Module 02

System Architecture

Objectives
Objective 1: Determine and Configure Hardware Settings

BIOS
USB Topology
USB Controllers
USB Devices
USB Drivers
USB Hotplug
Reporting Your Hardware
Device Management Definitions

Objective 1: Determine and Configure Hardware Settings

Setting up a PC for Linux (or any other operating system)

requires some familiarity with the devices installed in the
system and their configuration
It includes: modems, network adapters, hard drives, USB
controllers, and sound cards

BIOS
The firmware located in a PC,

commonly called the BIOS, is

responsible for bringing all of the
system hardware to a state at
which it is ready to boot an
operating system
Includes: testing of memory, other
devices, and locating an operating
system from among several storage
devices
In addition, the BIOS provides a lowlevel system configuration interface.
Exp: allowing the user to choose
such things as boot devices and
resource assignments.

BIOS
Depending on the BIOS vendor, these will include settings
for disks, on-board ports (such as serial and parallel ports),
and the clock, as well as many others.
Date and time: set in BIOS or in OS
Disks and boot devices as CD-DVD, Floopy, Network
Boot (NIC)

Using the /proc filesystem

When adding new hardware to an

existing Linux system, you may

wish to verify which resources the
existing devices are using. The
/proc filesystem, the kernels
status repository, contains this
information.
/proc/interrupts
interrupts or IRQs are signals
generated by peripherals for
the cpu to know.
when the cpu receives an
interrupt signal, it temporarily
suspends all its activities and
attends to the interrupt

Using the /proc filesystem

/proc/dma
Direct Memory Access
For faster peripheral devices, generating interrupts to
talk to cpu and then gain access to RAM could slow
things down.
DMA solves this problem by granting the peripheral
direct access to memory areas; basically bypassing the
cpu.

Using the /proc filesystem

/proc/ioports:
When cpu needs to
communicate to
peripheral devices, it
does so by writing to IO
ports or simply ports.
Each device has its
own separate port that
is not shared with other
devices.

USB Topology
Universal Serial Bus (USB) is a type of interface used to
connect various types of peripherals, ranging from
keyboards and mice to hard drives, scanners, digital
cameras, and printers.
The lsusb command can be used to see how devices are
physically attached to a Linux system.

USB Controllers
There are three types of USB host controllers:
Open Host Controller Interface (OHCI)
Universal Host Controller Interface (UHCI)
Enhanced Host Controller Interface (EHCI)
OHCI and UHCI controllers are both USB 1.1 controllers,
which are capable of a maximum of 12 Mbps.
EHCI controllers are USB 2.0 controllers, which are
capable of a theoretical maximum of 480 Mbps
USB 3.0 Speed: 4800Mbps
A USB 2.0 device attached to a USB 1.1 hub will only be
able to run at USB 1.1 speeds.

USB Device
There are several classes of USB devices:
Human Interface Device (HID)

Input devices (mice, keyboards, etc.)

Communications device
Modems
Mass storage device
Disk devices, flash readers, etc.
Audio
Sound devices
IrDA
Infrared devices
Printer
Printers and USB-to-parallel cables

USB Drivers
USB support was added to the Linux kernel in the 2.3.x
development kernel series
The Linux kernel USB drivers fall into three categories:
Host controller drivers: usb-ohci.o , usb-uhci.o , usbehci.o
Class drivers: usb-storage.o , printer.o, and audio.o
Other device drivers

USB Hotplug
Hotplug lets you plug in new USB devices and use them
immediately.
Starting with kernel 2.4 (in January 2001), hotplugging
became a standard feature of Linux.

Reporting Your Hardware

Some useful tools to report
information about the
hardware installed include
lsmod, lsdev, and lspci.
lsmod: showing what
kernel modules are
currently loaded.
The output of lsmod is a
series of columns
identifying the module
name, its size, its use
number, and its status.

Reporting Your Hardware

Some useful tools to report
information about the
hardware installed include
lsmod, lsdev, and lspci.
lsdev: displays
information about your
systems hardware, such
as interrupt addresses
and I/O ports.

Reporting Your Hardware

Some useful tools to report information about the hardware
installed include lsmod, lsdev, and lspci.
lspci: displays information about your systems PCI buses
and your installed PCI devices

Device Management Definitions

Hotplugging: the ability of a computer system to add or
remove hardware without powering the system down.
Coldplugging:
In most computer systems, CPUs and memory are
coldpluggable
But it is common for high-end servers and mainframes
to feature hotplug capability of these components.