From owner-freebsd-smp Fri Mar 14 2: 3: 2 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-smp@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 186AE37B404 for ; Fri, 14 Mar 2003 02:03:01 -0800 (PST) Received: from mailhub.fokus.fraunhofer.de (mailhub.fokus.fraunhofer.de [193.174.154.14]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id ABDE043FBD for ; Fri, 14 Mar 2003 02:02:59 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from brandt@fokus.fraunhofer.de) Received: from beagle (beagle [193.175.132.100]) by mailhub.fokus.fraunhofer.de (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id h2EA2vM02037 for ; Fri, 14 Mar 2003 11:02:57 +0100 (MET) Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 11:02:57 +0100 (CET) From: Harti Brandt To: smp@freebsd.org Subject: information about locking requirements Message-ID: <20030314105232.I65266@beagle.fokus.fraunhofer.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-smp@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Hi, having red through the smp pages and papers and the smp mailing list archive and seeing the current SMP state of the network interface drivers does it make sense to do the following: 1. Gradually append to (some of) the section 9 man pages a new section "locking requirements" (or something like this) that decribes, what requirements with regard to locks a given interface has. In the recent discussion about the M_ flags the was some arguing about "we need to teach the programmer" and I think it would really help. For example, neither the malloc(9) not the mbuf(9) page tells me anything about whether I'm allowed or not to hold any locks while calling the interface and whether it uses Giant or not. The only information if have found so far is at the end of mutex(9) that lists copyout() and Co. Do you think this makes sense? If yes, I would try to craft a couple of initial sentences for some of the man pages. 2. I would like to gradually collect some of the assumptions that an interface driver may make (with regard to locking) and some requirements and put them somewhere (after getting comments on the net and smp lists). This will probably help people later on so they don't have to read through zillions of old mails. What is the best place to put such information to? A man page? The SMP project page? harti -- harti brandt, http://www.fokus.fraunhofer.de/research/cc/cats/employees/hartmut.brandt/private brandt@fokus.fraunhofer.de, harti@freebsd.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-smp" in the body of the message