Critical Sections for userland.

[Alfred Perlstein]

* Daniel Eischen <deischen at freebsd.org> [071002 20:16] wrote:
> On Tue, 2 Oct 2007, Alfred Perlstein wrote:
> 
> >* Daniel Eischen <deischen at freebsd.org> [071002 20:02] wrote:
> >>On Tue, 2 Oct 2007, Alfred Perlstein wrote:
> >>
> >>>* Daniel Eischen <deischen at freebsd.org> [071002 19:46] wrote:
> >>>>On Tue, 2 Oct 2007, Alfred Perlstein wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>>Hi guys, we need critical sections for userland here.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>This is basically to avoid a process being switched out while holding
> >>>>>a user level spinlock.
> >>>>
> >>>>Setting the scheduling class to real-time and using SCHED_FIFO
> >>>>and adjusting the thread priority around the lock doesn't work?
> >>>
> >>>Too heavy weight, we want to basically have this sort of code
> >>>in userland:
> >>
> >>Well, yeah, but are you _really_ sure that you aren't just
> >>running something that should be real-time and have priority
> >>over other applications?  SCHED_FIFO means you will run until
> >>you relinquish the CPU (you can only do this as root).  If
> >>all your threads are well behaved, would this work?  Have
> >>you tried it?
> >
> >No, because it wouldn't work.  How do we know when to let go
> >of the cpu?  In my system, the kernel tells you without polling.
> 
> You don't have to know when to "let go of the cpu" if your
> threads are well behaved (meaning they block on some event,
> or have periods when they wait).  They will let go of the
> CPU normally.  When they're busy, they will not be switched
> out (unless perhaps there is an interrupt thread that needs
> to run -- I'm not sure how real-time threads get scheduled
> against ithreads).
> 
> If your threads are not well behaved (CPU hogs), then that
> isn't going to work because they'll probably bog down the
> system.

Yes, I know how threading works.

Unfortunately, your solution is not workable for us.

thank you,
-- 
- Alfred Perlstein