Linux Kernel, Board Support and Driver Development training

All you need to know to use make the Linux kernel support your own hardware.

Overview

Michael Opdenacker showing how to run the latest kernels on your Linux distribution. Can be useful for contributing to kernel sources.

Everything you need to know to make the Linux kernel boot on your new embedded board and write drivers for its specific hardware devices. Learn how to describe your hardware with the device tree, and debug the kernel code (written by yourself or by the community).

Also learn how to contribute changes back to the upstream version of Linux, to reduce your own maintenance costs, make support for your hardware ubiquitous and enjoy contributions from the Linux kernel developer community.

Using progressive but challenging practical labs and varied techniques to make the learning always stimulating and fun, and above all to make it stick. At least 75% of the time is dedicated to practical activities. Learn by doing!

Description

Delivery	In-person (all continents) or online, public or private session
Language	English or French
Mix	25% theory – 75% practical activities – Learn by doing!

Duration

5 days (in-person), 32 hours (online)

Hardware	BeaglePlay board with TI Sitara AM625 SoC (ARM64)
Linux kernel version	6.12 (LTS) used in practical labs
Prerequisites	Familiarity with the Linux command line

Upcoming sessions

Trainer	Dates	Cost	Register
Michael Opdenacker	Nov 3 – 7, 10, 12, 13, online 15:00 to 19:00 UTC+2 Seats left	1990 EUR ^{1, 2, 3}

¹ We want our training to be accessible to individuals around the world. If our standard rate is a barrier due to local income levels, please apply anyway — we’ll do our best to offer a suitable price.
² Individuals (all countries, not paying through a company) are subject to + 20% V.A.T. However, we offer a discount on the base cost to cancel the impact of V.A.T. and keep the same total price. See also ¹.
³ Only for French companies: + 20% V.A.T.

Available discounts

The below discounts can be combined, up to a limit of 400 EUR per participant.

200 EUR returning participant discount for any extra course taken by the same participant at most 12 months after another one.
200 EUR early bird discount for any registration at least 2 months before the session dates.
200 EUR extra participant discount for each participant from the same entity (same invoicing address) in addition to the first one.

If V.A.T. is applicable, it applies to the amounts before V.A.T.

Private sessions

This course can be taught in a private session anywhere in the world, either in your company’s premises or online. This offers more privacy and allows for customization options.

Agenda

Configuring, building, booting and kernel modules

Presentation of the hardware
Big picture: Linux kernel in the whole system. Interface with user applications.
Lab: board setup, serial port access, U-Boot setup, tftp networking between the board and PC.
Retrieve Linux kernel sources. Understand the Linux release process and choose a version for your project.
Lab: clone the mainline “stable” source tree with git
Linux kernel source code. Technical and licensing constraints.
Kernel source management tools
Lab: Exploring kernel source code
Configure the Linux kernel. Guided tour of most interesting options.
Cross-compiling the kernel. Speed up this build.
Lab: configuring and compiling the kernel
Install the kernel and modules
Boot the kernel from the bootloader. Device Tree and kernel command line
Lab: kernel booting, NFS root filesystem
Using and writing kernel modules. Programming constraints.
Lab: create your first module, add parameters, access kernel internals. Check compliance with kernel coding standards.

Part 2: Device model – Bus, drivers and devices

How the kernel abstracts and binds busses, devices and drivers.
Case of busses supporting device enumeration: USB and PCI
Device Tree: how to describe hardware that cannot be detected.
How to validate your Device Tree.
Lab: browse and update Device Trees. Drive GPIO LEDs.
Example: the I2C bus.
Understanding pin multiplexing.
Lab: enable pin multiplexing for I2C buses. Add description of I2C gamepad device.
Device and driver model. Bus drivers.
USB device driver example.
Probing of devices.
Platform devices and drivers.
Example: I2C and writing I2C device drivers.
Lab: create a basic I2C driver for the gamepad device. Bind the driver to the device.
Communication over the I2C bus.
Lab: initialize the I2C device and read the states of the joystick and buttons.

Part 3: Kernel frameworks, memory and I/O

Kernel frameworks: abstracting devices in user-space.
Device-managed allocations.
Example: the Input subsystem. How to register and implement input devices.
Lab: completing the I2C driver: exposing device data to userspace. Play ASCII games with the gamepad.
Kernel memory management
Available memory allocators.
Kernel memory debugging.
Reserving and mapping I/O memory (registers).
Lab: add UART devices to Device Tree. Access I/O registers to write data to board serial ports.
Character driver operations: read, write, ioctl(). Exchanging data with user-space.
The Misc subsystem. How to register Misc devices.
Lab: output-only serial port driver.

Part 4: Interrupts, deferring work, locking

Processes and scheduling. Waiting for a condition.
Support for interrupts to process hardware events.
Lab: read data received on the serial ports.
Managing concurrency issues. Lock based and lock-less primitives. Debugging locks.
Lab: torture the serial driver using parallel writer threads. Expose bugs due to concurrency issues and fix them through locking.

Part 5: Board support, debugging, testing and contribution

Available techniques for kernel debugging.
Lab: debug and fix a broken kernel driver with multiple issues.
How to support a new board. How SoCs are supported.
Kernel testing. Performance analysis.
Lab: performance analysis with perf and ftrace.
Kernel development best practices: error handling, coding conventions.
Locate specific issue by bisecting kernel code.
How to contribute to the upstream Linux kernel.
Getting involved: ideas for kernel contribution.
Conferences and useful resources.
Q&A session.

What is provided?

	In-person public sessions	In-person private sessions	Online public sessions
Electronic board and all its required accessories, for the duration of the course	✅	✅	❌
Lunch, morning and afternoon breaks	✅	❌	❌
Electronic copies of the lecture and practical lab materials.	✅	✅	✅
Solutions to practical labs	✅	✅	✅
Video recordings of the lectures from the trainer.	❌	❌	✅
Electronic training certificate, after successful completion of the course, which can be shared on your LinkedIn profile and on other social media.	✅	✅	✅

What’s special in our courses?

Majority of practical activities, representing at least 75% of learning time.

Short lectures only: sequences of theory never exceed 30 minutes, and are interleaved with quick or longer practice. Too long series of lectures are hard to digest, especially in an online setting.

Technical and teaching experience: courses taught by an industry veteran with more than 20 years of experience in embedded Linux and 30 years using and advocating for Free and Open Source Software.

FAQ

Q: Will I get solutions to the practical labs?
A: Yes, C code and Device Tree solutions are shared at the end of each lab.

Q: In-house sessions: can practical labs be run on the CPU that my project uses?
A: The Linux kernel tries to offer the same mechanisms for all types of hardware, so most of what you learn on another platform should apply on other ones as well. Another reason to stick with our standard instructions is that the some drivers we develop during the labs depend on the CPU being driven, in particular its hardware registers. Therefore porting our practical labs to different hardware remains possible, if you are ready to accept additional preparation costs.

See also our FAQ for all types of courses and our sustainability efforts.