Packaging storage device drivers

Packaging storage device drivers

HBA drivers are packaged on a 3.5 inch, 1.44 MB floppy disk media that is called an IHV HBA floppy. The files on the media must be in either cpio or tar format and include:

The C-language and assembly language source files (required for some certification levels; recommended for all drivers).
binary file(s) for the driver.
DSP files required to configure the driver. Specifically, this includes:
- The driver's makefile.
- The driver's System(DSP/4dsp) file.
- The driver's Master(DSP/4dsp) file.
- The driver's Space.c(DSP/4dsp) file.
- The driver's disk.cfg(DSP/4dsp) file (HBA drivers only).
See ``DSP (Driver Software Package)''.
Packaging scripts and files required to install the driver. See ``Packaging and installing SVR5 drivers''.

Driver developers should create an IHV HBA floppy every time they install the driver for testing. This simplifies the testing and enables you to test and debug the package at the same time as you test and debug the driver.

The HBA Floppy Disk

SCO SVR5 1 and 2 Host Bus Adapter (HBA) drivers, must provide a standard DSP, but must also be packaged as HBA floppies. A demand-loadable image of the HBA driver is included on a separate floppy disk, along with the DSP, and made available to the user during system installation.

The HBA floppy contains a set of standard files and DSPs for all vendor-provided HBA drivers, and is used during two distinct phases of the installation process. The first phase demand-loads all the preconfigured loadable images of HBA drivers that are present on the HBA floppy. The loadable image modules are necessary not only for installing the operating system on a hard disk device connected to the HBA, but also for accessing the installation media. The second phase of the installation process optionally installs the DSPs for HBA drivers that were successfully loaded in the first phase.

The graphical (GUI-based) shell script bldscript available with the HDK helps driver developers to generate HBA floppies. To use this, your are expected to provide a complete DSP that includes the following components:

copyright(4)
pkginfo(4)
postinstall
preremove
prototype(4)

You can refer to the appropriate manual pages for details on the contents of each of these components. Please see also the sample DPT driver source in the HDK for an example. In most cases, a functional HBA diskette can be constructed by replacing the reference to DPT with the new driver in the packaging components (that is, copyright, pkginfo, postinstall, preremove, and prototype).

In addition to the DSP and loadable image, ihvhba.bldscript copies an additional set of files to the floppy:

HBAINST: A shell script that selectively installs the DSP for all the HBA drivers that are were successfully loaded during the installation phase.
pkglist: An ASCII file that contains a list of all the HBA packages contained on any given HBA floppy.
load.name: A file containing an ASCII string that uniquely identifies the HBA floppy
loadmods: A pre-formatted file required by the demand-load mechanism

The ihvhba.bldscript utility is located in the HDK in the /usr/src/hdk/hba/ihvhba directory.