Hello,
I am doing some research on this currently but maybe someone here is able to point me in the right direction.

I am looking for example of a script/c code for communication with perhipiral device(any kind)

Basically what i want to do is to create a script/c code to
enable/disable a device(doesnt matter what device).

I want to be able to disable for example a mouse and then enable it - i dont want existing programs i would like to create or see an example of a piece of code that is able to disable a video card , mouse etc just by running it.

Should i be researching into system calls or I am way off?


Thank you!

I am using Fedora 4.

fc4 is a bit old now but it will do. anything in unix is a file. so /dev/ttyS0 is your first serial port, /dev/mem is the computer's RAM, so if you know how to write to a file with your script you can control pretttymuch anything. with a serial port you gotta set the correct baud rate and that and i have no idea how you would do that but google probably knows. i dunno how you would go about disabling a mouse that would usually involve changing some setting for your X server.

Thanks for quick reply! , yeah i know FC4 is old
I am just looking for some examples for talking with devices
I would like to create or see a script to maybe turn off a monitor/mouse(i think thats safer)
than tryng to disable and the re enable a video card via script.

Googling so far is hard on this topic not finding much,so i came here in hopes of a link to some guide or code examples.

Any input is usefull,even some helpfull keywords to google for!

Thank you.

the normal way to do something like that is to pass a command to some -tool for the particular device

for example hdparm -Y will switch off a hard drive but if you really want to know how hdparm goes about switching it off you gotta get the source for it, and see what it sends to the hard drive's /dev file

ah thanks for clearing it up
i'll start on checking out some open source apps!

any specific ones you'd suggest besides hdparm?

maybe GNU eject. there are loads of them I cant think of right now

Well i did some research but my C knowlege is kind of weak

From my understanding all devices are nodes in /proc filesystem in /dev

so my mouse is /dev/mouse0 - is the a way to remove this node therefore disabling the mouse and then to create it back so it is enabled?

also the ioctl system call - is it capable of talking to the devices?

I understand everything is a file philosophy - but how do i find out what commands can be issued to the /dev/mouse or /dev/hd1 etc?

all i am looking for is a system call or command to disable/enable said device in /dev

Thank you!