2.3. Hello World (part 2)

As of Linux 2.4, you can rename the init and cleanup functions of your modules; they no longer have to be called init_module() and cleanup_module() respectively. This is done with the module_init() and module_exit() macros. These macros are defined in linux/init.h. The only caveat is that your init and cleanup functions must be defined before calling the macros, otherwise you'll get compilation errors. Here's an example of this technique:

/*  hello-2.c - Demonstrating the module_init() and module_exit() macros.  This is the
 *     preferred over using init_module() and cleanup_module().
 */
#include <linux/module.h>   // Needed by all modules
#include <linux/kernel.h>   // Needed for KERN_ALERT
#include <linux/init.h>     // Needed for the macros


static int hello_2_init(void)
{
   printk(KERN_ALERT "Hello, world 2\n");
   return 0;
}


static void hello_2_exit(void)
{
   printk(KERN_ALERT "Goodbye, world 2\n");
}


module_init(hello_2_init);
module_exit(hello_2_exit);

So now we have two real kernel modules under our belt. With productivity as high as ours, we should have a high powered Makefile. Here's a more advanced Makefile which will compile both our modules at the same time. It's optimized for brevity and scalability. If you don't understand it, I urge you to read the makefile info pages or the GNU Make Manual.

WARN    := -W -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -Wmissing-prototypes
INCLUDE := -isystem /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build/include
CFLAGS  := -O2 -DMODULE -D__KERNEL__ ${WARN} ${INCLUDE}
CC      := gcc-3.0
OBJS    := ${patsubst %.c, %.o, ${wildcard *.c}}

all: ${OBJS}

.PHONY: clean

clean:
    rm -rf *.o

As an exercise to the reader, if we had another module in the same directory, say hello-3.c, how would you modify this Makefile to automatically compile that module?