Re: [C/R ARM][PATCH 1/3] ARM: Rudimentary syscall interfaces

[Oren Laadan]

On Tue, 23 Mar 2010, Matt Helsley wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 08:53:42PM +0000, Russell King - ARM Linux wrote:
> > On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 09:06:03PM -0400, Christoffer Dall wrote:
> > > This small commit introduces a global state of system calls for ARM
> > > making it possible for a debugger or checkpointing to gain information
> > > about another process' state with respect to system calls.
> > 
> > I don't particularly like the idea that we always store the syscall
> > number to memory for every system call, whether the stored version is
> > used or not.
> > 
> > Since ARM caches are generally not write allocate, this means mostly
> > write-only variables can have a higher than expected expense.
> > 
> > Is there not some thread flag which can be checked to see if we need to
> > store the syscall number?
> 
> Perhaps before we freeze the task we can save the syscall number on ARM.
> The patches suggest that the signal delivery path -- which the freezer
> utilizes -- has the syscall number already.
> 
> Should work since the threads must be frozen first anyway.

I like the idea.

However, would it also work for those cases when the freezing does not 
occur from the signal delivery path - e.g. for vfork and ptraced tasks ?

Oren.
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