| ============================================================================ |
| |
| can.txt |
| |
| Readme file for the Controller Area Network Protocol Family (aka Socket CAN) |
| |
| This file contains |
| |
| 1 Overview / What is Socket CAN |
| |
| 2 Motivation / Why using the socket API |
| |
| 3 Socket CAN concept |
| 3.1 receive lists |
| 3.2 local loopback of sent frames |
| 3.3 network security issues (capabilities) |
| 3.4 network problem notifications |
| |
| 4 How to use Socket CAN |
| 4.1 RAW protocol sockets with can_filters (SOCK_RAW) |
| 4.1.1 RAW socket option CAN_RAW_FILTER |
| 4.1.2 RAW socket option CAN_RAW_ERR_FILTER |
| 4.1.3 RAW socket option CAN_RAW_LOOPBACK |
| 4.1.4 RAW socket option CAN_RAW_RECV_OWN_MSGS |
| 4.2 Broadcast Manager protocol sockets (SOCK_DGRAM) |
| 4.3 connected transport protocols (SOCK_SEQPACKET) |
| 4.4 unconnected transport protocols (SOCK_DGRAM) |
| |
| 5 Socket CAN core module |
| 5.1 can.ko module params |
| 5.2 procfs content |
| 5.3 writing own CAN protocol modules |
| |
| 6 CAN network drivers |
| 6.1 general settings |
| 6.2 local loopback of sent frames |
| 6.3 CAN controller hardware filters |
| 6.4 The virtual CAN driver (vcan) |
| 6.5 currently supported CAN hardware |
| 6.6 todo |
| |
| 7 Credits |
| |
| ============================================================================ |
| |
| 1. Overview / What is Socket CAN |
| -------------------------------- |
| |
| The socketcan package is an implementation of CAN protocols |
| (Controller Area Network) for Linux. CAN is a networking technology |
| which has widespread use in automation, embedded devices, and |
| automotive fields. While there have been other CAN implementations |
| for Linux based on character devices, Socket CAN uses the Berkeley |
| socket API, the Linux network stack and implements the CAN device |
| drivers as network interfaces. The CAN socket API has been designed |
| as similar as possible to the TCP/IP protocols to allow programmers, |
| familiar with network programming, to easily learn how to use CAN |
| sockets. |
| |
| 2. Motivation / Why using the socket API |
| ---------------------------------------- |
| |
| There have been CAN implementations for Linux before Socket CAN so the |
| question arises, why we have started another project. Most existing |
| implementations come as a device driver for some CAN hardware, they |
| are based on character devices and provide comparatively little |
| functionality. Usually, there is only a hardware-specific device |
| driver which provides a character device interface to send and |
| receive raw CAN frames, directly to/from the controller hardware. |
| Queueing of frames and higher-level transport protocols like ISO-TP |
| have to be implemented in user space applications. Also, most |
| character-device implementations support only one single process to |
| open the device at a time, similar to a serial interface. Exchanging |
| the CAN controller requires employment of another device driver and |
| often the need for adaption of large parts of the application to the |
| new driver's API. |
| |
| Socket CAN was designed to overcome all of these limitations. A new |
| protocol family has been implemented which provides a socket interface |
| to user space applications and which builds upon the Linux network |
| layer, so to use all of the provided queueing functionality. A device |
| driver for CAN controller hardware registers itself with the Linux |
| network layer as a network device, so that CAN frames from the |
| controller can be passed up to the network layer and on to the CAN |
| protocol family module and also vice-versa. Also, the protocol family |
| module provides an API for transport protocol modules to register, so |
| that any number of transport protocols can be loaded or unloaded |
| dynamically. In fact, the can core module alone does not provide any |
| protocol and cannot be used without loading at least one additional |
| protocol module. Multiple sockets can be opened at the same time, |
| on different or the same protocol module and they can listen/send |
| frames on different or the same CAN IDs. Several sockets listening on |
| the same interface for frames with the same CAN ID are all passed the |
| same received matching CAN frames. An application wishing to |
| communicate using a specific transport protocol, e.g. ISO-TP, just |
| selects that protocol when opening the socket, and then can read and |
| write application data byte streams, without having to deal with |
| CAN-IDs, frames, etc. |
| |
| Similar functionality visible from user-space could be provided by a |
| character device, too, but this would lead to a technically inelegant |
| solution for a couple of reasons: |
| |
| * Intricate usage. Instead of passing a protocol argument to |
| socket(2) and using bind(2) to select a CAN interface and CAN ID, an |
| application would have to do all these operations using ioctl(2)s. |
| |
| * Code duplication. A character device cannot make use of the Linux |
| network queueing code, so all that code would have to be duplicated |
| for CAN networking. |
| |
| * Abstraction. In most existing character-device implementations, the |
| hardware-specific device driver for a CAN controller directly |
| provides the character device for the application to work with. |
| This is at least very unusual in Unix systems for both, char and |
| block devices. For example you don't have a character device for a |
| certain UART of a serial interface, a certain sound chip in your |
| computer, a SCSI or IDE controller providing access to your hard |
| disk or tape streamer device. Instead, you have abstraction layers |
| which provide a unified character or block device interface to the |
| application on the one hand, and a interface for hardware-specific |
| device drivers on the other hand. These abstractions are provided |
| by subsystems like the tty layer, the audio subsystem or the SCSI |
| and IDE subsystems for the devices mentioned above. |
| |
| The easiest way to implement a CAN device driver is as a character |
| device without such a (complete) abstraction layer, as is done by most |
| existing drivers. The right way, however, would be to add such a |
| layer with all the functionality like registering for certain CAN |
| IDs, supporting several open file descriptors and (de)multiplexing |
| CAN frames between them, (sophisticated) queueing of CAN frames, and |
| providing an API for device drivers to register with. However, then |
| it would be no more difficult, or may be even easier, to use the |
| networking framework provided by the Linux kernel, and this is what |
| Socket CAN does. |
| |
| The use of the networking framework of the Linux kernel is just the |
| natural and most appropriate way to implement CAN for Linux. |
| |
| 3. Socket CAN concept |
| --------------------- |
| |
| As described in chapter 2 it is the main goal of Socket CAN to |
| provide a socket interface to user space applications which builds |
| upon the Linux network layer. In contrast to the commonly known |
| TCP/IP and ethernet networking, the CAN bus is a broadcast-only(!) |
| medium that has no MAC-layer addressing like ethernet. The CAN-identifier |
| (can_id) is used for arbitration on the CAN-bus. Therefore the CAN-IDs |
| have to be chosen uniquely on the bus. When designing a CAN-ECU |
| network the CAN-IDs are mapped to be sent by a specific ECU. |
| For this reason a CAN-ID can be treated best as a kind of source address. |
| |
| 3.1 receive lists |
| |
| The network transparent access of multiple applications leads to the |
| problem that different applications may be interested in the same |
| CAN-IDs from the same CAN network interface. The Socket CAN core |
| module - which implements the protocol family CAN - provides several |
| high efficient receive lists for this reason. If e.g. a user space |
| application opens a CAN RAW socket, the raw protocol module itself |
| requests the (range of) CAN-IDs from the Socket CAN core that are |
| requested by the user. The subscription and unsubscription of |
| CAN-IDs can be done for specific CAN interfaces or for all(!) known |
| CAN interfaces with the can_rx_(un)register() functions provided to |
| CAN protocol modules by the SocketCAN core (see chapter 5). |
| To optimize the CPU usage at runtime the receive lists are split up |
| into several specific lists per device that match the requested |
| filter complexity for a given use-case. |
| |
| 3.2 local loopback of sent frames |
| |
| As known from other networking concepts the data exchanging |
| applications may run on the same or different nodes without any |
| change (except for the according addressing information): |
| |
| ___ ___ ___ _______ ___ |
| | _ | | _ | | _ | | _ _ | | _ | |
| ||A|| ||B|| ||C|| ||A| |B|| ||C|| |
| |___| |___| |___| |_______| |___| |
| | | | | | |
| -----------------(1)- CAN bus -(2)--------------- |
| |
| To ensure that application A receives the same information in the |
| example (2) as it would receive in example (1) there is need for |
| some kind of local loopback of the sent CAN frames on the appropriate |
| node. |
| |
| The Linux network devices (by default) just can handle the |
| transmission and reception of media dependent frames. Due to the |
| arbitration on the CAN bus the transmission of a low prio CAN-ID |
| may be delayed by the reception of a high prio CAN frame. To |
| reflect the correct* traffic on the node the loopback of the sent |
| data has to be performed right after a successful transmission. If |
| the CAN network interface is not capable of performing the loopback for |
| some reason the SocketCAN core can do this task as a fallback solution. |
| See chapter 6.2 for details (recommended). |
| |
| The loopback functionality is enabled by default to reflect standard |
| networking behaviour for CAN applications. Due to some requests from |
| the RT-SocketCAN group the loopback optionally may be disabled for each |
| separate socket. See sockopts from the CAN RAW sockets in chapter 4.1. |
| |
| * = you really like to have this when you're running analyser tools |
| like 'candump' or 'cansniffer' on the (same) node. |
| |
| 3.3 network security issues (capabilities) |
| |
| The Controller Area Network is a local field bus transmitting only |
| broadcast messages without any routing and security concepts. |
| In the majority of cases the user application has to deal with |
| raw CAN frames. Therefore it might be reasonable NOT to restrict |
| the CAN access only to the user root, as known from other networks. |
| Since the currently implemented CAN_RAW and CAN_BCM sockets can only |
| send and receive frames to/from CAN interfaces it does not affect |
| security of others networks to allow all users to access the CAN. |
| To enable non-root users to access CAN_RAW and CAN_BCM protocol |
| sockets the Kconfig options CAN_RAW_USER and/or CAN_BCM_USER may be |
| selected at kernel compile time. |
| |
| 3.4 network problem notifications |
| |
| The use of the CAN bus may lead to several problems on the physical |
| and media access control layer. Detecting and logging of these lower |
| layer problems is a vital requirement for CAN users to identify |
| hardware issues on the physical transceiver layer as well as |
| arbitration problems and error frames caused by the different |
| ECUs. The occurrence of detected errors are important for diagnosis |
| and have to be logged together with the exact timestamp. For this |
| reason the CAN interface driver can generate so called Error Frames |
| that can optionally be passed to the user application in the same |
| way as other CAN frames. Whenever an error on the physical layer |
| or the MAC layer is detected (e.g. by the CAN controller) the driver |
| creates an appropriate error frame. Error frames can be requested by |
| the user application using the common CAN filter mechanisms. Inside |
| this filter definition the (interested) type of errors may be |
| selected. The reception of error frames is disabled by default. |
| |
| 4. How to use Socket CAN |
| ------------------------ |
| |
| Like TCP/IP, you first need to open a socket for communicating over a |
| CAN network. Since Socket CAN implements a new protocol family, you |
| need to pass PF_CAN as the first argument to the socket(2) system |
| call. Currently, there are two CAN protocols to choose from, the raw |
| socket protocol and the broadcast manager (BCM). So to open a socket, |
| you would write |
| |
| s = socket(PF_CAN, SOCK_RAW, CAN_RAW); |
| |
| and |
| |
| s = socket(PF_CAN, SOCK_DGRAM, CAN_BCM); |
| |
| respectively. After the successful creation of the socket, you would |
| normally use the bind(2) system call to bind the socket to a CAN |
| interface (which is different from TCP/IP due to different addressing |
| - see chapter 3). After binding (CAN_RAW) or connecting (CAN_BCM) |
| the socket, you can read(2) and write(2) from/to the socket or use |
| send(2), sendto(2), sendmsg(2) and the recv* counterpart operations |
| on the socket as usual. There are also CAN specific socket options |
| described below. |
| |
| The basic CAN frame structure and the sockaddr structure are defined |
| in include/linux/can.h: |
| |
| struct can_frame { |
| canid_t can_id; /* 32 bit CAN_ID + EFF/RTR/ERR flags */ |
| __u8 can_dlc; /* data length code: 0 .. 8 */ |
| __u8 data[8] __attribute__((aligned(8))); |
| }; |
| |
| The alignment of the (linear) payload data[] to a 64bit boundary |
| allows the user to define own structs and unions to easily access the |
| CAN payload. There is no given byteorder on the CAN bus by |
| default. A read(2) system call on a CAN_RAW socket transfers a |
| struct can_frame to the user space. |
| |
| The sockaddr_can structure has an interface index like the |
| PF_PACKET socket, that also binds to a specific interface: |
| |
| struct sockaddr_can { |
| sa_family_t can_family; |
| int can_ifindex; |
| union { |
| /* transport protocol class address info (e.g. ISOTP) */ |
| struct { canid_t rx_id, tx_id; } tp; |
| |
| /* reserved for future CAN protocols address information */ |
| } can_addr; |
| }; |
| |
| To determine the interface index an appropriate ioctl() has to |
| be used (example for CAN_RAW sockets without error checking): |
| |
| int s; |
| struct sockaddr_can addr; |
| struct ifreq ifr; |
| |
| s = socket(PF_CAN, SOCK_RAW, CAN_RAW); |
| |
| strcpy(ifr.ifr_name, "can0" ); |
| ioctl(s, SIOCGIFINDEX, &ifr); |
| |
| addr.can_family = AF_CAN; |
| addr.can_ifindex = ifr.ifr_ifindex; |
| |
| bind(s, (struct sockaddr *)&addr, sizeof(addr)); |
| |
| (..) |
| |
| To bind a socket to all(!) CAN interfaces the interface index must |
| be 0 (zero). In this case the socket receives CAN frames from every |
| enabled CAN interface. To determine the originating CAN interface |
| the system call recvfrom(2) may be used instead of read(2). To send |
| on a socket that is bound to 'any' interface sendto(2) is needed to |
| specify the outgoing interface. |
| |
| Reading CAN frames from a bound CAN_RAW socket (see above) consists |
| of reading a struct can_frame: |
| |
| struct can_frame frame; |
| |
| nbytes = read(s, &frame, sizeof(struct can_frame)); |
| |
| if (nbytes < 0) { |
| perror("can raw socket read"); |
| return 1; |
| } |
| |
| /* paranoid check ... */ |
| if (nbytes < sizeof(struct can_frame)) { |
| fprintf(stderr, "read: incomplete CAN frame\n"); |
| return 1; |
| } |
| |
| /* do something with the received CAN frame */ |
| |
| Writing CAN frames can be done similarly, with the write(2) system call: |
| |
| nbytes = write(s, &frame, sizeof(struct can_frame)); |
| |
| When the CAN interface is bound to 'any' existing CAN interface |
| (addr.can_ifindex = 0) it is recommended to use recvfrom(2) if the |
| information about the originating CAN interface is needed: |
| |
| struct sockaddr_can addr; |
| struct ifreq ifr; |
| socklen_t len = sizeof(addr); |
| struct can_frame frame; |
| |
| nbytes = recvfrom(s, &frame, sizeof(struct can_frame), |
| 0, (struct sockaddr*)&addr, &len); |
| |
| /* get interface name of the received CAN frame */ |
| ifr.ifr_ifindex = addr.can_ifindex; |
| ioctl(s, SIOCGIFNAME, &ifr); |
| printf("Received a CAN frame from interface %s", ifr.ifr_name); |
| |
| To write CAN frames on sockets bound to 'any' CAN interface the |
| outgoing interface has to be defined certainly. |
| |
| strcpy(ifr.ifr_name, "can0"); |
| ioctl(s, SIOCGIFINDEX, &ifr); |
| addr.can_ifindex = ifr.ifr_ifindex; |
| addr.can_family = AF_CAN; |
| |
| nbytes = sendto(s, &frame, sizeof(struct can_frame), |
| 0, (struct sockaddr*)&addr, sizeof(addr)); |
| |
| 4.1 RAW protocol sockets with can_filters (SOCK_RAW) |
| |
| Using CAN_RAW sockets is extensively comparable to the commonly |
| known access to CAN character devices. To meet the new possibilities |
| provided by the multi user SocketCAN approach, some reasonable |
| defaults are set at RAW socket binding time: |
| |
| - The filters are set to exactly one filter receiving everything |
| - The socket only receives valid data frames (=> no error frames) |
| - The loopback of sent CAN frames is enabled (see chapter 3.2) |
| - The socket does not receive its own sent frames (in loopback mode) |
| |
| These default settings may be changed before or after binding the socket. |
| To use the referenced definitions of the socket options for CAN_RAW |
| sockets, include <linux/can/raw.h>. |
| |
| 4.1.1 RAW socket option CAN_RAW_FILTER |
| |
| The reception of CAN frames using CAN_RAW sockets can be controlled |
| by defining 0 .. n filters with the CAN_RAW_FILTER socket option. |
| |
| The CAN filter structure is defined in include/linux/can.h: |
| |
| struct can_filter { |
| canid_t can_id; |
| canid_t can_mask; |
| }; |
| |
| A filter matches, when |
| |
| <received_can_id> & mask == can_id & mask |
| |
| which is analogous to known CAN controllers hardware filter semantics. |
| The filter can be inverted in this semantic, when the CAN_INV_FILTER |
| bit is set in can_id element of the can_filter structure. In |
| contrast to CAN controller hardware filters the user may set 0 .. n |
| receive filters for each open socket separately: |
| |
| struct can_filter rfilter[2]; |
| |
| rfilter[0].can_id = 0x123; |
| rfilter[0].can_mask = CAN_SFF_MASK; |
| rfilter[1].can_id = 0x200; |
| rfilter[1].can_mask = 0x700; |
| |
| setsockopt(s, SOL_CAN_RAW, CAN_RAW_FILTER, &rfilter, sizeof(rfilter)); |
| |
| To disable the reception of CAN frames on the selected CAN_RAW socket: |
| |
| setsockopt(s, SOL_CAN_RAW, CAN_RAW_FILTER, NULL, 0); |
| |
| To set the filters to zero filters is quite obsolete as not read |
| data causes the raw socket to discard the received CAN frames. But |
| having this 'send only' use-case we may remove the receive list in the |
| Kernel to save a little (really a very little!) CPU usage. |
| |
| 4.1.2 RAW socket option CAN_RAW_ERR_FILTER |
| |
| As described in chapter 3.4 the CAN interface driver can generate so |
| called Error Frames that can optionally be passed to the user |
| application in the same way as other CAN frames. The possible |
| errors are divided into different error classes that may be filtered |
| using the appropriate error mask. To register for every possible |
| error condition CAN_ERR_MASK can be used as value for the error mask. |
| The values for the error mask are defined in linux/can/error.h . |
| |
| can_err_mask_t err_mask = ( CAN_ERR_TX_TIMEOUT | CAN_ERR_BUSOFF ); |
| |
| setsockopt(s, SOL_CAN_RAW, CAN_RAW_ERR_FILTER, |
| &err_mask, sizeof(err_mask)); |
| |
| 4.1.3 RAW socket option CAN_RAW_LOOPBACK |
| |
| To meet multi user needs the local loopback is enabled by default |
| (see chapter 3.2 for details). But in some embedded use-cases |
| (e.g. when only one application uses the CAN bus) this loopback |
| functionality can be disabled (separately for each socket): |
| |
| int loopback = 0; /* 0 = disabled, 1 = enabled (default) */ |
| |
| setsockopt(s, SOL_CAN_RAW, CAN_RAW_LOOPBACK, &loopback, sizeof(loopback)); |
| |
| 4.1.4 RAW socket option CAN_RAW_RECV_OWN_MSGS |
| |
| When the local loopback is enabled, all the sent CAN frames are |
| looped back to the open CAN sockets that registered for the CAN |
| frames' CAN-ID on this given interface to meet the multi user |
| needs. The reception of the CAN frames on the same socket that was |
| sending the CAN frame is assumed to be unwanted and therefore |
| disabled by default. This default behaviour may be changed on |
| demand: |
| |
| int recv_own_msgs = 1; /* 0 = disabled (default), 1 = enabled */ |
| |
| setsockopt(s, SOL_CAN_RAW, CAN_RAW_RECV_OWN_MSGS, |
| &recv_own_msgs, sizeof(recv_own_msgs)); |
| |
| 4.2 Broadcast Manager protocol sockets (SOCK_DGRAM) |
| 4.3 connected transport protocols (SOCK_SEQPACKET) |
| 4.4 unconnected transport protocols (SOCK_DGRAM) |
| |
| |
| 5. Socket CAN core module |
| ------------------------- |
| |
| The Socket CAN core module implements the protocol family |
| PF_CAN. CAN protocol modules are loaded by the core module at |
| runtime. The core module provides an interface for CAN protocol |
| modules to subscribe needed CAN IDs (see chapter 3.1). |
| |
| 5.1 can.ko module params |
| |
| - stats_timer: To calculate the Socket CAN core statistics |
| (e.g. current/maximum frames per second) this 1 second timer is |
| invoked at can.ko module start time by default. This timer can be |
| disabled by using stattimer=0 on the module commandline. |
| |
| - debug: (removed since SocketCAN SVN r546) |
| |
| 5.2 procfs content |
| |
| As described in chapter 3.1 the Socket CAN core uses several filter |
| lists to deliver received CAN frames to CAN protocol modules. These |
| receive lists, their filters and the count of filter matches can be |
| checked in the appropriate receive list. All entries contain the |
| device and a protocol module identifier: |
| |
| foo@bar:~$ cat /proc/net/can/rcvlist_all |
| |
| receive list 'rx_all': |
| (vcan3: no entry) |
| (vcan2: no entry) |
| (vcan1: no entry) |
| device can_id can_mask function userdata matches ident |
| vcan0 000 00000000 f88e6370 f6c6f400 0 raw |
| (any: no entry) |
| |
| In this example an application requests any CAN traffic from vcan0. |
| |
| rcvlist_all - list for unfiltered entries (no filter operations) |
| rcvlist_eff - list for single extended frame (EFF) entries |
| rcvlist_err - list for error frames masks |
| rcvlist_fil - list for mask/value filters |
| rcvlist_inv - list for mask/value filters (inverse semantic) |
| rcvlist_sff - list for single standard frame (SFF) entries |
| |
| Additional procfs files in /proc/net/can |
| |
| stats - Socket CAN core statistics (rx/tx frames, match ratios, ...) |
| reset_stats - manual statistic reset |
| version - prints the Socket CAN core version and the ABI version |
| |
| 5.3 writing own CAN protocol modules |
| |
| To implement a new protocol in the protocol family PF_CAN a new |
| protocol has to be defined in include/linux/can.h . |
| The prototypes and definitions to use the Socket CAN core can be |
| accessed by including include/linux/can/core.h . |
| In addition to functions that register the CAN protocol and the |
| CAN device notifier chain there are functions to subscribe CAN |
| frames received by CAN interfaces and to send CAN frames: |
| |
| can_rx_register - subscribe CAN frames from a specific interface |
| can_rx_unregister - unsubscribe CAN frames from a specific interface |
| can_send - transmit a CAN frame (optional with local loopback) |
| |
| For details see the kerneldoc documentation in net/can/af_can.c or |
| the source code of net/can/raw.c or net/can/bcm.c . |
| |
| 6. CAN network drivers |
| ---------------------- |
| |
| Writing a CAN network device driver is much easier than writing a |
| CAN character device driver. Similar to other known network device |
| drivers you mainly have to deal with: |
| |
| - TX: Put the CAN frame from the socket buffer to the CAN controller. |
| - RX: Put the CAN frame from the CAN controller to the socket buffer. |
| |
| See e.g. at Documentation/networking/netdevices.txt . The differences |
| for writing CAN network device driver are described below: |
| |
| 6.1 general settings |
| |
| dev->type = ARPHRD_CAN; /* the netdevice hardware type */ |
| dev->flags = IFF_NOARP; /* CAN has no arp */ |
| |
| dev->mtu = sizeof(struct can_frame); |
| |
| The struct can_frame is the payload of each socket buffer in the |
| protocol family PF_CAN. |
| |
| 6.2 local loopback of sent frames |
| |
| As described in chapter 3.2 the CAN network device driver should |
| support a local loopback functionality similar to the local echo |
| e.g. of tty devices. In this case the driver flag IFF_ECHO has to be |
| set to prevent the PF_CAN core from locally echoing sent frames |
| (aka loopback) as fallback solution: |
| |
| dev->flags = (IFF_NOARP | IFF_ECHO); |
| |
| 6.3 CAN controller hardware filters |
| |
| To reduce the interrupt load on deep embedded systems some CAN |
| controllers support the filtering of CAN IDs or ranges of CAN IDs. |
| These hardware filter capabilities vary from controller to |
| controller and have to be identified as not feasible in a multi-user |
| networking approach. The use of the very controller specific |
| hardware filters could make sense in a very dedicated use-case, as a |
| filter on driver level would affect all users in the multi-user |
| system. The high efficient filter sets inside the PF_CAN core allow |
| to set different multiple filters for each socket separately. |
| Therefore the use of hardware filters goes to the category 'handmade |
| tuning on deep embedded systems'. The author is running a MPC603e |
| @133MHz with four SJA1000 CAN controllers from 2002 under heavy bus |
| load without any problems ... |
| |
| 6.4 The virtual CAN driver (vcan) |
| |
| Similar to the network loopback devices, vcan offers a virtual local |
| CAN interface. A full qualified address on CAN consists of |
| |
| - a unique CAN Identifier (CAN ID) |
| - the CAN bus this CAN ID is transmitted on (e.g. can0) |
| |
| so in common use cases more than one virtual CAN interface is needed. |
| |
| The virtual CAN interfaces allow the transmission and reception of CAN |
| frames without real CAN controller hardware. Virtual CAN network |
| devices are usually named 'vcanX', like vcan0 vcan1 vcan2 ... |
| When compiled as a module the virtual CAN driver module is called vcan.ko |
| |
| Since Linux Kernel version 2.6.24 the vcan driver supports the Kernel |
| netlink interface to create vcan network devices. The creation and |
| removal of vcan network devices can be managed with the ip(8) tool: |
| |
| - Create a virtual CAN network interface: |
| ip link add type vcan |
| |
| - Create a virtual CAN network interface with a specific name 'vcan42': |
| ip link add dev vcan42 type vcan |
| |
| - Remove a (virtual CAN) network interface 'vcan42': |
| ip link del vcan42 |
| |
| The tool 'vcan' from the SocketCAN SVN repository on BerliOS is obsolete. |
| |
| Virtual CAN network device creation in older Kernels: |
| In Linux Kernel versions < 2.6.24 the vcan driver creates 4 vcan |
| netdevices at module load time by default. This value can be changed |
| with the module parameter 'numdev'. E.g. 'modprobe vcan numdev=8' |
| |
| 6.5 currently supported CAN hardware |
| |
| On the project website http://developer.berlios.de/projects/socketcan |
| there are different drivers available: |
| |
| vcan: Virtual CAN interface driver (if no real hardware is available) |
| sja1000: Philips SJA1000 CAN controller (recommended) |
| i82527: Intel i82527 CAN controller |
| mscan: Motorola/Freescale CAN controller (e.g. inside SOC MPC5200) |
| ccan: CCAN controller core (e.g. inside SOC h7202) |
| slcan: For a bunch of CAN adaptors that are attached via a |
| serial line ASCII protocol (for serial / USB adaptors) |
| |
| Additionally the different CAN adaptors (ISA/PCI/PCMCIA/USB/Parport) |
| from PEAK Systemtechnik support the CAN netdevice driver model |
| since Linux driver v6.0: http://www.peak-system.com/linux/index.htm |
| |
| Please check the Mailing Lists on the berlios OSS project website. |
| |
| 6.6 todo |
| |
| The configuration interface for CAN network drivers is still an open |
| issue that has not been finalized in the socketcan project. Also the |
| idea of having a library module (candev.ko) that holds functions |
| that are needed by all CAN netdevices is not ready to ship. |
| Your contribution is welcome. |
| |
| 7. Credits |
| ---------- |
| |
| Oliver Hartkopp (PF_CAN core, filters, drivers, bcm) |
| Urs Thuermann (PF_CAN core, kernel integration, socket interfaces, raw, vcan) |
| Jan Kizka (RT-SocketCAN core, Socket-API reconciliation) |
| Wolfgang Grandegger (RT-SocketCAN core & drivers, Raw Socket-API reviews) |
| Robert Schwebel (design reviews, PTXdist integration) |
| Marc Kleine-Budde (design reviews, Kernel 2.6 cleanups, drivers) |
| Benedikt Spranger (reviews) |
| Thomas Gleixner (LKML reviews, coding style, posting hints) |
| Andrey Volkov (kernel subtree structure, ioctls, mscan driver) |
| Matthias Brukner (first SJA1000 CAN netdevice implementation Q2/2003) |
| Klaus Hitschler (PEAK driver integration) |
| Uwe Koppe (CAN netdevices with PF_PACKET approach) |
| Michael Schulze (driver layer loopback requirement, RT CAN drivers review) |