LinuxPPS: core support

This patch adds the kernel side of the PPS support currently named
"LinuxPPS".

PPS means "pulse per second" and a PPS source is just a device which
provides a high precision signal each second so that an application can
use it to adjust system clock time.

Common use is the combination of the NTPD as userland program with a GPS
receiver as PPS source to obtain a wallclock-time with sub-millisecond
synchronisation to UTC.

To obtain this goal the userland programs shoud use the PPS API
specification (RFC 2783 - Pulse-Per-Second API for UNIX-like Operating
Systems, Version 1.0) which in part is implemented by this patch.  It
provides a set of chars devices, one per PPS source, which can be used to
get the time signal.  The RFC's functions can be implemented by accessing
to these char devices.

Signed-off-by: Rodolfo Giometti <[email protected]>
Cc: David Woodhouse <[email protected]>
Cc: Greg KH <[email protected]>
Cc: Randy Dunlap <[email protected]>
Cc: Kay Sievers <[email protected]>
Acked-by: Alan Cox <[email protected]>
Cc: Michael Kerrisk <[email protected]>
Cc: Christoph Hellwig <[email protected]>
Cc: Roman Zippel <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <[email protected]>

Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-pps

@@ -0,0 +1,73 @@
+What:		/sys/class/pps/
+Date:		February 2008
+Contact:	Rodolfo Giometti <[email protected]>
+Description:
+		The /sys/class/pps/ directory will contain files and
+		directories that will provide a unified interface to
+		the PPS sources.
+
+What:		/sys/class/pps/ppsX/
+Date:		February 2008
+Contact:	Rodolfo Giometti <[email protected]>
+Description:
+		The /sys/class/pps/ppsX/ directory is related to X-th
+		PPS source into the system. Each directory will
+		contain files to manage and control its PPS source.
+
+What:		/sys/class/pps/ppsX/assert
+Date:		February 2008
+Contact:	Rodolfo Giometti <[email protected]>
+Description:
+		The /sys/class/pps/ppsX/assert file reports the assert events
+		and the assert sequence number of the X-th source in the form:
+
+			<secs>.<nsec>#<sequence>
+
+		If the source has no assert events the content of this file
+		is empty.
+
+What:		/sys/class/pps/ppsX/clear
+Date:		February 2008
+Contact:	Rodolfo Giometti <[email protected]>
+Description:
+		The /sys/class/pps/ppsX/clear file reports the clear events
+		and the clear sequence number of the X-th source in the form:
+
+			<secs>.<nsec>#<sequence>
+
+		If the source has no clear events the content of this file
+		is empty.
+
+What:		/sys/class/pps/ppsX/mode
+Date:		February 2008
+Contact:	Rodolfo Giometti <[email protected]>
+Description:
+		The /sys/class/pps/ppsX/mode file reports the functioning
+		mode of the X-th source in hexadecimal encoding.
+
+		Please, refer to linux/include/linux/pps.h for further
+		info.
+
+What:		/sys/class/pps/ppsX/echo
+Date:		February 2008
+Contact:	Rodolfo Giometti <[email protected]>
+Description:
+		The /sys/class/pps/ppsX/echo file reports if the X-th does
+		or does not support an "echo" function.
+
+What:		/sys/class/pps/ppsX/name
+Date:		February 2008
+Contact:	Rodolfo Giometti <[email protected]>
+Description:
+		The /sys/class/pps/ppsX/name file reports the name of the
+		X-th source.
+
+What:		/sys/class/pps/ppsX/path
+Date:		February 2008
+Contact:	Rodolfo Giometti <[email protected]>
+Description:
+		The /sys/class/pps/ppsX/path file reports the path name of
+		the device connected with the X-th source.
+
+		If the source is not connected with any device the content
+		of this file is empty.

Documentation/ioctl/ioctl-number.txt

@@ -149,6 +149,8 @@ Code	Seq#	Include File		Comments
 'p'	40-7F	linux/nvram.h
 'p'	80-9F				user-space parport
 					<mailto:[email protected]>
+'p'	a1-a4	linux/pps.h		LinuxPPS
+					<mailto:[email protected]>
 'q'	00-1F	linux/serio.h
 'q'	80-FF				Internet PhoneJACK, Internet LineJACK
 					<http://www.quicknet.net>

Documentation/pps/pps.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,172 @@
+
+			PPS - Pulse Per Second
+			----------------------
+
+(C) Copyright 2007 Rodolfo Giometti <[email protected]>
+
+This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
+it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
+the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
+(at your option) any later version.
+
+This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
+but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
+MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
+GNU General Public License for more details.
+
+
+
+Overview
+--------
+
+LinuxPPS provides a programming interface (API) to define in the
+system several PPS sources.
+
+PPS means "pulse per second" and a PPS source is just a device which
+provides a high precision signal each second so that an application
+can use it to adjust system clock time.
+
+A PPS source can be connected to a serial port (usually to the Data
+Carrier Detect pin) or to a parallel port (ACK-pin) or to a special
+CPU's GPIOs (this is the common case in embedded systems) but in each
+case when a new pulse arrives the system must apply to it a timestamp
+and record it for userland.
+
+Common use is the combination of the NTPD as userland program, with a
+GPS receiver as PPS source, to obtain a wallclock-time with
+sub-millisecond synchronisation to UTC.
+
+
+RFC considerations
+------------------
+
+While implementing a PPS API as RFC 2783 defines and using an embedded
+CPU GPIO-Pin as physical link to the signal, I encountered a deeper
+problem:
+
+   At startup it needs a file descriptor as argument for the function
+   time_pps_create().
+
+This implies that the source has a /dev/... entry. This assumption is
+ok for the serial and parallel port, where you can do something
+useful besides(!) the gathering of timestamps as it is the central
+task for a PPS-API. But this assumption does not work for a single
+purpose GPIO line. In this case even basic file-related functionality
+(like read() and write()) makes no sense at all and should not be a
+precondition for the use of a PPS-API.
+
+The problem can be simply solved if you consider that a PPS source is
+not always connected with a GPS data source.
+
+So your programs should check if the GPS data source (the serial port
+for instance) is a PPS source too, and if not they should provide the
+possibility to open another device as PPS source.
+
+In LinuxPPS the PPS sources are simply char devices usually mapped
+into files /dev/pps0, /dev/pps1, etc..
+
+
+Coding example
+--------------
+
+To register a PPS source into the kernel you should define a struct
+pps_source_info_s as follows:
+
+    static struct pps_source_info pps_ktimer_info = {
+	    .name         = "ktimer",
+	    .path         = "",
+	    .mode         = PPS_CAPTUREASSERT | PPS_OFFSETASSERT | \
+			    PPS_ECHOASSERT | \
+			    PPS_CANWAIT | PPS_TSFMT_TSPEC,
+	    .echo         = pps_ktimer_echo,
+	    .owner        = THIS_MODULE,
+    };
+
+and then calling the function pps_register_source() in your
+intialization routine as follows:
+
+    source = pps_register_source(&pps_ktimer_info,
+			PPS_CAPTUREASSERT | PPS_OFFSETASSERT);
+
+The pps_register_source() prototype is:
+
+  int pps_register_source(struct pps_source_info_s *info, int default_params)
+
+where "info" is a pointer to a structure that describes a particular
+PPS source, "default_params" tells the system what the initial default
+parameters for the device should be (it is obvious that these parameters
+must be a subset of ones defined in the struct
+pps_source_info_s which describe the capabilities of the driver).
+
+Once you have registered a new PPS source into the system you can
+signal an assert event (for example in the interrupt handler routine)
+just using:
+
+    pps_event(source, &ts, PPS_CAPTUREASSERT, ptr)
+
+where "ts" is the event's timestamp.
+
+The same function may also run the defined echo function
+(pps_ktimer_echo(), passing to it the "ptr" pointer) if the user
+asked for that... etc..
+
+Please see the file drivers/pps/clients/ktimer.c for example code.
+
+
+SYSFS support
+-------------
+
+If the SYSFS filesystem is enabled in the kernel it provides a new class:
+
+   $ ls /sys/class/pps/
+   pps0/  pps1/  pps2/
+
+Every directory is the ID of a PPS sources defined in the system and
+inside you find several files:
+
+   $ ls /sys/class/pps/pps0/
+   assert	clear  echo  mode  name  path  subsystem@  uevent
+
+Inside each "assert" and "clear" file you can find the timestamp and a
+sequence number:
+
+   $ cat /sys/class/pps/pps0/assert
+   1170026870.983207967#8
+
+Where before the "#" is the timestamp in seconds; after it is the
+sequence number. Other files are:
+
+* echo: reports if the PPS source has an echo function or not;
+
+* mode: reports available PPS functioning modes;
+
+* name: reports the PPS source's name;
+
+* path: reports the PPS source's device path, that is the device the
+  PPS source is connected to (if it exists).
+
+
+Testing the PPS support
+-----------------------
+
+In order to test the PPS support even without specific hardware you can use
+the ktimer driver (see the client subsection in the PPS configuration menu)
+and the userland tools provided into Documentaion/pps/ directory.
+
+Once you have enabled the compilation of ktimer just modprobe it (if
+not statically compiled):
+
+   # modprobe ktimer
+
+and the run ppstest as follow:
+
+   $ ./ppstest /dev/pps0
+   trying PPS source "/dev/pps1"
+   found PPS source "/dev/pps1"
+   ok, found 1 source(s), now start fetching data...
+   source 0 - assert 1186592699.388832443, sequence: 364 - clear  0.000000000, sequence: 0
+   source 0 - assert 1186592700.388931295, sequence: 365 - clear  0.000000000, sequence: 0
+   source 0 - assert 1186592701.389032765, sequence: 366 - clear  0.000000000, sequence: 0
+
+Please, note that to compile userland programs you need the file timepps.h
+(see Documentation/pps/).

MAINTAINERS

@@ -4577,6 +4577,13 @@ S:	Maintained
 F:	drivers/net/pppol2tp.c
 F:	include/linux/if_pppol2tp.h
 
+PPS SUPPORT
+P:	Rodolfo Giometti
+M:	[email protected]
+W:	http://wiki.enneenne.com/index.php/LinuxPPS_support
+L:	[email protected] (subscribers-only)
+S:	Maintained
+
 PREEMPTIBLE KERNEL
 P:	Robert Love
 M:	[email protected]

drivers/Kconfig

@@ -52,6 +52,8 @@ source "drivers/i2c/Kconfig"
 
 source "drivers/spi/Kconfig"
 
+source "drivers/pps/Kconfig"
+
 source "drivers/gpio/Kconfig"
 
 source "drivers/w1/Kconfig"

drivers/Makefile

@@ -72,6 +72,7 @@ obj-$(CONFIG_INPUT)		+= input/
 obj-$(CONFIG_I2O)		+= message/
 obj-$(CONFIG_RTC_LIB)		+= rtc/
 obj-y				+= i2c/ media/
+obj-$(CONFIG_PPS)		+= pps/
 obj-$(CONFIG_W1)		+= w1/
 obj-$(CONFIG_POWER_SUPPLY)	+= power/
 obj-$(CONFIG_HWMON)		+= hwmon/

drivers/pps/Kconfig

@@ -0,0 +1,33 @@
+#
+# PPS support configuration
+#
+
+menu "PPS support"
+
+config PPS
+	tristate "PPS support"
+	depends on EXPERIMENTAL
+	---help---
+	  PPS (Pulse Per Second) is a special pulse provided by some GPS
+	  antennae. Userland can use it to get a high-precision time
+	  reference.
+
+	  Some antennae's PPS signals are connected with the CD (Carrier
+	  Detect) pin of the serial line they use to communicate with the
+	  host. In this case use the SERIAL_LINE client support.
+
+	  Some antennae's PPS signals are connected with some special host
+	  inputs so you have to enable the corresponding client support.
+
+	  To compile this driver as a module, choose M here: the module
+	  will be called pps_core.ko.
+
+config PPS_DEBUG
+	bool "PPS debugging messages"
+	depends on PPS
+	help
+	  Say Y here if you want the PPS support to produce a bunch of debug
+	  messages to the system log.  Select this if you are having a
+	  problem with PPS support and want to see more of what is going on.
+
+endmenu

drivers/pps/Makefile

@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
+#
+# Makefile for the PPS core.
+#
+
+pps_core-y			:= pps.o kapi.o sysfs.o
+obj-$(CONFIG_PPS)		:= pps_core.o
+
+ccflags-$(CONFIG_PPS_DEBUG) := -DDEBUG