used to emulate a hardware device, particularly in
Virtual devices may also operate in a non-virtualized environment. For example, a virtual network adapter is used with a virtual private network, while a virtual disk device is used with iSCSI. A good example for virtual device drivers can be Daemon Tools.
There are several variants of virtual device drivers, such as
Open source drivers
- Graphics device driver
- Printers: CUPS
- RAIDs: CCISS[11] (Compaq Command Interface for SCSI-3 Support[12])
- Scanners: SANE
- Video: Vidix, Direct Rendering Infrastructure
- fas: Fast/wide SCSI controller
- hme: Fast (10/100 Mbit/s) Ethernet
- isp: Differential SCSI controllers and the SunSwift card
- glm: (Gigabaud Link Module[13]) UltraSCSI controllers
- scsi: Small Computer Serial Interface (SCSI) devices
- sf: soc+ or social Fiber Channel Arbitrated Loop (FCAL)
- soc: SPARC Storage Array (SSA) controllers and the control device
- social: Serial optical controllers for FCAL (soc+)
APIs
- Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) – the graphic display driver architecture for Windows Vista and later.
- Unified Audio Model (UAM)[14]
- Windows Driver Foundation(WDF)
- Declarative Componentized Hardware (DCH) - Universal Windows Platform driver[15]
- Windows Driver Model (WDM)
- network carddriver API
- Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) – the standard Linux sound-driver interface
- Scanner Access Now Easy (SANE) – a public-domain interface to raster-image scanner-hardware
- filesystem APIfor IBM OS/2 and Microsoft Windows NT
- Open Data-Link Interface (ODI) – network card API similar to NDIS
- Uniform Driver Interface (UDI) – a cross-platform driver interface project
- Dynax Driver Framework (dxd) – C++ open source cross-platform driver framework for KMDF and IOKit[16]
Identifiers
A device on the
A PCI device has often an ID pair for the main chip of the device, and also a subsystem ID pair which identifies the vendor, which may be different from the chip manufacturer.
Security
Devices often have a large number of diverse and customized device drivers running in their operating system (OS) kernel and often contain various
There is a lack of effective kernel vulnerability detection tools, especially for closed-source OSes such as Microsoft Windows[19] where the source code of the device drivers is mostly not public (open source)[20] and the drivers often also have many privileges.[21][22][23][24]
Such vulnerabilities also exist in drivers in laptops,[25] drivers for WiFi and bluetooth,[26][27] gaming/graphics drivers,[28] and drivers in printers.[29]
A group of security researchers considers the lack of isolation as one of the main factors undermining kernel security,[30] and published a isolation framework to protect operating system kernels, primarily the monolithic Linux kernel which, according to them, gets ~80,000 commits/year to its drivers.[31][32]
An important consideration in the design of a kernel is the support it provides for protection from faults (fault tolerance) and from malicious behaviours (security). These two aspects are usually not clearly distinguished, and the adoption of this distinction in the kernel design leads to the rejection of a hierarchical structure for protection.[33]
The mechanisms or policies provided by the kernel can be classified according to several criteria, including: static (enforced at ); whether they are hardware supported or language based; whether they are more an open mechanism or a binding policy; and many more.See also
References
- ^ a b "What is all device driver?". WhatIs.com. TechTarget. Archived from the original on 13 February 2021. Retrieved 19 March 2018.
- ISBN 9780470618332. Archivedfrom the original on 2021-02-13. Retrieved 2020-11-10.
- ISBN 9781555581411. Archivedfrom the original on 2021-01-26. Retrieved 2016-08-05.
- ^ "MAKEDEV — Linux Command — Unix Command". Linux.about.com. 2009-09-11. Archived from the original on 2009-04-30. Retrieved 2009-09-17.
- ISBN 0-13-142938-8.
- ISBN 978-0-7356-8418-8.
- ^ "Introduction to the User-Mode Driver Framework (UMDF)". Microsoft. 2006-10-10. Archived from the original on 2010-01-07. Retrieved 2008-03-04.
- ISBN 9780324830132. Archivedfrom the original on 2021-06-09. Retrieved 2020-11-10.
- ]
- ^ "What are Device Drivers and why do we need them?". drivers.com. April 17, 2015. Archived from the original on November 20, 2016. Retrieved March 19, 2018.
- ^ "CCISS". SourceForge. 2010. Archived from the original on 2010-08-21. Retrieved 2010-08-11.
Drivers for the HP (previously Compaq) Smart Array controllers which provide hardware RAID capability.
- ]
- ^ "US Patent 5969841 - Gigabaud link module with received power detect signal". PatentStorm LLC. Archived from the original on 2011-06-12. Retrieved 2009-09-08.
An improved Gigabaud Link Module (GLM) is provided for performing bi-directional data transfers between a host device and a serial transfer medium.
- ^ "Unified Audio Model (Windows CE 5.0)". Microsoft Developer Network. Archived from the original on 2017-06-22. Retrieved 2016-09-19.
- ^ Dell US. "What are DCH drivers and why do you need to know about them? | Dell US". www.dell.com. Retrieved 2020-10-29.
- ^ "dxd - dynax driver framework: Main Page". dxd.dynax.at. Archived from the original on 2016-05-29. Retrieved 2016-09-19.
- ISBN 9781939133045. Archivedfrom the original on 5 November 2022. Retrieved 5 November 2022.
- ^ Goodin, Dan (14 October 2022). "How a Microsoft blunder opened millions of PCs to potent malware attacks". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on 8 November 2022. Retrieved 8 November 2022.
- ISBN 9781931971409. Retrieved 5 November 2022.
- ^ King, Bertel (18 June 2022). "Closed Source vs. Open Source Hardware Drivers: Why It Matters". MUO. Archived from the original on 5 November 2022. Retrieved 5 November 2022.
- ^ Branscombe, Mary (7 April 2022). "How Microsoft blocks vulnerable and malicious drivers in Defender, third-party security tools and in Windows 11". TechRepublic. Archived from the original on 5 November 2022. Retrieved 5 November 2022.
- ^ Goodin, Dan (5 October 2022). "No fix in sight for mile-wide loophole plaguing a key Windows defense for years". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on 5 November 2022. Retrieved 5 November 2022.
- ^ Davenport, Corbin. ""Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver" Attacks Are Breaking Windows". How-To Geek. Archived from the original on 5 November 2022. Retrieved 5 November 2022.
- ^ "Windows 10 Security Alert: Vulnerabilities Found in Over 40 Drivers". BleepingComputer. Archived from the original on 5 November 2022. Retrieved 5 November 2022.
- ^ Goodin, Dan (13 July 2022). "Vulnerabilities that could allow undectable infections affect 70 Lenovo laptop models". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on 5 November 2022. Retrieved 5 November 2022.
- ^ Ridley, Jacob (9 February 2022). "You're going to want to update your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth drivers today". PC Gamer. Archived from the original on 5 November 2022. Retrieved 5 November 2022.
- ^ "Wireless 'BlueBorne' Attacks Target Billions of Bluetooth Devices". threatpost.com. Archived from the original on 5 November 2022. Retrieved 5 November 2022.
- ^ Spadafora, Anthony (12 January 2022). "Installing gaming drivers might leave your PC vulnerable to cyberattacks". TechRadar. Archived from the original on 5 November 2022. Retrieved 5 November 2022.
- ^ "HP patches vulnerable driver lurking in printers for 16 years". ZDNET. Archived from the original on 5 November 2022. Retrieved 5 November 2022.
- ^ "Fine-grained kernel isolation". mars-research.github.io. Archived from the original on 15 September 2022. Retrieved 15 September 2022.
- ^ Fetzer, Mary. "Automatic device driver isolation protects against bugs in operating systems". Pennsylvania State University via techxplore.com. Archived from the original on 15 September 2022. Retrieved 15 September 2022.
- ^ Huang, Yongzhe; Narayanan, Vikram; Detweiler, David; Huang, Kaiming; Tan, Gang; Jaeger, Trent; Burtsev, Anton (2022). "KSplit: Automating Device Driver Isolation" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 15 September 2022. Retrieved 15 September 2022.
- ^ Wulf 1974 pp.337–345
- ^ Denning 1976
- ^ Swift 2005, p.29 quote: "isolation, resource control, decision verification (checking), and error recovery."