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Date:      Wed, 10 Nov 2004 15:00:27 +0100
From:      gerarra@tin.it
To:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Cc:        avg@icyb.net.ua
Subject:   RE: syscall: td_retval and zero return value
Message-ID:  <41536AD50005DCD2@ims3a.cp.tin.it>
In-Reply-To: <41921229.9080404@icyb.net.ua>

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>I have very little assembler/x86 knowledge.
>Could anyone please help me understand what it means to assign a
>non-zero value to td_retval in a system call when return value of the
>call is zero/success?
>
>I see in syscall() in src/sys/i386/i386/trap.c (btw is this the right
>place?) that in such circumstances value from td_retval[] is put into
>EAX and EDX registers and PSL_C (carry bit) is cleared in status/flags
>register in a stack frame of a calling process. But I don't understand
>what it practically means for the calling process.
>
>Thank you in advance.

The way the handler advice you about syscalls failing is setting (and not=

clearing as you were saying) the carry bit in eflags register (about ia32=
).
A sort of errno (if you see in a C-coder view) value is set in eax (or,
alternatively, edx) to show the reason of failing. There's no way to know=

where error code is set; you can just verify pratically.

You can find all these things on "Programmers handbook".

cheers,
rookie




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