Read/Write Struct Containing Arrays to/from Binary File - struct

I have a struct:
typedef struct codeKey_s {
unsigned char shortest;
unsigned char longest;
unsigned char lengths[256];
int table[256];
} codeKey_t;
As you can see I have statically sized arrays of value types. My problem is when I save, and then read them from a binary file both of the arrays are empty. I see other people making this work with char* strings, so what gives?
Here are my write/read statements:
fwrite(codeKey, sizeof (codeKey_t), 1, file);
codeKey_t* retCodeKey = (codeKey_t*)malloc(sizeof(codeKey_t));
fread(retCodeKey, sizeof(codeKey_t*), 1, readFile);

From TFM
On success, fread() and fwrite() return the number of items read or written.
You're only trying once to fread and fwrite; it's not guaranted they finish in one call.
The other question is the timing - do you open and fread the file shortly after the fwrite, maybe before closing the write filehandle? If so, you may need to flush the write filehandle, before reading.
Update
You're calling fread wrong
fread(retCodeKey, sizeof(codeKey_t*), 1, readFile);
passing the size of a pointer type into the size argument.

Related

Result of calling hci_inquiry

When calling hci_inquiry how do I know/control if responses are of type inquiry_info, inquiry_info_with_rssi or inquiry_info_with_rssi_and_pscan_mode?
As you can see in the file hci_lib.h, in the prototype, the fifth argument is a double pointer to your inquiry_info array of size num_rsp.
int hci_inquiry(int dev_id, int len, int num_rsp, const uint8_t *lap, inquiry_info **ii, long flags);
inquiry_info_with_rssi and inquiry_info_with_rssi_and_pscan_mode are quite different structures so if you mistakenly use them you will have unexpected results.

Append to a file in the /proc file system

I'm implementing a file in /proc which I'd like to be a little more file-like than usual. In particular, I'd like to detect that someone is appending to the file and handle that correctly -- that is, I'd like to distinguish between someone doing
echo value > /proc/my_proc_file
and
echo value >> /proc/my_proc_file
Like all write functions, mine is handed an offset as its fourth argument:
ssize_t my_proc_write(struct file *file, const char __user *buf,
size_t count, loff_t *offs)
But *offs is always 0.
When I set up my proc file, I'm specifying seq_lseek as the lseek function:
struct file_operations my_proc_fops = {
.open = my_proc_open,
.read = seq_read,
.write = my_proc_write,
.llseek = seq_lseek,
};
Inspecting the source (in fs/seq_file.c), it looks like seq_lseek maintains file->f_pos appropriately, but when I look at file->f_pos in my write function, it's always 0, too. (This may not be surprising, since appending usually means opening with O_APPEND which doesn't result in any explicit calls to lseek.)
Anyway, is there a way to do this? Presumably these write functions wouldn't have been set up with offset pointer arguments if they weren't going to pass in useful, nonzero values from time to time...
first, from user perspective, file opened with O_APPEND will ALWAYS append data when you call write(), no matter where the f_pos is set by llseek(). but f_pos is still effective for read().
second, kernel framework dosn't know the file length unless it calls your llseek to find out, but that's not gonna happen because it will mess up f_pos,so kernel expect your driver, which is the only one who knows where is the true "end of the file", to act accordingly when (file->f_flags & O_APPEND) is true. basically, your driver needs to check that flag when write() is called and ignore the offs param and do the append.

How to send an int over uint8_t data?

I'm using the RadioHead Packet Radio library from airspayce.com. In the example (nrf24_reliable_datagram_client & server) they let two nodes communicate with each other by sending strings back and forth. Now I want to send an int instead of a string there, and do something with this data. This is what they do in the example:
Define the buf byte.
uint8_t buf[RH_NRF24_MAX_MESSAGE_LEN];
This function receives the data:
manager.recvfromAckTimeout(buf, &len, 500, &from)
Print the buf variable.
Serial.print((char*)buf);
So far so good.Now I want to do something like:
int value = (char*)buf;
Or:
char value[10] = { (char*)buf };
But then I get:
invalid conversion from 'char*' to 'int' (or to 'char'...)
Next to that, on the other side where I'm sending the data, I have:
uint8_t data[] = { analogRead(A0) };
When I'm printing this data on the receiver side, using the code from the first question, I get weird characters. So I thought, let's try:
Serial.print((char*)buf, DEC); // or BYTE
But then I get:
call of overloaded 'print(char*, int)' is ambiguous
What am I doing wrong? Thanks in advance!
You can't just assign an array to an integer and hope that it merges the elements together for you - for example, how does it know how to merge them?
For converting a uint16_t to a uint8_t[2] array you would want to do something like this:
uint16_t analog = analogRead(A0); //read in as int.
uint8_t data[2] = {analog, (analog >> 8)}; // extract as {lower byte, upper byte)
Serial.write(data,2); //write the two bytes to the serial port, lower byte first.
You could do it in other ways like using a union of a uint16_t with an array of two uint8_t's, but the above way is more portable. You could also do it by type casting the pointer to an int, however if one end uses big endian and the other uses little endian, that won't work unless you flip the data around in the array as you are receiving it.
For the receiver end, you would have:
uint8_t data[2];
...
... //whatever you do to receive the bytes that were sent over serial.
...
//Now assuming that data[] contains the received bytes where:
//data[0] was the first in (lower byte) and data[1] was the second in (upper byte)
uint16_t merged = (data[1] << 8) | data[0]; //merge them back together
Hopefully that helps.
Also, the 'overloaded prototype' is saying that no function exists which takes that particular set of input variables. From the print class header you will find there is however this prototype:
write(const uint8_t *buffer, size_t size);
which does what you want - print a specified number of uint8_t's from an array.

Returning string from a remote server using rpcgen

I am going through RPC tutorial and learn few techniques in rpcgen. I have the idea of adding, multiplying different data types using rpcgen.
But I have not found any clue that how could I declare a function in .x file which will return a string. Actually I am trying to build a procedure which will return a random string(rand string array is in server).
Can any one advise me how to proceed in this issue? It will be helpful if you advise me any tutorial regarding this returning string/pointer issue.
Thank you in advance.
Ok, answering to the original question (more than 2 years old), the first answer is correct but a little tricky.
In your .x file, you define your structure with the string inside, having defined previously the size of the string:
typedef string str_t<255>;
struct my_result {
str_t data;
};
...
Then you invoke rpcgen on your .x file to generate client and server stubs and .xdr file:
$rpcgen -N *file.x*
Now you can compile client and server in addition to any program where you pretend to use the remote functions. To do so, I followed the "repcgen Tutorial" in ORACLE's web page:
https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19683-01/816-1435/rpcgenpguide-21470/index.html
The tricky part is, although you defined a string of size m (array of m characters) what rpcgen and .xdr file create is a pointer to allocated memmory. Something like this:
.h file
typedef char *str_t;
struct my_result {
int res;
str_t data;
};
typedef struct my_result my_result;
.xdr file
bool_t xdr_str_t (XDR *xdrs, str_t *objp)
{
register int32_t *buf;
if (!xdr_string (xdrs, objp, 255))
return FALSE;
return TRUE;
}
So just take into account when using this structure in your server side that it is not a string of size m, but a char pointer for which you'll have to reserve memory before using it or you'll be prompted the same error than me on execution:
Segmentation fault!
To use it on the server you can write:
static my_result response;
static char text[255];
memset(&response, '\0', sizeof(my_result));
memset(text, '\0', sizeof(text));
response.data = text;
And from there you are ready to use it wisely! :)
According to the XDR protocol specification you can define a string type where m is the length of the string in bytes:
The standard defines a string of n (numbered 0 to n -1) bytes to be the number n encoded as an unsigned integer (as described above), and followed by the n bytes of the string. Each byte must be regarded by the implementation as being 8-bit transparent data. This allows use of arbitrary character set encodings. Byte m of the string always precedes byte m +1 of the string, and byte 0 of the string always follows the string's length. If n is not a multiple of four, then the n bytes are followed by enough (0 to 3) residual zero bytes, r, to make the total byte count a multiple of four.
string object<m>;
You can then define a struct with the string type str_t as one of the variables:
typedef string str_t<255>;
struct my_result {
str_t data;
};
Then in your .x file you can define an RPC in your program which returns a struct of type my_result. Since rpcgen will give you a pointer to this struct (which I have called res) you can print the message with prinf("%s\n", res->data);.
program HELLO_PROG {
version HELLO_VERSION {
my_result abc() = 1;
} = 1;
} = 1000;

kmalloc: only allocating 4 bytes

So I am trying to dynamically allocate a buffer on module initialization. The buffer needs to be in scope at all times as it stores data that user space programs interact with. So here is my code:
static char* file_data
#define MAX_SIZE 256
.
.
.
{
file_data = kzalloc(MAX_SIZE, GFP_KERNEL)
.
.
.
}
However when I do sizeof file_data it always returns 4. What am I doing wrong?
Edit: The buffer stores input from a user space program, but 4 characters is all that can be stored.
size_t read_file(char* __user buf, size_t count)
{
unsigned int len = 0;
len = copy_to_user(buf, file_data, count);
return count;
}
ssize_t write_file(char* __user buf, size_t count)
{
if(count >= MAX_SIZE)
return -EINVAL;
copy_from_user(file_data, buf,count)
return count;
}
file_data is a pointer. On a 32-bit platform, it's size is 32 bits, or 4 bytes. What you want to know is the size of the data pointed to by file_data. You can't use the sizeof operator for this because sizeof is a compile time operation. You can't use it on things allocated dynamically at run time.
(Besides, you already know the size of the data pointed to by file_data -- it's MAX_SIZE?)
char *file_data is a pointer to a char. Evidently you're on a 32-bit system so any pointer is 4 bytes. The compiler (which handles sizeof) doesn't know or care how much memory you're allocating for file_data to point to, it just knows you're asking for the size of the pointer (which you are, whether you meant to or not). If you want the size of the memory it points to, you'll have to keep track of it yourself.

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