Capabilities for device drivers

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Thu, 2006-01-12 22:23
Joined: 2006-01-12
Forum posts: 6
Hello,

Small question, in the MMP file of a device driver, what "capabilities" should I list - those the driver needs, or those required in order to use the driver?

I couldn't find a clear statement anywhere...

Thanks in advance,

Nir

Fri, 2006-01-13 20:07
Joined: 2004-07-10
Forum posts: 364
Re: Capabilities for device drivers
See if you can get some answers at the security newsgroup

http://www.symbian.com/developer/public/index.html
Sun, 2006-01-29 01:06
Forum Nokia Champion
Joined: 2003-10-01
Forum posts: 721
Re: Capabilities for device drivers
Practically, in the MMP file of an EXE, you have to list those capabilities that you'd like your EXE to be able to do. E.g. if you want your EXE to perform HTTP comms (over TCP/IP), then you have to add NetworkServices capability. If you don't add it to the list, then your EXE will not be able to perform network comms.

However, the meaning of asssigned capabilities is a little bit different for executables other than EXE (like a device driver, a special DLL). For these binaries, capabilities indicates the level of trust, what you can do with the library IF the hosting process (i.e. the EXE) holds that capability. That is, you can assign NetworkServices capability to your device driver (strange, though), it won't necessarily work unless the hosting process has NetworkServices capability, too. The more capabilities a library has, the more you can trust it.

Finally, answering your question: the target should be to assign as many capabilities to your device driver as you can (yes, including NetworkServices, too). Nevertheless, you might have some hard moments when you try to sign your device driver and people are asking questions about the capabilities of your module.  Wink

tOtE

Gabor Torok
Software architect, Agil Eight (http://www.agileight.com/)
Blog: http://mobile-thoughts.blogspot.com/

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