cvs commit: src/sys/kern uipc_socket.c

[Alfred Perlstein]

1) apologies for top posting
2) cool, thanks for the explanation, I wasn't aware that this was
a cleanup step and was hoping it wasn't another ad-hoc reference
counting "fix".  This looks good.

* Robert Watson <rwatson at FreeBSD.org> [060315 05:48] wrote:
> 
> Socket and PCB reference counting is currently Extraordinarily Complex and 
> More Than A Little Broken.  This is the first in a long series of steps to 
> migrate the socket and protocol code from an ad hoc reference system to a 
> more pure reference system.  This includes:
> 
> - Transitioning so_pcb to being a protocol-only field, instead of allowing 
> the
>   socket layer to use it.  SS_PROTOREF is, in effect, replacing so_pcb as a
>   reference visible to the socket layer.
> 
> - Moving towards an invariant that so_pcb is non-NULL for the life time of a
>   socket for most protocol, allowing us to remove the constant checking for 
>   a
>   NULL so_pcb (and associated locking) throughout the protocols.  This
>   involves a significant rewrite of TCP's pcb use, as we currently discard 
>   the
>   PCB long before the socket is freed, hence significant complexity in all 
>   the
>   TCP protocol APIs exposed to the socket layer.
> 
> - Guaranteeing that pru_detach() will only be called once per socket, and 
> only
>   if pru_attach() succeeded.
> 
> - Eliminating unused failure modes, such as the failure of pru_detach() and
>   pru_abort().
> 
> - Fixing a large number of race conditions and bugs in the TCP tcpcb and 
> twpcb
>   model.
> 
> I would like to get to the point where so_count is the sole reference count 
> on the socket, but it will take quite a bit of work to get there.  You can 
> find an outstanding, if somewhat dated, patch at:
> 
>     http://www.watson.org/~robert/freebsd/netperf/20060228-rwatson_sockref.diff
> 
> Cleaning up and merging large parts of this is waiting on a couple of 
> things, including updates to the bluetooth code (I've contacted emax 
> already), and also on a determination of the future of netatm.  I have 
> changes in that patch to make netatm compile, but I'm unable to test it, 
> and fairly sure there is more to be done there.
> 
> Robert N M Watson

-- 
- Alfred Perlstein
- CTO Okcupid.com / FreeBSD Hacker / All that jazz -