intro(D4)intro(D4)NAMEintro.D4 - introduction to kernel data structures
SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/ddi.h>
DESCRIPTION
This section describes the kernel data structures a developer might need
to use in a device driver.
USAGE
Driver developers should not declare arrays of these structures, as the
size of any structure might change between releases. Two exceptions to
this are the iovec(D4) and uio(D4) structures.
Drivers can only reference those structure members described on the
manual page. The actual data structures may have additional structure
members beyond those described, but drivers must not reference them.
Some structure members are flags fields that consist of a bitmask of
flags. Drivers must never directly assign values to these structure
members. Drivers should only set and clear flags they are interested in,
since the actual implementation may contain unlisted flags.
Data structures that are ``black boxes'' to drivers are not described in
this section. These structures are referenced on the manual pages where
they are used. Drivers should not be written to use any of their
structure members. Their only valid use is passing pointers to the
structures to the particular kernel routines.
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