From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: greg@kroah.com (Greg KH) Date: Thu, 3 May 2018 11:34:08 -0700 Subject: serial: start_tx & buffer handling In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20180503183408.GA12152@kroah.com> To: kernelnewbies@lists.kernelnewbies.org List-Id: kernelnewbies.lists.kernelnewbies.org On Thu, May 03, 2018 at 08:08:48PM +0530, Muni Sekhar wrote: > Hi All, > > I?m trying to understand how user mode buffer is written to low level > serial hardware registers. > > For this I read the kernel code and I came to know that from user mode > write() API lands into kernel?s tty_write() ("drivers/tty/tty_io.c") > and then it calls a uart_write() ("drivers/tty/serial/serial_core.c"). > > In uart_write(), the buffer is copied to circ_buf and then it calls > low level serial hardware driver?s start_tx() (struct uart_ops > .start_tx). But here I could not find how the buffer kept in circ_buf > is copied to serial port?s TX_FIFO registers? > > Can someone take a moment to explain me on this? It all depends on which specific UART driver you are looking at, they all do it a bit different depending on the hardware. Which one are you looking at? Look at what the start_tx callback does for that specific driver, that should give you a hint as to how data starts flowing. Usually an interrupt is enabled that is used to flush the buffer out to the hardware. thanks, greg k-h