Completions
Here is some details about the "completions":- Completions is a technique that can be used to convey that particular task has been completed to the other process
- <linux/completion.h> must be included to use this.
- A completion can be declared by DECLARE_COMPLETION(my_completion)
- If it has to be created and initialized dynamically then we may use the following method.
init_completion(&my_completion);
- Waiting can be done by wait_for_completion(struct completion *c)
- It performs an uninterruptible wait and if nobody ever issues a complete() , then that results in an un-killable process.
- Completion can be notified by
- void complete(struct completion *c)
- void complete_all(struct completion *c)
- Both of the above functions behaves differently if more than one process is waiting
- In that case complete() will only notify only one process. But the complete_all() will notify all the processes waiting.
- The structure can be reused without any problem unless complete_all is used. If comlpete_all is used then re-initialization has to be done in the follwing way :- INIT_COMPLETION(struct completion c)
The Device
The structure of device is simple. Here is the write operation
copy_from_user(buff,buffer,4);complete(&sig);The write operation simply copies the data from user space to an array in the kernel space.Then it issues a complete(). This is anything but a declaration that a particular task that is associated with sig has been completed and a process waiting on sig can proceed.The read operaion is as follows.wait_for_completion(&sig);copy_to_user(buffer,buff,4);The read operation on the other hand waits on the sig using wait_for_completion(). So when another process issues a complete() on sig, then the reader can proceed.
The device has the following behavior
- Read and write can only be done with data size as 4 characters.
- The data written to the device persists unless a read operation is done on the the device. The write operations is non-blocking.
- The read operation on the device has to wait unless something is written to the device. Hence read operation is blocking.
Reference : LDD 3e Chapter 5
Good . "completions" were a brand new IPC mechanism for me. Is it what is called as mailboxes ?
ReplyDelete@Vijeen I don't know what you exactly mean by a mailbox. Probably you are talking about a user space functionality. "completions" on the other hand is purely a Kernel functionality.
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