The last half year I've been working on a replacement TTY layer for the
FreeBSD kernel. The new TTY layer was designed to improve the following:
- Improved driver model:
The old TTY layer has a driver model that is not abstract enough to
make it friendly to use. A good example is the output path, where the
device drivers directly access the output buffers. This means that an
in-kernel PPP implementation must always convert network buffers into
TTY buffers.
If a PPP implementation would be built on top of the new TTY layer
(still needs a hooks layer, though), it would allow the PPP
implementation to directly hand the data to the TTY driver.
- Improved hotplugging:
With the old TTY layer, it isn't entirely safe to destroy TTY's from
the system. This implementation has a two-step destructing design,
where the driver first abandons the TTY. After all threads have left
the TTY, the TTY layer calls a routine in the driver, which can be
used to free resources (unit numbers, etc).
The pts(4) driver also implements this feature, which means
posix_openpt() will now return PTY's that are created on the fly.
- Improved performance:
One of the major improvements is the per-TTY mutex, which is expected
to improve scalability when compared to the old Giant locking.
Another change is the unbuffered copying to userspace, which is both
used on TTY device nodes and PTY masters.
Upgrading should be quite straightforward. Unlike previous versions,
existing kernel configuration files do not need to be changed, except
when they reference device drivers that are listed in UPDATING.
Obtained from: //depot/projects/mpsafetty/...
Approved by: philip (ex-mentor)
Discussed: on the lists, at BSDCan, at the DevSummit
Sponsored by: Snow B.V., the Netherlands
dcons(4) fixed by: kan
As clearly mentioned on the mailing lists, there is a list of drivers
that have not been ported to the MPSAFE TTY layer yet. Remove them from
the kernel configuration files. This means people can now still use
these drivers if they explicitly put them in their kernel configuration
file, which is good.
People should keep in mind that after August 10, these drivers will not
work anymore. Even though owners of the hardware are capable of getting
these drivers working again, I will see if I can at least get them to a
compilable state (if time permits).
current@ and stable@ for the locking patches. The driver can always be
revived if someone tests it.
This driver also sleeps in its if_init routine, so it likely doesn't really
work at all anyway in modern releases.
parts relied on the now removed NET_NEEDS_GIANT.
Most of I4B has been disconnected from the build
since July 2007 in HEAD/RELENG_7.
This is what was removed:
- configuration in /etc/isdn
- examples
- man pages
- kernel configuration
- sys/i4b (drivers, layers, include files)
- user space tools
- i4b support from ppp
- further documentation
Discussed with: rwatson, re
Note this includes changes to all drivers and moves some device firmware
loading to use firmware(9) and a separate module (e.g. ral). Also there
no longer are separate wlan_scan* modules; this functionality is now
bundled into the wlan module.
Supported by: Hobnob and Marvell
Reviewed by: many
Obtained from: Atheros (some bits)
to detect (or load) kernel NLM support in rpc.lockd. Remove the '-k'
option to rpc.lockd and make kernel NLM the default. A user can still
force the use of the old user NLM by building a kernel without NFSLOCKD
and/or removing the nfslockd.ko module.
frequency generation and what frequency the generated was anyones
guess.
In general the 32.768kHz RTC clock x-tal was the best, because that
was a regular wrist-watch Xtal, whereas the X-tal generating the
ISA bus frequency was much lower quality, often costing as much as
several cents a piece, so it made good sense to check the ISA bus
frequency against the RTC clock.
The other relevant property of those machines, is that they
typically had no more than 16MB RAM.
These days, CPU chips croak if their clocks are not tightly within
specs and all necessary frequencies are derived from the master
crystal by means if PLL's.
Considering that it takes on average 1.5 second to calibrate the
frequency of the i8254 counter, that more likely than not, we will
not actually use the result of the calibration, and as the final
clincher, we seldom use the i8254 for anything besides BEL in
syscons anyway, it has become time to drop the calibration code.
If you need to tell the system what frequency your i8254 runs,
you can do so from the loader using hw.i8254.freq or using the
sysctl kern.timecounter.tc.i8254.frequency.
While the KSE project was quite successful in bringing threading to
FreeBSD, the M:N approach taken by the kse library was never developed
to its full potential. Backwards compatibility will be provided via
libmap.conf for dynamically linked binaries and static binaries will
be broken.
- Introduce per-architecture stack_machdep.c to hold stack_save(9).
- Introduce per-architecture machine/stack.h to capture any common
definitions required between db_trace.c and stack_machdep.c.
- Add new kernel option "options STACK"; we will build in stack(9) if it is
defined, or also if "options DDB" is defined to provide compatibility
with existing users of stack(9).
Add new stack_save_td(9) function, which allows the capture of a stacktrace
of another thread rather than the current thread, which the existing
stack_save(9) was limited to. It requires that the thread be neither
swapped out nor running, which is the responsibility of the consumer to
enforce.
Update stack(9) man page.
Build tested: amd64, arm, i386, ia64, powerpc, sparc64, sun4v
Runtime tested: amd64 (rwatson), arm (cognet), i386 (rwatson)
the 7.0 timeframe.
This is needed because I4B is not locked and NET_NEEDS_GIANT goes away.
The plan is to lock I4B and bring everything back for 7.1.
Approved by: re (kensmith)
more exposure. The current state of SCTP implementation is
considered to be ready for 32-bit platforms, but still need some
work/testing on 64-bit platforms.
Approved by: re (kensmith)
Discussed with: rrs
making the relevant files standard. This avoids duplication and
makes it easier to override/disable unwanted schemes. Since ARM
doesn't have a DEFAULTS configuration file, leave the source
files for the BSD and MBR partitioning schemes in files.arm for
now.
partitioning class that supports multiple schemes. Current
schemes supported are APM (Apple Partition Map) and GPT.
Change all GEOM_APPLE anf GEOM_GPT options into GEOM_PART_APM
and GEOM_PART_GPT (resp).
The ctlreq interface supports verbs to create and destroy
partitioning schemes on a disk; to add, delete and modify
partitions; and to commit or undo changes made.
it as a default.
For the record, the KDTRACE option caused _no_ additional source files
to be compiled in; certainly no CDDL source files. All it did was to
allow existing BSD licensed kernel files to include one or more CDDL
header files.
By removing this from DEFAULTS, the onus is on a kernel builder to add
the option to the kernel config, possibly by including GENERIC and
customising from there. It means that DTrace won't be a feature
available in FreeBSD by default, which is the way I intended it to be.
Without this option, you can't load the dtrace module (which contains
the dtrace device and the DTrace framework). This is equivalent to
requiring an option in a kernel config before you can load the linux
emulation module, for example.
I think it is a mistake to have DTrace ported to FreeBSD, but not
to have it available to everyone, all the time. The only exception
to this is the companies which distribute systems with FreeBSD embedded.
Those companies will customise their systems anyway. The KDTRACE
option was intended for them, and only them.
adds the hooks that DTrace modules register with, and adds a few functions
which have the dtrace_ prefix to allow the DTrace FBT (function boundary
trace) provider to avoid tracing because they are called from the DTtrace
probe context.
Unlike other forms of tracing and debug, DTrace support in the kernel
incurs negligible run-time cost.
I think the only reason why anyone wouldn't want to have kernel support
enabled for DTrace would be due to the license (CDDL) under which DTrace
is released.
The 'nooption' kernel config entry has to be used to turn KSE off now.
This isn't my preferred way of dealing with this, but I'll defer to
scottl's experience with the io/mem kernel option change and the grief
experienced over that.
Submitted by: scottl@
except sun4v.
This change makes the transition from a default to an option more
transparent and is an attempt to head off all the compliants that are
likely from people who don't read UPDATING, based on experience with
the io/mem change.
Submitted by: scottl@
unsuspecting users.
- Add a comment in NOTES about experimental status of SCHED_ULE.
- Make warning about experimental status in sched_ule(4) a bit
stronger.
Suggested and reviewed by: dougb
Discussed on: developers
MFC after: 3 days
and pc98 MD files. Remove nodevice and nooption lines specific
to sio(4) from ia64, powerpc and sparc64 NOTES. There were no
such lines for arm yet.
sio(4) is usable on less than half the platforms, not counting
a future mips platform. Its presence in MI files is therefore
increasingly becoming a burden.
in 1999, and there are changes to the sysctl names compared to PR,
according to that discussion. The description is in sys/conf/NOTES.
Lines in the GENERIC files are added in commented-out form.
I'll attach the test script I've used to PR.
PR: kern/14584
Submitted by: babkin
an explicit comment that it's needed for the linuxolator. This is not the
case anymore. For all other architectures there was only a "KEEP THIS".
I'm (and other people too) running a COMPAT_43-less kernel since it's not
necessary anymore for the linuxolator. Roman is running such a kernel for a
for longer time. No problems so far. And I doubt other (newer than ia32
or alpha) architectures really depend on it.
This may result in a small performance increase for some workloads.
If the removal of COMPAT_43 results in a not working program, please
recompile it and all dependencies and try again before reporting a
problem.
The only place where COMPAT_43 is needed (as in: does not compile without
it) is in the (outdated/not usable since too old) svr4 code.
Note: this does not remove the COMPAT_43TTY option.
Nagging by: rdivacky
