On Tue, Nov 09, 2010 at 09:24:06PM +0200, Antti Kantee wrote: > On Tue Nov 09 2010 at 12:47:11 -0600, David Young wrote: > > On Tue, Nov 09, 2010 at 04:31:22PM +0200, Antti Kantee wrote: > > > A big problem with the XIP thread is that it is simply not palatable. > > > It takes a lot of commitment just to read the thread, not to mention > > > putting out a sensible review comments like e.g. Chuq and Matt have done. > > > The issue is complex and the code involved is even more so. However, > > > that is no excuse for a confusing presentation. It seems like hardly > > > anyone can follow what is going on, and usually that signals that the > > > audience is not the root of the problem. > > > > If the conversation's leading participants adopt the rule that they may > > not introduce a new term ("pager ops") or symbol ("pgo_fault") to the > > discussion until a manual page describes it, then we will gain some > > useful kernel-internals documentation, and the conversation will be more > > accessible. :-) > > Those concepts are carefully documented, if nowhere else, at least in > the uvm dissertation.
A dissertation is just the kind of documentation that I am *not* looking for. It's not written to answer practical questions about using UVM. > Basically a pager is involved in moving things > between memory and whatever the va is backed with (swap, a file system, > "ubc", ...). "What is a pager?" is a textbook concept that I don't expect for uvm(9) to cover. I do expect for uvm(9) to answer a question such as, "how do I create a new virtual-memory range and install my own fault handler for it?", "what are the arguments and return codes for pgo_get, pgo_put, and pgo_fault?", "what are the public members of vm_page, if any?", or "what are the public members of a uvm_object, if any?" Dave -- David Young OJC Technologies dyo...@ojctech.com Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933