This patch separates the character and block driver communication
protocols. The old character protocol remains the same, but a new
block protocol is introduced. The libdriver library is replaced by
two new libraries: libchardriver and libblockdriver. Their exposed
API, and drivers that use them, have been updated accordingly.
Together, libbdev and libblockdriver now completely abstract away
the message format used by the block protocol. As the memory driver
is both a character and a block device driver, it now implements its
own message loop.
The most important semantic change made to the block protocol is that
it is no longer possible to return both partial results and an error
for a single transfer. This simplifies the interaction between the
caller and the driver, as the I/O vector no longer needs to be copied
back. Also, drivers are now no longer supposed to decide based on the
layout of the I/O vector when a transfer should be cut short. Put
simply, transfers are now supposed to either succeed completely, or
result in an error.
After this patch, the state of the various pieces is as follows:
- block protocol: stable
- libbdev API: stable for synchronous communication
- libblockdriver API: needs slight revision (the drvlib/partition API
in particular; the threading API will also change shortly)
- character protocol: needs cleanup
- libchardriver API: needs cleanup accordingly
- driver restarts: largely unsupported until endpoint changes are
reintroduced
As a side effect, this patch eliminates several bugs, hacks, and gcc
-Wall and -W warnings all over the place. It probably introduces a
few new ones, too.
Update warning: this patch changes the protocol between MFS and disk
drivers, so in order to use old/new images, the MFS from the ramdisk
must be used to mount all file systems.
SYSLIB CHANGES:
- SEF must be used by every system process and is thereby part of the system
library.
- The framework provides a receive() interface (sef_receive) for system
processes to automatically catch known system even messages and process them.
- SEF provides a default behavior for each type of system event, but allows
system processes to register callbacks to override the default behavior.
- Custom (local to the process) or predefined (provided by SEF) callback
implementations can be registered to SEF.
- SEF currently includes support for 2 types of system events:
1. SEF Ping. The event occurs every time RS sends a ping to figure out
whether a system process is still alive. The default callback implementation
provided by SEF is to notify RS back to let it know the process is alive
and kicking.
2. SEF Live update. The event occurs every time RS sends a prepare to update
message to let a system process know an update is available and to prepare
for it. The live update support is very basic for now. SEF only deals with
verifying if the prepare state can be supported by the process, dumping the
state for debugging purposes, and providing an event-driven programming
model to the process to react to state changes check-in when ready to update.
- SEF should be extended in the future to integrate support for more types of
system events. Ideally, all the cross-cutting concerns should be integrated into
SEF to avoid duplicating code and ease extensibility. Examples include:
* PM notify messages primarily used at shutdown.
* SYSTEM notify messages primarily used for signals.
* CLOCK notify messages used for system alarms.
* Debug messages. IS could still be in charge of fkey handling but would
forward the debug message to the target process (e.g. PM, if the user
requested debug information about PM). SEF would then catch the message and
do nothing unless the process has registered an appropriate callback to
deal with the event. This simplifies the programming model to print debug
information, avoids duplicating code, and reduces the effort to print
debug information.
SYSTEM PROCESSES CHANGES:
- Every system process registers SEF callbacks it needs to override the default
system behavior and calls sef_startup() right after being started.
- sef_startup() does almost nothing now, but will be extended in the future to
support callbacks of its own to let RS control and synchronize with every
system process at initialization time.
- Every system process calls sef_receive() now rather than receive() directly,
to let SEF handle predefined system events.
RS CHANGES:
- RS supports a basic single-component live update protocol now, as follows:
* When an update command is issued (via "service update *"), RS notifies the
target system process to prepare for a specific update state.
* If the process doesn't respond back in time, the update is aborted.
* When the process responds back, RS kills it and marks it for refreshing.
* The process is then automatically restarted as for a buggy process and can
start running again.
* Live update is currently prototyped as a controlled failure.
now used for printing diagnostic messages through the kernel message
buffer. this lets processes print diagnostics without sending messages
to tty and log directly, simplifying the message protocol a lot and
reducing difficulties with deadlocks and other situations in which
diagnostics are blackholed (e.g. grants don't work). this makes
DIAGNOSTICS(_S), ASYN_DIAGNOSTICS and DIAG_REPL obsolete, although tty
and log still accept the codes for 'old' binaries. This also simplifies
diagnostics in several servers and drivers - only tty needs its own
kputc() now.
. simplifications in vfs, and some effort to get the vnode references
right (consistent) even during shutdown. m_mounted_on is now NULL
for root filesystems (!) (the original and new root), a less awkward
special case than 'm_mounted_on == m_root_node'. root now has exactly
one reference, to root, if no files are open, just like all other
filesystems. m_driver_e is unused.
libdriver. at_wini now queues messages it can't handle it receives when
waiting for an interrupt. this way it can do receive(ANY) and timeouts
should be working again (were broken for VFS, as with the advent of VFS,
at_wini could get requests from a filesystem while it was waiting for an
interrupt - as a hack, the receive() was changed to receive(HARDWARE)).
Added mq.c to libdriver, and made libdriver an actual library that
drivers link with -L../libdriver -ldriver. (So adding files, if
necessary, is easier next time.)
OUTPUT_PROCS_ARRAY in <minix/config.h>, in that order, terminated by NONE.
log no longer forwards messages to tty itself. This leads to less funny
loops and more robust debug-message handling. Also the list of
processes receiving messages can easily be changed around or disabled by
editing the array (e.g. disable it by changing the array to { NONE }.).
kernel) to the log driver. The log driver forwards such output to the TTY.
Changed driver_task() not to send a reply if the return value is EDONTREPLY.
