There is not that much use for it on a single CPU, however, deadlock
between kernel and system task can be delected. Or a runaway loop.
If a kernel gets locked up the timer interrupts don't occure (as all
interrupts are disabled in kernel mode). The only chance is to
interrupt the kernel by a non-maskable interrupt.
This patch generates NMIs using performance counters. It uses the most
widely available performace counters. As the performance counters are
highly model-specific this patch is not guaranteed to work on every
machine. Unfortunately this is also true for KVM :-/ On the other
hand adding this feature for other models is not extremely difficult
and the framework makes it hopefully easy enough.
Depending on the frequency of the CPU an NMI is generated at most
about every 0.5s If the cpu's speed is less then 2Ghz it is generated
at most every 1s. In general an NMI is generated much less often as
the performance counter counts down only if the cpu is not idle.
Therefore the overhead of this feature is fairly minimal even if the
load is high.
Uppon detecting that the kernel is locked up the kernel dumps the
state of the kernel registers and panics.
Local APIC must be enabled for the watchdog to work.
The code is _always_ compiled in, however, it is only enabled if
watchdog=<non-zero> is set in the boot monitor.
One corner case is serial console debugging. As dumping a lot of stuff
to the serial link may take a lot of time, the watchdog does not
detect lockups during this time!!! as it would result in too many
false positives. 10 nmi have to be handled before the lockup is
detected. This means something between ~5s to 10s.
Another corner case is that the watchdog is enabled only after the
paging is enabled as it would be pure madness to try to get it right.
debugging info on panic: decode segment selectors and descriptors, now moved
to arch-specific part, prototypes added; sanity checking in debug.h made
optional with vmassert().
mainly in the kernel and headers. This split based on work by
Ingmar Alting <iaalting@cs.vu.nl> done for his Minix PowerPC architecture
port.
. kernel does not program the interrupt controller directly, do any
other architecture-dependent operations, or contain assembly any more,
but uses architecture-dependent functions in arch/$(ARCH)/.
. architecture-dependent constants and types defined in arch/$(ARCH)/include.
. <ibm/portio.h> moved to <minix/portio.h>, as they have become, for now,
architecture-independent functions.
. int86, sdevio, readbios, and iopenable are now i386-specific kernel calls
and live in arch/i386/do_* now.
. i386 arch now supports even less 86 code; e.g. mpx86.s and klib86.s have
gone, and 'machine.protected' is gone (and always taken to be 1 in i386).
If 86 support is to return, it should be a new architecture.
. prototypes for the architecture-dependent functions defined in
kernel/arch/$(ARCH)/*.c but used in kernel/ are in kernel/proto.h
. /etc/make.conf included in makefiles and shell scripts that need to
know the building architecture; it defines ARCH=<arch>, currently only
i386.
. some basic per-architecture build support outside of the kernel (lib)
. in clock.c, only dequeue a process if it was ready
. fixes for new include files
files deleted:
. mpx/klib.s - only for choosing between mpx/klib86 and -386
. klib86.s - only for 86
i386-specific files files moved (or arch-dependent stuff moved) to arch/i386/:
. mpx386.s (entry point)
. klib386.s
. sconst.h
. exception.c
. protect.c
. protect.h
. i8269.c
- fixed bug that caused IDLE to panic (irq hook inconsistency);
- kprintf() now accepts multiple arguments; moved to utility.c;
- prepare_shutdown() signals system processes with SIGKSTOP;
- phys_fill() renamed to phys_memset(), argument order changed;
- kmemset() removed in favor of phys_kmemset();
- kstrncpy() removed in favor of phys_copy();
- katoi, kstrncmp replaced by normal library procedure again;
- rm_irq_handler() interface changed (simply pass hook pointer);
New configuration header file to include/ exclude functionality.
Extracted privileged features from struct proc and create new struct priv.
Renamed various system calls for readability.
- current and maximum priority per process;
- quantum size and current ticks left per process;
- max number of full quantums in a row allow
(otherwise current priority is decremented)
Removed stop sequence when MINIX is shut down.
Disabled send mask checks --- to be replaced by proper mechanism.
Fixed bug relating to 'shutdown -x'.
Simplified clock accounting of realtime.
Updated Makefiles for mkdept script.
Reduced kernel size by 512KB by moving private buffer into cstart() function.
Replaced assertions with erroneous return values. Removed assertions relating
to isuserp(rp), since all processes should become user processes; system
processes are now treated similar to other processes.
