I have a hard time understanding the exact usage of MODULE_DEVICE_TABLE(usb, id_table)
AFAIK this will generate the map files that will be used later by modprobe
whenever a new device is inserted, it will match it against those map files and load the module if it matches.
But my misunderstanding is "isn't the module loaded anyway?"
I mean I already loaded it when I did insmod module-name
. or am I missing something?
The Linux kernel supports two main types of USB drivers: drivers on a host system and drivers on a device. The USB drivers for a host system control the USB devices that are plugged into it, from the host's point of view (a common USB host is a desktop computer.)
MODULE_DEVICE_TABLE is used to generate map files by depmod program; When device is hot-plugged, bus driver generates hotplug event.
Linux currently supports almost all USB class devices (standard types of devices like keyboards, mice, modems, printers and speakers) and an ever-growing number of vendor-specific devices (such as USB to serial converters, digital cameras, Ethernet devices and MP3 players).
Whether a driver for a USB device is there or not on a Linux system, a valid USB device will always be detected at the hardware and kernel spaces of a USB-enabled Linux system, since it is designed (and detected) as per the USB protocol specifications.
It is usually used to support hot-plugging, by loading/inserting the driver for a device if not already loaded.
There is a similar question here: Detect the presence of a device when it's hot plugged in Linux
(From my ans)
It works as follows:
Each driver in the code exposes its vendor/device id using:
MODULE_DEVICE_TABLE(of, omap_mcspi_of_match);
At compilation time the build process extracts this infomation from all the drivers and prepares a device table.
When you insert the device, the device table is referred by the kernel and if an entry is found matching the device/vendor id of the added device, then its module is loaded and initialized.
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