Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Fri, 12 Jul 2002 22:21:35 -0400 (EDT)
From:      John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org>
To:        Jonathan Lemon <jlemon@flugsvamp.com>
Cc:        current@FreeBSD.ORG, David Schultz <dschultz@uclink.Berkeley.EDU>, David Xu <bsddiy@yahoo.com>
Subject:   Re: i386 trap code
Message-ID:  <XFMail.20020708152746.jhb@FreeBSD.org>
In-Reply-To: <20020707111727.A77366@prism.flugsvamp.com>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help

On 07-Jul-2002 Jonathan Lemon wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 06, 2002 at 11:59:50PM -0700, David Xu wrote:
>> Jonthan,
>> 
>>   I just use DOS program as an example, for any program, if it wants to go
>> into VM86 mode, it is very easy, just calls i386_vm86() to initailize its
>> VM86 pcb extension, setups some memory area, then call sigreturn() to turn
>> into VM86 mode.
>>   I think global in_vm86call flags is a bug under SMP, it creates a race
>> condition. suppose this scenario:
>>   CPU A is running a simple VM86 code program.
>>   CPU B is running vm86_intcall() by some kernel driver (vesa module ?)
>>   CPU B set in_vm86call = 1
>>   CPU A gets a fault trap.
>>   CPU A runs trap(), and find that in_vm86call is set and handles the trap
>>         as  it is running vm86_intcall(), but it is not true and make a mess.
> 
> Yes, as I mentioned earlier, the way the original vm86 bioscall worked 
> was to prevent an AST until the BIOS was done.  This relied on the giant
> lock for correctness, since we only allowed one CPU into the kernel at 
> once.  There probably needs to be some work done for -current in this area.

Since vm86_lock is a spin lock, you could possibly make in_vm86call per-cpu
or you could just check the lock instead of the variable to fix this.

-- 

John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org>  <><  http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/
"Power Users Use the Power to Serve!"  -  http://www.FreeBSD.org/

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?XFMail.20020708152746.jhb>