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+============================================================================
+
+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;
+ }
+
+ /* paraniod 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)
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