Hi, Not sure that it is the good place to do that. I am quite new in kernel dev and it will be great to have some review/advise on a implementation in kernel. My need : Read periodically data from a sensor with spi. I know that data is available thanks to a GPIO. Data are available every 2 ms. First step for me was to : Declare a irq handler on the ready signal GPIO thanks to gpio_to_irq and request_irq function. First I try to read from spi in my irq handler.I finally understand that I cannot make call which implies sleep in irq handler like spi_sync for example. I finally use wake_up_interruptible call in my irq handler to make the spi work in another piece of code. static irqreturn_t irq_handler(int irq, void *id) { flag = 1; wake_up_interruptible(&wq); return IRQ_HANDLED; } On my first try I just use a kernel thread which read data from spi and then which send my data to userspace thanks to a netlink socket. while(!kthread_should_stop()) { wait_event_interruptible(wq, flag != 0 || kthread_should_stop()); if (kthread_should_stop()) do_exit (0); flag = 0; // read data from spi (...) // send data in netlink socket skb = nlmsg_new(NLMSG_ALIGN(msg_size + 1), GFP_ATOMIC); nlh = nlmsg_put(skb, 0, 1, NLMSG_DONE, msg_size + 1, 0); memcpy(nlmsg_data(nlh), spi->rx_buf, msg_size); ret = nlmsg_multicast(nl_sk, skb, 0, MYGRP, GFP_ATOMIC); schedule(); // not sure that I need this line of code. } Problem I was not sure that netlink socket was the best solution to my problem. Also I was not able to use the same socket during my data acquisition. I must call nlmsg_new on each new data sample. Other strange stuff, If I call nsmsg_free at the end of the process I have big stability issue during my test. Moreover, if I am to slow to send data from kernel space to user space, I will miss event from my irq handler and miss sample from my sensor. My second try was to use a character device to send data from kernel space to userpsace. I was already using the character device to drive my kernel driver. Open/Release to init/clean sensor. And ioctl to send command to the sensor like start/stop acquisition. So my plan was just to add a read callback on the character device. static const struct file_operations fops = { .owner = THIS_MODULE, .unlocked_ioctl = ads_ioctl, .open = ads_open, .release = ads_release, .read = ads_read, .unlocked_ioctl = ads_ioctl, }; static int ads_read(struct file *filp, char __user *data, size_t len, loff_t *ppos) { struct ads_dev *dev = filp->private_data; wait_event_interruptible(wq, flag != 0); flag = 0; // read data from spi (...) copy_to_user(data, spi->rx_buf, DATA_SIZE); return DATA_SIZE; }; This code seems to be easy compare to the netlink solution. Even in the user space code side. Just need to use a read instead of using socket and libnl. But the problem is always there. If the read operation over the spi and the copy_to_user take more than 2 ms, I will lost sample from my sensor. My last plan was to use mixed the two previous solutions and use a kthread + the character device. The irq wake up the thread. I read data over spi. I put the data in a queue. The read callback from character device will gather data from the queue. I have always a synchrone call which can take more than 2 ms. But At least I can send the data to user space in a synchrone way. But I was not able to find a proper way to use a queue with semaphore. So it was quite basic. A static queue + offset + wake_up_interruptible/wait_event_interruptible to synchronize kernel thread and my read callback. static uint8_t queue[50 * DATA_SIZE]; static int read_offset = 0; static int write_offset = 0; I guess that my problems are quite common in kernel driver which want to gather some data over spi. Is there a good kernel driver that I can take as good practice/example to implement my solution ? Feel free to say that my code is stupid ! Thanks, Arthur.