IRP Major Function Codes
Each driver-specific I/O stack location (IO_STACK_LOCATION) for every IRP contains a major function code (IRP_MJ_XXX), which tells the driver what operation it or the underlying device driver should carry out to satisfy the I/O request. Each kernel-mode driver must provide dispatch routines for the major function codes that it must support.
The specific operations a driver carries out for a given IRP_MJ_XXX code depend somewhat on the underlying device, particularly for IRP_MJ_DEVICE_CONTROL and IRP_MJ_INTERNAL_DEVICE_CONTROL requests. For example, the requests sent to a keyboard driver are necessarily somewhat different from those sent to a disk driver. However, the I/O manager defines the parameters and I/O stack location contents for each system-defined major function code.
Every higher-level driver must set up the appropriate I/O stack location in IRPs for the next-lower-level driver and call IoCallDriver, either with each input IRP, or with a driver-created IRP (if the higher-level driver holds on to the input IRP). Consequently, every intermediate driver must supply a dispatch routine for each major function code that the underlying device driver handles. Otherwise, a new intermediate driver will "break the chain" whenever an application or still higher-level driver attempts to send an I/O request down to the underlying device driver.
File system drivers also handle a required subset of system-defined IRP_MJ_XXX function codes, some with subordinate IRP_MN_XXX function codes.
Drivers handle IRPs set with some or all of the following major function codes:
IRP_MJ_INTERNAL_DEVICE_CONTROL
The input and output parameters described in this section are the function-specific parameters in the IRP.
For more information about IRPs, see Handling IRPs.
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