Compiling a Driver as a Part of a Kernel, Not as a Module

Compiling a driver as a part of a kernel, not as a module

You're definitely going to have to put the driver source in the kernel source tree and update the makefile to include it. You can see how this works in steps 1.1 through 1.3 here.

If user-level software does any talking with the device driver it probably does it via system calls. Search through the source of the driver looking for asmlinkage if you find any of these then you're looking at adding some system calls. The remainder of the above document will explain how to set them up. You'll have to modify at least two files (and they might vary slightly depending on your kernel version).

If the device driver does any talking with the kernel directly, we're dealing with Interrupts, Memory Mapped I/O, or DMA. To be honest with you I do not know whether they can be handled within the source file for your driver (in which case you're good do go), or whether they also require modifying other files in the source tree. The Linux Kernel Module Programming Guide is a good resource for such things.

Good Luck

Unable to compile a kernel module

1. For compiling loadable kernel modules in Linux tree apply the following command

   make modules

2. .ko is the proper kernel module extension. If .o is tried with insmod, then Invalid module format error will be displayed.

How to compile a device driver into the kernel?

I'm afraid you will not be able to build a driver which is supported up to 2.6.18 and your kernel is 4.18.

Good news is that this NIC has upstream Linux driver for quite some time now, look here at the source of 4.18. As per Makefile, it is enabled via CONFIG_SUNDANCE. So I believe this NIC should work out of the box.

If not, you might want to build just this driver as a module for your current kernel. How to do that - this falls out of the scope of this question.

Compiling out-of-tree kernel module against any kernel source tree on the filesystem

goal is to have it compile against any source tree

ya you can do it providing a compiled source-code path

just replace make -C /lib/modules/$(shell uname -r)/build M=$PWD modules

with this

make -C <path-to-compiled-src-code> M=$PWD modules

make -C /home/vinay/linux-3.9 M=$PWD modules

try below makefile

Makefile –

# if KERNELRELEASE is defined, we've been invoked from the
# kernel build system and can use its language.
ifneq (${KERNELRELEASE},)
obj-m := new-mod.o
# Otherwise we were called directly from the command line.
# Invoke the kernel build system.
  else
    KERNEL_SOURCE := /usr/src/linux
    PWD := $(shell pwd)
default:
      ${MAKE} -C ${KERNEL_SOURCE} SUBDIRS=${PWD} modules

clean:
      ${MAKE} -C ${KERNEL_SOURCE} SUBDIRS=${PWD} clean
endif

In above you can change KERNEL_SOURCE := /usr/src/linux-->to.--> your sr-code KERNEL_SOURCE := <path to compiled-src-code>

for further info find below liks

while building kernel modules why do we need /lib/modules?

A simple program on linux device driver

How to make a built-in device driver in linux

What is the difference for linux kernel :module or built-in?

If something is compiled in the linux kernel it will be part of the binary forever. So, it wont be loaded into the kernel on a "as-needed" basis. So, for example assume you have a realtek ethernet card on your machine why do you need drivers for intel ethernet cards?

One other thing, kernel modules in general can not reference a function in the kernel unless it is exported to modules using EXPORT_SYMBOL and its variants. So, if your driver need to reference functions from the kernel sources (which should not be the case anyways) then you have to add your driver into the kernel source tree.

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