Qn: kernel_thread()

From: Alpha Beta (abbashake007@lycos.com)
Date: Sat Feb 02 2002 - 12:16:20 EST


In the code of
int kernel_thread(int (*fn)(void *), void * arg, unsigned long flags)
in arch/i386/kernel/process.c

as can be seen in the code here, a system call is made by trigerring the 0x80 interrupt.
this function kernel_thread() is used to launch the init process during booting by
start_kernel() //in init/main.c
But at that time, the process 0 which calls kernel_thread is executing in Kernel mode, so why should some process in kernel mode make a system call??

int kernel_thread(int (*fn)(void *), void * arg, unsigned long flags)
{
        long retval, d0;

        __asm__ __volatile__(
                "movl %%esp,%%esi\n\t"
                "int $0x80\n\t" /* Linux/i386 system call */
                "cmpl %%esp,%%esi\n\t" /* child or parent? */
                "je 1f\n\t" /* parent - jump */
                /* Load the argument into eax, and push it. That way, it does
                 * not matter whether the called function is compiled with
                 * -mregparm or not. */
                "movl %4,%%eax\n\t"
                "pushl %%eax\n\t"
                "call *%5\n\t" /* call fn */
                "movl %3,%0\n\t" /* exit */
                "int $0x80\n"
                "1:\t"
                :"=&a" (retval), "=&S" (d0)
                :"0" (__NR_clone), "i" (__NR_exit),
                 "r" (arg), "r" (fn),
                 "b" (flags | CLONE_VM)
                : "memory");
        return retval;
}

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Feb 07 2002 - 21:00:23 EST