FIREWIRE(4)

📦 version 12.2, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

FIREWIRE(4) 💖 Kernel Interfaces Manual 💖

okay bestie, gather round, because we're about to talk about the firewire driver and honestly? she's iconic. this is the IEEE1394 High-performance Serial Bus and she does NOT play. ✨

🌸 NAME 🌸

firewire — IEEE1394 High-performance Serial Bus 🦋

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

so to get this driver compiled into your kernel, bestie, you drop this line into your kernel configuration file:

device firewire

or, if you'd rather load the driver as a module at boot time (which, valid, love that for you), you put this line in loader.conf(5):

firewire_load="YES"

either way, she's coming in. 💅

👑 DESCRIPTION 👑

FreeBSD provides machine-independent bus support and raw drivers for firewire interfaces. no cap. 🫶

The firewire driver is built out of two layers: the controller and the bus layer. The controller attaches to a physical bus (like pci(4)), and then the firewire bus attaches to the controller. From there, additional drivers can attach to the bus. it's giving layered. it's giving structural integrity. we love a hierarchy. 🎀

Up to 63 devices, including the host itself, can be attached to a firewire bus. The root node gets dynamically assigned with a PHY device function. And all the other firewire bus specific parameters — like node ID, cycle master, isochronous resource manager and bus manager — are also dynamically assigned, after a bus reset is initiated. On the firewire bus, every device is identified by an EUI 64 address. periodt. 💖

Debugging over the firewire interface is possible with the dcons(4) driver. Please see https://wiki.freebsd.org/DebugWithDcons for the details on how to set up debugging with firewire. yes, that's a link, yes you should read it. iykyk. 🧚

🍓 FILES 🍓

  • /dev/fw0.0
  • /dev/fwmem0.0

the way these paths are just sitting there, waiting for you to use them. 🌈

💜 SEE ALSO 💜

go read the whole friend group, bestie. they're all connected. 🔥

⭐ HISTORY ⭐

The firewire driver first appeared in FreeBSD 5.0. a legend from the jump. 💅

🌸 AUTHORS 🌸

The firewire driver was written by Katsushi Kobayashi and Hidetoshi Shimokawa for the FreeBSD project. absolute icons, we stan. 👑

💀 BUGS 💀

See fwohci(4) for security notes. that's it, that's the whole bug section, but like... go read it. seriously. safety first, always. 🙈

and that's the whole page, bestie!! this one came from the Debian crew, dated May 11, 2012 💖 — stay slaying, stay firewiring, mwah 🎀✨

📦 where this page comes from