Thanks for reading my blog. I am still a newbie in windows driver development and this blog is just a way for me to write down my findings. This is how I approached things and I hope that more people will benefit from that. Indeed, it’s hard to keep organizational structure in a blog. I don’t think that it’s easy for a blog to have what you describe as “beginning - middle - end” just because the blog evolves through time and new information that doesn’t fit in that model comes up.
Just to answer a few of your questions, though:
My 4th post has the title with the title “Introductory driver writing resources” (http://blogs.msdn.com/iliast/archive/2006/09/29/Introductory-driver-writing-resources.aspx).
Over there I have links to articles like http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?article=20 (Getting started writing device drivers) and http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?article=233 (The Basics: Exactly what is a driver).
I’m sure that if somebody looks just at the links in that post, he’ll find the answers to most of the questions that you are mentioning.
Also, in my 2nd post (“Prerequisites for a driver developer”) I provide links to undergraduate courses with recorded lectures (and supporting material) on operating systems that answer questions about fundamental OS concepts. I guess that this would answer your 9th question. In addition, in my 3rd post (“Becoming familiar with the windows internals”) I provide links for the same concepts, as they are applied to Windows.
So, generally, if you follow the structure of my blog from post 2 and afterwards (post 1 is an introduction for me), then you’ll see the following:
post 2: Fundamental operating system concepts
post 3: The previous concepts applied to windows
posts 4,5: Really introductory driver writing resources
(that’s where all your questions should have been answered in depth). But after that I also have posts with resources that can be used as an introduction to WDM, WDF, UMDF, KMDF. Subsequent posts provide my opinion on driver development books (your 10th question) and cover debugging and different IDEs that are used by developers.
Thanks a lot for the criticism. I appreciate it and it’ll help me make my blog better.
Ilias
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com [xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Prokash Sinha [xxxxx@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2007 7:54 PM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: Re: Re:[ntdev] Re: Beginner guide…
This blog of yours have a lot of informations, but where is the sturcture?. How would a newbie fly thru this blog? A newbie with some background might ask the following questions first -
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What is a windows driver ?
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Why do we need a driver ?
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What is the form of the binary file?
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How they get installed/removed/ get executed?
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Why it is different from ( usr-mode binaries: exe, dll )?
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Where can I get my hands dirty?
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What tools I need to develop/debug a driver ?
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Are there any form or structure of a windows driver? If so, are there many or just one stucture?
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Now once they found those, the next level comes with some OS concepts: re-entrant code, synchronization, interruptions, sync vs. asynch. inherently threaded, Irql levels and implications etc.
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Finally they arrive at a point when the books / online sources etc. can perhaps be suggested.
Recently I bumped into a friend’s blog ( actually he suggested me to look at :-). He was writing somehting about computer chess and modern lifestyle. THought very interesting, then found lack of all the following -
Introduction
Chronology
Comprehension
Completeness
Closing.
None of them actually were existed, and brain hurts when someone reads it. He is now rehashing the topics after I did send a violent note to him.
Just a thought.
-pro
On 3/9/07, Ilias Tsigkogiannis > wrote:
I’ve tried to write down the steps that I’ve been taking, while learning about device drivers at my blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/iliast/
Check it out and you might find it interesting. My approach, though, is that you need to start more by looking at more fundamental stuff, before starting to develop drivers (you can’t start building a house without creating solid foundations first, right?). First of all you should understand windows internals (the book “Microsoft Windows Internals, Fourth Edition: Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003, Windows XP, and Windows 2000” by Mark Russinovich and David Solomon is considered the definitive text) and then start building on top of that. You might find my first posts about “Becoming familiar with the windows internals” ( http://blogs.msdn.com/iliast/archive/2006/09/28/Becoming-familiar-with-the-windows-internals.aspx), “Introductory driver writing resources” ( http://blogs.msdn.com/iliast/archive/2006/09/29/Introductory-driver-writing-resources.aspx) and “Windows Device Drivers Book Reviews” ( http://blogs.msdn.com/iliast/archive/2006/10/25/Windows-Device-Drivers-Book-Reviews.aspx) interesting.
Ilias
—
Questions? First check the Kernel Driver FAQ at http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?id=256
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— Questions? First check the Kernel Driver FAQ at http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?id=256 To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer
