Grant Grundler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Tue, Mar 27, 2007 at 07:23:16AM -0600, Eric W. Biederman wrote: >> I guess I should add that I'm not certain that the code is exactly correct >> there are weird differences between enable/disable and mask. > > My understanding was "enable" would clear (or ignore) pending interrupts > and "unmask" would deliver pending interrupts. Disable and mask could > in many implementations be the same thing as long as the enable/unmask > difference was supported.
enable/disable are what are available to drivers. When the call enable_irq or disable_irq. Frequently we have code to make up for deficiencies in the hardware irq controller implementations here. mask/unmask are helper functions only used by the internals of the irq implementation, and actually are required to touch the hardware. The problem on x86 is that an ioapic will drop interrupts that come in while it is masked. Thus we have to play software games not to loose pending interrupts (i.e. leave the irq enabled until we get a pending interrupt). So I think you had the general drift although you had a couple of details confused. Eric - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
