Hi Greg, > Instead there is an intermediary context that I don't think you've > taken into account. > > I believe timers are also invoked in this intermediary context. ie. > When a timer invokes a function you can't trust the process / task > structures to relate to your original userspace app.
I think what you're referring to with intermediate context is work that is deferred for later so that the userspace app doesn't have to wait. Like for example when a write() happens, this doesn't have to necessarily go all the way till the disk immediately, instead its written to the page cache first and the kernel returns to userspace immediately. The process of writing from memory to disk is done later by something like pdflush or kjournald which are actually kernel threads executing in Process context. Is this what you mean by intermediate context? -Joel -- To unsubscribe from this list: send an email with "unsubscribe kernelnewbies" to ecar...@nl.linux.org Please read the FAQ at http://kernelnewbies.org/FAQ
