OUTB

Section: Linux Programmer's Manual (2)
Updated: 1995-11-29
Index Return to Main Contents

NAME

outb, outw, outl, outsb, outsw, outsl, inb, inw, inl, insb, insw, insl, outb_p, outw_p, outl_p, inb_p, inw_p, inl_p - port I/O

DESCRIPTION

This family of functions is used to do low-level port input and output. The out* functions do port output, the in* functions do port input; the b-suffix functions are byte-width and the w-suffix functions word-width; the _p-suffix functions pause until the I/O completes.

They are primarily designed for internal kernel use, but can be used from user space.

You compile with -O or -O2 or similar. The functions are defined as inline macros, and will not be substituted in without optimization enabled, causing unresolved references at link time.

You use ioperm(2) or alternatively iopl(2) to tell the kernel to allow the user space application to access the I/O ports in question. Failure to do this will cause the application to receive a segmentation fault.

CONFORMING TO

outb() and friends are hardware-specific. The value argument is passed first and the port argument is passed second, which is the opposite order from most DOS implementations.

COLOPHON

This page is part of release 3.22 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.