protection against module unloading ?
Luigi Rizzo
rizzo at iet.unipi.it
Mon Jul 13 12:28:43 UTC 2015
Hi,
I am trying to understand how to protect efficiently against
module removals when a device driver is in use.
This issue came up some time ago when trying netmap
loaded as a module.
--- Summary of the current mode of operation (as i understand it): ---
When a device is compiled as a module, all devfs calls in
sys/fs/devfs/devfs_vnops.c are protected by setting
dev->si_threadcount (within dev*_refthread()) for the duration of the call.
This is implemented using devfs_fp_check()/dev_relthread() which
in turn, for the module case, updates the dev->si_threadcount under
dev_lock() which is a single shared mutex, devmtx .
The above is problematic for driver modules that do a lot of I/O
using poll, ioctl, read or write, because of the system-wide contention
on devmtx
To mitigate the contention, statically compiled modules have the
SI_ETERNAL attribute that prevents the lock (major contention point)
and si_threadcount update.
--- Alternative ?
I was hoping to make the protection mechanism cheaper by only
increasing dev->si_threadcount on devfs_open() without calling
dev_relthread() ), and then decreasing si_threadcount on defvs_close() .
This way the reference is active for the lifetime of the file descriptor
without needing to track individual high-frequency calls.
This is probably not enough because there could be mmap handlers,
which remain active even after the device is closed.
However I do not think the current devfs_fp_check() suffices either,
and so drivers that have their own mmap code in a module that can be
unloaded must already implement their own mechanism to protect
against unloading.
In fact, this could be achieved easily by making these drivers use
dev_refthread() to hold a refcount while active.
Would the above work ? Anything missing ?
cheers
luigi
--
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Prof. Luigi RIZZO, rizzo at iet.unipi.it . Dip. di Ing. dell'Informazione
http://www.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/ . Universita` di Pisa
TEL +39-050-2217533 . via Diotisalvi 2
Mobile +39-338-6809875 . 56122 PISA (Italy)
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