Invoking ioctls for a device from 3 applications

[sumitv]

Hi,

I have a wireless lan module mounted on my PXA270 board linux kernel 2.6.19-1 platform. I am using some ioctls available with this wireless lan client module.

I have three applications that invoke these ioctls to access this device. These applications can call these ioctls at any time during the program execution.

1. First application calls wireless tools utility iwconfig that calls ioctl to device.
2. wpa_supplicant application which also calls ioctl to this device.
3. Third application which calls ioctl to read the protocol state of this device (Associated to access point or not).

I did not have a synchronisation routine between these 3 applications. Does kernel synchronise access to device so that at a time only one application can access the device?

Regards,
Sumit

[Rubberman]

I did not have a synchronisation routine between these 3 applications. Does kernel synchronise access to device so that at a time only one application can access the device?

Not usually. What I usually do in these cases is to have one application/server that does the actual device control, and the applications such as your 3 would send a message to that server to do whatever it is that they need. That nicely serializes the access to the device without the need for semaphores or other locking mechanisms.

[sumitv]

Thank you for the reply.

Thas a very good idea. I can achieve it for the two applications that I wrote. But the tird application (wpa_supplicant/iwconfig) is a third party application on which I don't have total control.

How can I achieve this?

Regards,
Sumit

[Rubberman]

Thank you for the reply.

Thas a very good idea. I can achieve it for the two applications that I wrote. But the tird application (wpa_supplicant/iwconfig) is a third party application on which I don't have total control.

How can I achieve this?

I'll have to think about that. It may be difficult considering that the third party application may be using any number of means to access the device. If you could determine that it is using a shared library (not a static library or functions) to access and control the device, then it may be possible to replace the standard library with one that is talking to the server that your own applications use for controlling the device. Alternative, you could modify the kernel or device driver that all of the applications have to use. Neither of these options are simple, and only a kernel or driver mod would allow you to be sure you controlled access from third party applications.

[sumitv]

Thanks for the ideas.

Regards,
Sumit