This chapter delves into the area of Linux memory management, with an emphasis on techniques that are useful to the device driver writer. Many types of driver programming require some understanding of how the virtual memory subsystem works; the material we cover in this chapter comes in handy more than once as we get into some of the more complex and performance-critical subsystems. The virtual memory subsystem is also a highly interesting part of the core Linux kernel and, therefore, it merits a look.
The material in this chapter is divided into three sections:
The first covers the implementation of the mmap system call, which allows the mapping of device memory directly into a user processâs address space. Not all devices require mmap support, but, for some, mapping device memory can yield significant performance improvements.
We then look at crossing the boundary from the other direction with a discussion of direct access to user-space pages. Relatively few drivers need this capability; in many cases, the kernel performs this sort of mapping without the driver even being aware of it. But an awareness of how to map user-space memory into the kernel (with get_user_pages) can be useful.
The final section covers direct memory access (DMA) I/O operations, which provide peripherals with direct access to system memory.
Of course, all of these techniques require an understanding of how Linux memory management works, so we start with an overview of that subsystem.
Rather than describing the theory of memory management in operating systems, this section tries to pinpoint the main features of the Linux implementation. Although you do not need to be a Linux virtual memory guru to implement mmap, a basic overview of how things work is useful. What follows is a fairly lengthy description of the data structures used by the kernel to manage memory. Once the necessary background has been covered, we can get into working with these structures.
Linux is, of course, a virtual memory system, meaning that the addresses seen by user programs do not directly correspond to the physical addresses used by the hardware. Virtual memory introduces a layer of indirection that allows a number of nice things. With virtual memory, programs running on the system can allocate far more memory than is physically available; indeed, even a single process can have a virtual address space larger than the systemâs physical memory. Virtual memory also allows the program to play a number of tricks with the processâs address space, including mapping the programâs memory to device memory.
Thus far, we have talked about virtual and physical addresses, but a number of the details have been glossed over. The Linux system deals with several types of addresses, each with its own semantics. Unfortunately, the kernel code is not always very clear on exactly which type of address is being used in each situation, so the programmer must be careful.
The following is a list of address types used in Linux. Figure 15-1 shows how these address types relate to physical memory.
- User virtual addresses
These are the regular addresses seen by user-space programs. User addresses are either 32 or 64 bits in length, depending on the underlying hardware architecture, and each process has its own virtual address space.
- Physical addresses
The addresses used between the processor and the systemâs memory. Physical addresses are 32- or 64-bit quantities; even 32-bit systems can use larger physical addresses in some situations.
- Bus addresses
The addresses used between peripheral buses and memory. Often, they are the same as the physical addresses used by the processor, but that is not necessarily the case. Some architectures can provide an I/O memory management unit (IOMMU) that remaps addresses between a bus and main memory. An IOMMU can make life easier in a number of ways (making a buffer scattered in memory appear contiguous to the device, for example), but programming the IOMMU is an extra step that must be performed when setting up DMA operations. Bus addresses are highly architecture dependent, of course.
- Kernel logical addresses
These make up the normal address space of the kernel. These addresses map some portion (perhaps all) of main memory and are often treated as if they were physical addresses. On most architectures, logical addresses and their associated physical addresses differ only by a constant offset. Logical addresses use the hardwareâs native pointer size and, therefore, may be unable to address all of physical memory on heavily equipped 32-bit systems. Logical addresses are usually stored in variables of type
unsignedlongorvoid*. Memory returned from kmalloc has a kernel logical address.- Kernel virtual addresses
Kernel virtual addresses are similar to logical addresses in that they are a mapping from a kernel-space address to a physical address. Kernel virtual addresses do not necessarily have the linear, one-to-one mapping to physical addresses that characterize the logical address space, however. All logical addresses are kernel virtual addresses, but many kernel virtual addresses are not logical addresses. For example, memory allocated by vmalloc has a virtual address (but no direct physical mapping). The kmap function (described later in this chapter) also returns virtual addresses. Virtual addresses are usually stored in pointer variables.
If you have a logical address, the macro _ _pa( ) (defined in <asm/page.h>) returns its associated physical address. Physical addresses can be mapped back to logical addresses with _ _va( ), but only for low-memory pages.
Different kernel functions require different types of addresses. It would be nice if there were different C types defined, so that the required address types were explicit, but we have no such luck. In this chapter, we try to be clear on which types of addresses are used where.
Physical memory
is divided into discrete
units called pages. Much of the systemâs internal handling of
memory is done on a per-page basis. Page size varies from one architecture to the next,
although most systems currently use 4096-byte pages. The constant PAGE_SIZE (defined in <asm/page.h>) gives the page size on any given architecture.
If you look at a memory addressâvirtual or physicalâit is divisible into a page number
and an offset within the page. If 4096-byte pages are being used, for example, the 12
least-significant bits are the offset, and the remaining, higher bits indicate the page
number. If you discard the offset and shift the rest of an offset to the right, the result
is called a page frame number
(PFN). Shifting bits
to convert between page frame numbers and addresses is a fairly common operation; the macro
PAGE_SHIFT
tells how many
bits must be shifted to make this conversion.
The difference between logical and kernel virtual addresses is highlighted on 32-bit systems that are equipped with large amounts of memory. With 32 bits, it is possible to address 4 GB of memory. Linux on 32-bit systems has, until recently, been limited to substantially less memory than that, however, because of the way it sets up the virtual address space.
The kernel (on the x86 architecture, in the default configuration) splits the 4-GB virtual address space between user-space and the kernel; the same set of mappings is used in both contexts. A typical split dedicates 3 GB to user space, and 1 GB for kernel space.[1] The kernelâs code and data structures must fit into that space, but the biggest consumer of kernel address space is virtual mappings for physical memory. The kernel cannot directly manipulate memory that is not mapped into the kernelâs address space. The kernel, in other words, needs its own virtual address for any memory it must touch directly. Thus, for many years, the maximum amount of physical memory that could be handled by the kernel was the amount that could be mapped into the kernelâs portion of the virtual address space, minus the space needed for the kernel code itself. As a result, x86-based Linux systems could work with a maximum of a little under 1 GB of physical memory.
In response to commercial pressure to support more memory while not breaking 32-bit application and the systemâs compatibility, the processor manufacturers have added âaddress extensionâ features to their products. The result is that, in many cases, even 32-bit processors can address more than 4 GB of physical memory. The limitation on how much memory can be directly mapped with logical addresses remains, however. Only the lowest portion of memory (up to 1 or 2 GB, depending on the hardware and the kernel configuration) has logical addresses;[2] the rest (high memory) does not. Before accessing a specific high-memory page, the kernel must set up an explicit virtual mapping to make that page available in the kernelâs address space. Thus, many kernel data structures must be placed in low memory; high memory tends to be reserved for user-space process pages.
The term âhigh memoryâ can be confusing to some, especially since it has other meanings in the PC world. So, to make things clear, weâll define the terms here:
- Low memory
Memory for which logical addresses exist in kernel space. On almost every system you will likely encounter, all memory is low memory.
- High memory
Memory for which logical addresses do not exist, because it is beyond the address range set aside for kernel virtual addresses.
On i386 systems, the boundary between low and high memory is usually set at just under 1 GB, although that boundary can be changed at kernel configuration time. This boundary is not related in any way to the old 640 KB limit found on the original PC, and its placement is not dictated by the hardware. It is, instead, a limit set by the kernel itself as it splits the 32-bit address space between kernel and user space.
We will point out limitations on the use of high memory as we come to them in this chapter.
Historically, the kernel
has used logical
addresses to refer to pages of physical memory. The addition of high-memory support,
however, has exposed an obvious problem with that approachâlogical addresses are not
available for high memory. Therefore, kernel functions that deal with memory are
increasingly using pointers to struct
page (defined in <linux/mm.h>) instead. This data structure is used to keep track of
just about everything the kernel needs to know about physical memory; there is one
struct page for each physical page on the system.
Some of the fields of this structure include the following:
atomic_t count;The number of references there are to this page. When the count drops to
0, the page is returned to the free list.void *virtual;The kernel virtual address of the page, if it is mapped;
NULL, otherwise. Low-memory pages are always mapped; high-memory pages usually are not. This field does not appear on all architectures; it generally is compiled only where the kernel virtual address of a page cannot be easily calculated. If you want to look at this field, the proper method is to use the page_address macro, described below.unsigned long flags;A set of bit flags describing the status of the page. These include
PG_locked, which indicates that the page has been locked in memory, andPG_reserved, which prevents the memory management system from working with the page at all.
There is much more information within struct page,
but it is part of the deeper black magic of memory management and is not of concern to
driver writers.
The kernel maintains one or more arrays of struct
page entries that track all of the physical memory on the system. On some
systems, there is a single array called mem_map. On
some systems, however, the situation is more complicated.
Nonuniform
memory access (NUMA) systems and those with widely discontiguous physical memory may have
more than one memory map array, so code that is meant to be portable should avoid direct
access to the array whenever possible. Fortunately, it is usually quite easy to just work
with struct page pointers without worrying about where
they come from.
Some functions and macros are defined for translating between struct page pointers and virtual addresses:
struct page *virt_to_page(void *kaddr);This macro, defined in <asm/page.h>, takes a kernel logical address and returns its associated
struct pagepointer. Since it requires a logical address, it does not work with memory from vmalloc or high memory.struct page *pfn_to_page(int pfn);Returns the
struct pagepointer for the given page frame number. If necessary, it checks a page frame number for validity with pfn_valid before passing it to pfn_to_page.void *page_address(struct page *page);Returns the kernel virtual address of this page, if such an address exists. For high memory, that address exists only if the page has been mapped. This function is defined in <linux/mm.h>. In most situations, you want to use a version of kmap rather than page_address.
#include <linux/highmem.h>void *kmap(struct page *page);void kunmap(struct page *page);kmap returns a kernel virtual address for any page in the system. For low-memory pages, it just returns the logical address of the page; for high-memory pages, kmap creates a special mapping in a dedicated part of the kernel address space. Mappings created with kmap should always be freed with kunmap; a limited number of such mappings is available, so it is better not to hold on to them for too long. kmap calls maintain a counter, so if two or more functions both call kmap on the same page, the right thing happens. Note also that kmap can sleep if no mappings are available.
#include <linux/highmem.h>#include <asm/kmap_types.h>void *kmap_atomic(struct page *page, enum km_type type);void kunmap_atomic(void *addr, enum km_type type);kmap_atomic is a high-performance form of kmap. Each architecture maintains a small list of slots (dedicated page table entries) for atomic kmaps; a caller of kmap_atomic must tell the system which of those slots to use in the
typeargument. The only slots that make sense for drivers areKM_USER0andKM_USER1(for code running directly from a call from user space), andKM_IRQ0andKM_IRQ1(for interrupt handlers). Note that atomic kmaps must be handled atomically; your code cannot sleep while holding one. Note also that nothing in the kernel keeps two functions from trying to use the same slot and interfering with each other (although there is a unique set of slots for each CPU). In practice, contention for atomic kmap slots seems to not be a problem.
We see some uses of these functions when we get into the example code, later in this chapter and in subsequent chapters.
On any modern system, the processor must have a mechanism for translating virtual addresses into its corresponding physical addresses. This mechanism is called a page table; it is essentially a multilevel tree-structured array containing virtual-to-physical mappings and a few associated flags. The Linux kernel maintains a set of page tables even on architectures that do not use such tables directly.
A number of operations commonly performed by device drivers can involve manipulating page tables. Fortunately for the driver author, the 2.6 kernel has eliminated any need to work with page tables directly. As a result, we do not describe them in any detail; curious readers may want to have a look at Understanding The Linux Kernel by Daniel P. Bovet and Marco Cesati (OâReilly) for the full story.
The virtual memory area (VMA) is the kernel data structure used to manage distinct regions of a processâs address space. A VMA represents a homogeneous region in the virtual memory of a process: a contiguous range of virtual addresses that have the same permission flags and are backed up by the same object (a file, say, or swap space). It corresponds loosely to the concept of a âsegment,â although it is better described as âa memory object with its own properties.â The memory map of a process is made up of (at least) the following areas:
An area for the programâs executable code (often called text)
Multiple areas for data, including initialized data (that which has an explicitly assigned value at the beginning of execution), uninitialized data (BSS),[3] and the program stack
One area for each active memory mapping
The memory areas of a process can be seen by looking in /proc/ <pid/maps> (in which pid, of course, is replaced by a process ID). /proc/self is a special case of /proc/ pid, because it always refers to the current process. As an example, here are a couple of memory maps (to which we have added short comments in italics):
# cat /proc/1/maps
look at init
08048000-0804e000 r-xp 00000000 03:01 64652 /sbin/init text
0804e000-0804f000 rw-p 00006000 03:01 64652 /sbin/init data
0804f000-08053000 rwxp 00000000 00:00 0 zero-mapped BSS
40000000-40015000 r-xp 00000000 03:01 96278 /lib/ld-2.3.2.so text
40015000-40016000 rw-p 00014000 03:01 96278 /lib/ld-2.3.2.so data
40016000-40017000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 BSS for ld.so
42000000-4212e000 r-xp 00000000 03:01 80290 /lib/tls/libc-2.3.2.so text
4212e000-42131000 rw-p 0012e000 03:01 80290 /lib/tls/libc-2.3.2.so data
42131000-42133000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 BSS for libc
bffff000-c0000000 rwxp 00000000 00:00 0 Stack segment
ffffe000-fffff000 ---p 00000000 00:00 0 vsyscall page
# rsh wolf cat /proc/self/maps #### x86-64 (trimmed)
00400000-00405000 r-xp 00000000 03:01 1596291 /bin/cat text
00504000-00505000 rw-p 00004000 03:01 1596291 /bin/cat data
00505000-00526000 rwxp 00505000 00:00 0 bss
3252200000-3252214000 r-xp 00000000 03:01 1237890 /lib64/ld-2.3.3.so
3252300000-3252301000 r--p 00100000 03:01 1237890 /lib64/ld-2.3.3.so
3252301000-3252302000 rw-p 00101000 03:01 1237890 /lib64/ld-2.3.3.so
7fbfffe000-7fc0000000 rw-p 7fbfffe000 00:00 0 stack
ffffffffff600000-ffffffffffe00000 ---p 00000000 00:00 0 vsyscallThe fields in each line are:
start-end perm offset major:minor inode image
Each field in /proc/*/maps
(except the image name)
corresponds to a field in struct
vm_area_struct:
startendThe beginning and ending virtual addresses for this memory area.
permA bit mask with the memory areaâs read, write, and execute permissions. This field describes what the process is allowed to do with pages belonging to the area. The last character in the field is either
pfor âprivateâ orsfor âshared.âoffsetWhere the memory area begins in the file that it is mapped to. An offset of
0means that the beginning of the memory area corresponds to the beginning of the file.majorminorThe major and minor numbers of the device holding the file that has been mapped. Confusingly, for device mappings, the major and minor numbers refer to the disk partition holding the device special file that was opened by the user, and not the device itself.
inodeThe inode number of the mapped file.
imageThe name of the file (usually an executable image) that has been mapped.
When a user-space process calls mmap to map device memory into its address space, the system responds by creating a new VMA to represent that mapping. A driver that supports mmap (and, thus, that implements the mmap method) needs to help that process by completing the initialization of that VMA. The driver writer should, therefore, have at least a minimal understanding of VMAs in order to support mmap.
Letâs look at the most important fields in struct
vm_area_struct (defined in <linux/mm.h>). These fields may be used by device drivers in their
mmap
implementation. Note that the kernel maintains lists and trees of VMAs to optimize area
lookup, and several fields of vm_area_struct are used
to maintain this organization. Therefore, VMAs canât be created at will by a driver, or
the structures break. The main fields of VMAs are as follows (note the similarity
between these fields and the /proc output we just
saw):
unsigned long vm_start;unsigned long vm_end;The virtual address range covered by this VMA. These fields are the first two fields shown in /proc/*/maps.
struct file *vm_file;A pointer to the
struct filestructure associated with this area (if any).unsigned long vm_pgoff;The offset of the area in the file, in pages. When a file or device is mapped, this is the file position of the first page mapped in this area.
unsigned long vm_flags;A set of flags describing this area. The flags of the most interest to device driver writers are
VM_IOandVM_RESERVED.VM_IOmarks a VMA as being a memory-mapped I/O region. Among other things, theVM_IOflag prevents the region from being included in process core dumps.VM_RESERVEDtells the memory management system not to attempt to swap out this VMA; it should be set in most device mappings.struct vm_operations_struct *vm_ops;A set of functions that the kernel may invoke to operate on this memory area. Its presence indicates that the memory area is a kernel âobject,â like the
structfilewe have been using throughout the book.void *vm_private_data;A field that may be used by the driver to store its own information.
Like
struct vm_area_struct, the vm_operations_struct is defined in <linux/mm.h>; it includes the operations listed below. These
operations are the only ones needed to handle the processâs memory needs, and they are
listed in the order they are declared. Later in this chapter, some of these functions
are implemented.
void (*open)(struct vm_area_struct *vma);The open method is called by the kernel to allow the subsystem implementing the VMA to initialize the area. This method is invoked any time a new reference to the VMA is made (when a process forks, for example). The one exception happens when the VMA is first created by mmap; in this case, the driverâs mmap method is called instead.
void (*close)(struct vm_area_struct *vma);When an area is destroyed, the kernel calls its close operation. Note that thereâs no usage count associated with VMAs; the area is opened and closed exactly once by each process that uses it.
struct page *(*nopage)(struct vm_area_struct *vma, unsigned long address, int*type);When a process tries to access a page that belongs to a valid VMA, but that is currently not in memory, the nopage method is called (if it is defined) for the related area. The method returns the
struct pagepointer for the physical page after, perhaps, having read it in from secondary storage. If the nopage method isnât defined for the area, an empty page is allocated by the kernel.int (*populate)(struct vm_area_struct *vm, unsigned long address, unsignedlong len, pgprot_t prot, unsigned long pgoff, int nonblock);This method allows the kernel to âprefaultâ pages into memory before they are accessed by user space. There is generally no need for drivers to implement the populate method.
The final piece of the memory
management puzzle is the process memory map structure,
which holds all of the other data structures together. Each process in the system (with
the exception of a few kernel-space helper threads) has a struct
mm_struct (defined in <linux/sched.h>) that contains the processâs list of virtual memory
areas, page tables, and various other bits of memory management housekeeping information,
along with a semaphore (mmap_sem) and a spinlock
(page_table_lock). The pointer to this structure is
found in the task structure; in the rare cases where a driver needs to access it, the
usual way is to use current->mm. Note that the
memory management structure can be shared between processes; the Linux implementation of
threads works in this way, for example.
That concludes our overview of Linux memory management data structures. With that out of the way, we can now proceed to the implementation of the mmap system call.
Memory mapping is one of the most interesting features of modern Unix systems. As far as drivers are concerned, memory mapping can be implemented to provide user programs with direct access to device memory.
A definitive example of mmap usage can be seen by looking at a subset of the virtual memory areas for the X Window System server:
cat /proc/731/maps
000a0000-000c0000 rwxs 000a0000 03:01 282652 /dev/mem
000f0000-00100000 r-xs 000f0000 03:01 282652 /dev/mem
00400000-005c0000 r-xp 00000000 03:01 1366927 /usr/X11R6/bin/Xorg
006bf000-006f7000 rw-p 001bf000 03:01 1366927 /usr/X11R6/bin/Xorg
2a95828000-2a958a8000 rw-s fcc00000 03:01 282652 /dev/mem
2a958a8000-2a9d8a8000 rw-s e8000000 03:01 282652 /dev/mem
...The full list of the X serverâs VMAs is lengthy, but most of the entries are not of
interest here. We do see, however, four separate mappings of /dev/mem, which give some insight into how the X server works with the video
card. The first mapping is at a0000, which is the
standard location for video RAM in the 640-KB ISA hole. Further down, we see a large mapping
at e8000000, an address which is above the highest RAM
address on the system. This is a direct mapping of the
video memory
on the adapter.
These regions can also be seen in /proc/iomem:
000a0000-000bffff : Video RAM area 000c0000-000ccfff : Video ROM 000d1000-000d1fff : Adapter ROM 000f0000-000fffff : System ROM d7f00000-f7efffff : PCI Bus #01 e8000000-efffffff : 0000:01:00.0 fc700000-fccfffff : PCI Bus #01 fcc00000-fcc0ffff : 0000:01:00.0
Mapping a device means associating a range of user-space addresses to device memory. Whenever the program reads or writes in the assigned address range, it is actually accessing the device. In the X server example, using mmap allows quick and easy access to the video cardâs memory. For a performance-critical application like this, direct access makes a large difference.
As you might
suspect, not every device lends itself to the mmap abstraction; it
makes no sense, for instance, for serial ports and other stream-oriented devices. Another
limitation of mmap is that mapping is PAGE_SIZE grained. The kernel can manage virtual addresses only at the level of
page tables; therefore, the mapped area must be a multiple of PAGE_SIZE and must live in physical memory starting at an address that is a
multiple of PAGE_SIZE. The kernel forces size granularity
by making a region slightly bigger if its size isnât a multiple of the page size.
These limits are not a big constraint for drivers, because the program accessing the device is device dependent anyway. Since the program must know about how the device works, the programmer is not unduly bothered by the need to see to details like page alignment. A bigger constraint exists when ISA devices are used on some non-x86 platforms, because their hardware view of ISA may not be contiguous. For example, some Alpha computers see ISA memory as a scattered set of 8-bit, 16-bit, or 32-bit items, with no direct mapping. In such cases, you canât use mmap at all. The inability to perform direct mapping of ISA addresses to Alpha addresses is due to the incompatible data transfer specifications of the two systems. Whereas early Alpha processors could issue only 32-bit and 64-bit memory accesses, ISA can do only 8-bit and 16-bit transfers, and thereâs no way to transparently map one protocol onto the other.
There are sound advantages to using mmap when itâs feasible to do so. For instance, we have already looked at the X server, which transfers a lot of data to and from video memory; mapping the graphic display to user space dramatically improves the throughput, as opposed to an lseek/write implementation. Another typical example is a program controlling a PCI device. Most PCI peripherals map their control registers to a memory address, and a high-performance application might prefer to have direct access to the registers instead of repeatedly having to call ioctl to get its work done.
The mmap method is part of the file_operations structure and is invoked when the
mmap system call is issued. With mmap, the
kernel performs a good deal of work before the actual method is invoked, and, therefore, the
prototype of the method is quite different from that of the system call. This is unlike
calls such as ioctl and poll, where the kernel
does not do much before calling the method.
The system call is declared as follows (as described in the mmap(2) manual page):
mmap (caddr_t addr, size_t len, int prot, int flags, int fd, off_t offset)
On the other hand, the file operation is declared as:
int (*mmap) (struct file *filp, struct vm_area_struct *vma);
The filp argument in the method is the same as that
introduced in Chapter 3, while vma contains the information about the virtual address range
that is used to access the device. Therefore, much of the work has been done by the kernel;
to implement mmap, the driver only has to build suitable page tables
for the address range and, if necessary, replace vma->vm_ops with a new set of operations.
There are two ways of building the page tables: doing it all at once with a function
called remap_pfn_range or doing it a page at a time via
the nopage VMA method. Each method has its advantages and limitations.
We start with the âall at onceâ approach, which is simpler. From there, we add the
complications needed for a real-world implementation.
The job of building new page tables to map a range of physical addresses is handled by remap_pfn_range and io_remap_page_range, which have the following prototypes:
int remap_pfn_range(struct vm_area_struct *vma,
unsigned long virt_addr, unsigned long pfn,
unsigned long size, pgprot_t prot);
int io_remap_page_range(struct vm_area_struct *vma,
unsigned long virt_addr, unsigned long phys_addr,
unsigned long size, pgprot_t prot);The value returned by the function is the usual 0
or a negative error code. Letâs look at the exact meaning of the functionâs
arguments:
vmaThe virtual memory area into which the page range is being mapped.
virt_addrThe user virtual address where remapping should begin. The function builds page tables for the virtual address range between
virt_addrandvirt_addr+size.pfnThe page frame number corresponding to the physical address to which the virtual address should be mapped. The page frame number is simply the physical address right-shifted by
PAGE_SHIFTbits. For most uses, thevm_pgofffield of the VMA structure contains exactly the value you need. The function affects physical addresses from(pfn<<PAGE_SHIFT)to(pfn<<PAGE_SHIFT)+size.sizeThe dimension, in bytes, of the area being remapped.
protThe âprotectionâ requested for the new VMA. The driver can (and should) use the value found in
vma->vm_page_prot.
The
arguments to remap_pfn_range are fairly straightforward, and most of
them are already provided to you in the VMA when your mmap method is
called. You may be wondering why there are two functions, however. The first
(remap_pfn_range) is intended for situations where pfn refers to actual system RAM, while
io_remap_page_range should be used when phys_addr points to I/O memory. In practice, the two functions are identical
on every architecture except the SPARC, and you see remap_pfn_range
used in most situations. In the interest of writing portable drivers, however, you should
use the variant of remap_pfn_range that is suited to your particular
situation.
One other complication has to do with caching: usually, references to device memory should not be cached by the processor. Often the system BIOS sets things up properly, but it is also possible to disable caching of specific VMAs via the protection field. Unfortunately, disabling caching at this level is highly processor dependent. The curious reader may wish to look at the pgprot_noncached function from drivers/char/mem.c to see whatâs involved. We wonât discuss the topic further here.
If your driver needs to do a simple, linear mapping of device memory into a user address space, remap_pfn_range is almost all you really need to do the job. The following code is derived from drivers/char/mem.c and shows how this task is performed in a typical module called simple (Simple Implementation Mapping Pages with Little Enthusiasm):
static int simple_remap_mmap(struct file *filp, struct vm_area_struct *vma)
{
if (remap_pfn_range(vma, vma->vm_start, vm->vm_pgoff,
vma->vm_end - vma->vm_start,
vma->vm_page_prot))
return -EAGAIN;
vma->vm_ops = &simple_remap_vm_ops;
simple_vma_open(vma);
return 0;
}As you can see, remapping memory just a matter of calling remap_pfn_range to create the necessary page tables.
As we have seen, the
vm_area_struct structure contains a set of operations
that may be applied to the VMA.
Now we
look at providing those operations in a simple way. In particular, we provide
open and close operations for our VMA. These
operations are called whenever a process opens or closes the VMA; in particular, the
open method is invoked anytime a process forks and creates a new
reference to the VMA. The open and close VMA
methods are called in addition to the processing performed by the kernel, so they need not
reimplement any of the work done there. They exist as a way for drivers to do any
additional processing that they may require.
As it turns out, a simple driver such as simple need not do any extra processing in particular. So we have created open and close methods, which print a message to the system log informing the world that they have been called. Not particularly useful, but it does allow us to show how these methods can be provided, and see when they are invoked.
To this end, we override the default vma->vm_ops
with operations that call printk:
void simple_vma_open(struct vm_area_struct *vma)
{
printk(KERN_NOTICE "Simple VMA open, virt %lx, phys %lx\n",
vma->vm_start, vma->vm_pgoff << PAGE_SHIFT);
}
void simple_vma_close(struct vm_area_struct *vma)
{
printk(KERN_NOTICE "Simple VMA close.\n");
}
static struct vm_operations_struct simple_remap_vm_ops = {
.open = simple_vma_open,
.close = simple_vma_close,
};To make these operations active for a specific mapping, it is necessary to store a
pointer to simple_remap_vm_ops in the vm_ops field of the relevant VMA. This is usually done in the
mmap method. If you turn back to the
simple_remap_mmap example, you see these lines of code:
vma->vm_ops = &simple_remap_vm_ops; simple_vma_open(vma);
Note the explicit call to simple_vma_open. Since the open method is not invoked on the initial mmap, we must call it explicitly if we want it to run.
Although remap_pfn_range works well for many, if not most, driver mmap implementations, sometimes it is necessary to be a little more flexible. In such situations, an implementation using the nopage VMA method may be called for.
One situation in which the nopage approach is useful can be brought about by the mremap system call, which is used by applications to change the bounding addresses of a mapped region. As it happens, the kernel does not notify drivers directly when a mapped VMA is changed by mremap. If the VMA is reduced in size, the kernel can quietly flush out the unwanted pages without telling the driver. If, instead, the VMA is expanded, the driver eventually finds out by way of calls to nopage when mappings must be set up for the new pages, so there is no need to perform a separate notification. The nopage method, therefore, must be implemented if you want to support the mremap system call. Here, we show a simple implementation of nopage for the simple device.
The nopage method, remember, has the following prototype:
struct page *(*nopage)(struct vm_area_struct *vma,
unsigned long address, int *type);
When a user
process attempts to access a page in a VMA that is not present in memory, the associated
nopage function is called. The address parameter contains the virtual address that caused the fault, rounded
down to the beginning of the page. The nopage function must locate
and return the struct page pointer that refers to the
page the user wanted. This function must also take care to increment the usage count for
the page it returns by calling the get_page macro:
get_page(struct page *pageptr);
This step is necessary to keep the reference counts correct on the mapped pages. The
kernel maintains this count for every page; when the count goes to 0, the kernel knows that the page may be placed on the free
list. When a VMA is unmapped, the kernel decrements the usage count for every page in the
area. If your driver does not increment the count when adding a page to the area, the
usage count becomes 0 prematurely, and the integrity of
the system is compromised.
The nopage method should also store the type of fault in the
location pointed to by the type argumentâbut only if
that argument is not NULL. In device drivers, the
proper value for type will invariably be VM_FAULT_MINOR.
If you are using nopage, there is usually very little work to be done when mmap is called; our version looks like this:
static int simple_nopage_mmap(struct file *filp, struct vm_area_struct *vma)
{
unsigned long offset = vma->vm_pgoff << PAGE_SHIFT;
if (offset >= _ _pa(high_memory) || (filp->f_flags & O_SYNC))
vma->vm_flags |= VM_IO;
vma->vm_flags |= VM_RESERVED;
vma->vm_ops = &simple_nopage_vm_ops;
simple_vma_open(vma);
return 0;
}The main thing mmap has to do is to replace the default (NULL) vm_ops pointer with
our own operations. The nopage method then takes care of âremappingâ
one page at a time and returning the address of its struct
page structure. Because we are just implementing a
window onto physical memory here, the remapping step is simple: we only need to locate and
return a pointer to the struct
page for the desired address. Our
nopage method looks like the following:
struct page *simple_vma_nopage(struct vm_area_struct *vma,
unsigned long address, int *type)
{
struct page *pageptr;
unsigned long offset = vma->vm_pgoff << PAGE_SHIFT;
unsigned long physaddr = address - vma->vm_start + offset;
unsigned long pageframe = physaddr >> PAGE_SHIFT;
if (!pfn_valid(pageframe))
return NOPAGE_SIGBUS;
pageptr = pfn_to_page(pageframe);
get_page(pageptr);
if (type)
*type = VM_FAULT_MINOR;
return pageptr;
}Since, once again, we are simply mapping main memory here, the
nopage function need only find the correct struct
page for the faulting address and increment its
reference count. Therefore, the required sequence of events is to calculate the desired
physical address, and turn it into a page frame number by right-shifting it PAGE_SHIFT bits. Since user space can give us any address it
likes, we must ensure that we have a valid page frame; the pfn_valid
function does that for us. If the address is out of range, we return NOPAGE_SIGBUS, which causes a bus signal to be delivered to
the calling process. Otherwise, pfn_to_page gets the necessary
struct
page pointer; we can increment its reference count
(with a call to get_page) and return it.
The nopage method normally returns a pointer to a struct page. If, for some reason, a normal page cannot be
returned (e.g., the requested address is beyond the deviceâs memory region), NOPAGE_SIGBUS can be returned to signal the error; that is
what the simple code above does. nopage can also
return NOPAGE_OOM to indicate failures caused by
resource limitations.
Note that this implementation works for ISA memory regions but not for those on the
PCI bus. PCI memory is mapped above the highest system memory, and there are no entries in
the system memory map for those addresses. Because there is no struct page to return a pointer to, nopage cannot be
used in these situations; you must use remap_pfn_range
instead.
If the nopage method is left NULL, kernel code that handles page faults maps the zero page to the faulting
virtual address. The zero page is a copy-on-write page that reads
as 0 and that is used, for example, to map the BSS
segment. Any process referencing the zero page sees exactly that: a page filled with
zeroes. If the process writes to the page, it ends up modifying a private copy. Therefore,
if a process extends a mapped region by calling mremap, and the
driver hasnât implemented nopage, the process ends up with
zero-filled memory instead of a segmentation fault.
All the examples weâve seen so
far are reimplementations of /dev/mem; they remap
physical addresses into user space. The typical driver, however, wants to map only the
small address range that applies to its peripheral device, not all memory. In order to map
to user space only a subset of the whole memory range, the driver needs only to play with
the offsets. The following does the trick for a driver mapping a region of simple_region_size bytes, beginning at physical address
simple_region_start (which should be
page-aligned):
unsigned long off = vma->vm_pgoff << PAGE_SHIFT;
unsigned long physical = simple_region_start + off;
unsigned long vsize = vma->vm_end - vma->vm_start;
unsigned long psize = simple_region_size - off;
if (vsize > psize)
return -EINVAL; /* spans too high */
remap_pfn_range(vma, vma_>vm_start, physical, vsize, vma->vm_page_prot);In addition to calculating the offsets, this code introduces a check that reports an
error when the program tries to map more memory than is available in the I/O region of the
target device. In this code, psize is the physical I/O
size that is left after the offset has been specified, and vsize is the requested size of virtual memory; the function refuses to map
addresses that extend beyond the allowed memory range.
Note that the user process can always use mremap to extend its mapping, possibly past the end of the physical device area. If your driver fails to define a nopage method, it is never notified of this extension, and the additional area maps to the zero page. As a driver writer, you may well want to prevent this sort of behavior; mapping the zero page onto the end of your region is not an explicitly bad thing to do, but it is highly unlikely that the programmer wanted that to happen.
The simplest way to prevent extension of the mapping is to implement a simple nopage method that always causes a bus signal to be sent to the faulting process. Such a method would look like this:
struct page *simple_nopage(struct vm_area_struct *vma,
unsigned long address, int *type);
{ return NOPAGE_SIGBUS; /* send a SIGBUS */}As we have seen, the nopage method is called only when the
process dereferences an address that is within a known VMA but for which there is
currently no valid page table entry. If we have used remap_pfn_range
to map the entire device region, the nopage method shown here is
called only for references outside of that region. Thus, it can safely return NOPAGE_SIGBUS to signal an error. Of course, a more thorough
implementation of nopage could check to see whether the faulting
address is within the device area, and perform the remapping if that is the case. Once
again, however, nopage does not work with PCI memory areas, so
extension of PCI mappings is not possible.
An interesting limitation of remap_pfn_range is that it gives access only to reserved pages and physical addresses above the top of physical memory. In Linux, a page of physical addresses is marked as âreservedâ in the memory map to indicate that it is not available for memory management. On the PC, for example, the range between 640 KB and 1 MB is marked as reserved, as are the pages that host the kernel code itself. Reserved pages are locked in memory and are the only ones that can be safely mapped to user space; this limitation is a basic requirement for system stability.
Therefore, remap_pfn_range wonât allow you to remap conventional addresses, which include the ones you obtain by calling get_free_page. Instead, it maps in the zero page. Everything appears to work, with the exception that the process sees private, zero-filled pages rather than the remapped RAM that it was hoping for. Nonetheless, the function does everything that most hardware drivers need it to do, because it can remap high PCI buffers and ISA memory.
The limitations of remap_pfn_range can be seen by running mapper, one of the sample programs in misc-progs in the files provided on OâReillyâs FTP site. mapper is a simple tool that can be used to quickly test the mmap system call; it maps read-only parts of a file specified by command-line options and dumps the mapped region to standard output. The following session, for instance, shows that /dev/mem doesnât map the physical page located at address 64 KBâinstead, we see a page full of zeros (the host computer in this example is a PC, but the result would be the same on other platforms):
morgana.root# ./mapper /dev/mem 0x10000 0x1000 | od -Ax -t x1 mapped "/dev/mem" from 65536 to 69632 000000 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 * 001000
The inability of remap_pfn_range to deal with RAM suggests that memory-based devices like scull canât easily implement mmap, because its device memory is conventional RAM, not I/O memory. Fortunately, a relatively easy workaround is available to any driver that needs to map RAM into user space; it uses the nopage method that we have seen earlier.
The way to map real RAM to user
space is to use
vm_ops->nopage to deal with page faults one at a
time. A sample implementation is part of the scullp module,
introduced in Chapter 8.
scullp is a page-oriented char device. Because it is page oriented, it can implement mmap on its memory. The code implementing memory mapping uses some of the concepts introduced in Section 15.1.
Before examining the code, letâs look at the design choices that affect the mmap implementation in scullp :
scullp doesnât release device memory as long as the device is mapped. This is a matter of policy rather than a requirement, and it is different from the behavior of scull and similar devices, which are truncated to a length of
0when opened for writing. Refusing to free a mapped scullp device allows a process to overwrite regions actively mapped by another process, so you can test and see how processes and device memory interact. To avoid releasing a mapped device, the driver must keep a count of active mappings; thevmasfield in the device structure is used for this purpose.Memory mapping is performed only when the scullp
orderparameter (set at module load time) is0. The parameter controls how _ _get_free_pages is invoked (see Section 8.3). The zero-order limitation (which forces pages to be allocated one at a time, rather than in larger groups) is dictated by the internals of _ _get_free_pages, the allocation function used by scullp. To maximize allocation performance, the Linux kernel maintains a list of free pages for each allocation order, and only the reference count of the first page in a cluster is incremented by get_free_pages and decremented by free_pages. The mmap method is disabled for a scullp device if the allocation order is greater than zero, because nopage deals with single pages rather than clusters of pages. scullp simply does not know how to properly manage reference counts for pages that are part of higher-order allocations. (Return to Section 8.3.1 if you need a refresher on scullp and the memory allocation order value.)
The zero-order limitation is mostly intended to keep the code simple. It is possible to correctly implement mmap for multipage allocations by playing with the usage count of the pages, but it would only add to the complexity of the example without introducing any interesting information.
Code that is intended to map RAM according to the rules just outlined needs to implement the open, close, and nopage VMA methods; it also needs to access the memory map to adjust the page usage counts.
This implementation of scullp_mmap is very short, because it relies on the nopage function to do all the interesting work:
int scullp_mmap(struct file *filp, struct vm_area_struct *vma)
{
struct inode *inode = filp->f_dentry->d_inode;
/* refuse to map if order is not 0 */
if (scullp_devices[iminor(inode)].order)
return -ENODEV;
/* don't do anything here: "nopage" will fill the holes */
vma->vm_ops = &scullp_vm_ops;
vma->vm_flags |= VM_RESERVED;
vma->vm_private_data = filp->private_data;
scullp_vma_open(vma);
return 0;
}The purpose of the if statement is to avoid
mapping devices whose allocation order is not 0.
scullpâs operations are stored in the vm_ops field, and a pointer to the device structure is stashed in the
vm_private_data field. At the end, vm_ops->open is called to update the count of active
mappings for the device.
open and close simply keep track of the mapping count and are defined as follows:
void scullp_vma_open(struct vm_area_struct *vma)
{
struct scullp_dev *dev = vma->vm_private_data;
dev->vmas++;
}
void scullp_vma_close(struct vm_area_struct *vma)
{
struct scullp_dev *dev = vma->vm_private_data;
dev->vmas--;
}Most of the work is then performed by nopage. In the
scullp implementation, the address parameter to nopage is used to calculate an
offset into the device; the offset is then used to look up the correct page in the
scullp memory tree:
struct page *scullp_vma_nopage(struct vm_area_struct *vma,
unsigned long address, int *type)
{
unsigned long offset;
struct scullp_dev *ptr, *dev = vma->vm_private_data;
struct page *page = NOPAGE_SIGBUS;
void *pageptr = NULL; /* default to "missing" */
down(&dev->sem);
offset = (address - vma->vm_start) + (vma->vm_pgoff << PAGE_SHIFT);
if (offset >= dev->size) goto out; /* out of range */
/*
* Now retrieve the scullp device from the list,then the page.
* If the device has holes, the process receives a SIGBUS when
* accessing the hole.
*/
offset >>= PAGE_SHIFT; /* offset is a number of pages */
for (ptr = dev; ptr && offset >= dev->qset;) {
ptr = ptr->next;
offset -= dev->qset;
}
if (ptr && ptr->data) pageptr = ptr->data[offset];
if (!pageptr) goto out; /* hole or end-of-file */
page = virt_to_page(pageptr);
/* got it, now increment the count */
get_page(page);
if (type)
*type = VM_FAULT_MINOR;
out:
up(&dev->sem);
return page;
}scullp uses memory obtained with
get_free_pages. That memory is addressed using logical addresses,
so all scullp_nopage has to do to get a struct
page pointer is to call
virt_to_page.
The scullp device now works as expected, as you can see in this sample output from the mapper utility. Here, we send a directory listing of /dev (which is long) to the scullp device and then use the mapper utility to look at pieces of that listing with mmap:
morgana%ls -l /dev > /dev/scullpmorgana%./mapper /dev/scullp 0 140mapped "/dev/scullp" from 0 (0x00000000) to 140 (0x0000008c) total 232 crw------- 1 root root 10, 10 Sep 15 07:40 adbmouse crw-r--r-- 1 root root 10, 175 Sep 15 07:40 agpgart morgana%./mapper /dev/scullp 8192 200mapped "/dev/scullp" from 8192 (0x00002000) to 8392 (0x000020c8) d0h1494 brw-rw---- 1 root floppy 2, 92 Sep 15 07:40 fd0h1660 brw-rw---- 1 root floppy 2, 20 Sep 15 07:40 fd0h360 brw-rw---- 1 root floppy 2, 12 Sep 15 07:40 fd0H360
Although itâs rarely necessary, itâs interesting to see how a driver can map a kernel virtual address to user space using mmap. A true kernel virtual address, remember, is an address returned by a function such as vmallocâthat is, a virtual address mapped in the kernel page tables. The code in this section is taken from scullv, which is the module that works like scullp but allocates its storage through vmalloc.
Most of the scullv implementation is like the one weâve just seen
for scullp, except that there is no need to check the order parameter that controls memory allocation. The reason
for this is that vmalloc allocates its pages one at a time, because
single-page allocations are far more likely to succeed than multipage allocations.
Therefore, the allocation order problem doesnât apply to vmalloced
space.
Beyond that, there is only one difference between the nopage
implementations used by scullp and scullv.
Remember that scullp, once it found the page of interest, would
obtain the corresponding struct
page pointer with virt_to_page.
That function does not work with kernel virtual addresses, however. Instead, you must use
vmalloc_to_page. So the final part of the
scullv version of nopage looks like:
/*
* After scullv lookup, "page" is now the address of the page
* needed by the current process. Since it's a vmalloc address,
* turn it into a struct page.
*/
page = vmalloc_to_page(pageptr);
/* got it, now increment the count */
get_page(page);
if (type)
*type = VM_FAULT_MINOR;
out:
up(&dev->sem);
return page;Based on this discussion, you might also want to map addresses returned by ioremap to user space. That would be a mistake, however; addresses from ioremap are special and cannot be treated like normal kernel virtual addresses. Instead, you should use remap_pfn_range to remap I/O memory areas into user space.
Most I/O operations are buffered through the kernel. The use of a kernel-space buffer allows a degree of separation between user space and the actual device; this separation can make programming easier and can also yield performance benefits in many situations. There are cases, however, where it can be beneficial to perform I/O directly to or from a user-space buffer. If the amount of data being transferred is large, transferring data directly without an extra copy through kernel space can speed things up.
One example of direct I/O use in the 2.6 kernel is the SCSI tape driver. Streaming tapes can pass a lot of data through the system, and tape transfers are usually record-oriented, so there is little benefit to buffering data in the kernel. So, when the conditions are right (the user-space buffer is page-aligned, for example), the SCSI tape driver performs its I/O without copying the data.
That said, it is important to recognize that direct I/O does not always provide the performance boost that one might expect. The overhead of setting up direct I/O (which involves faulting in and pinning down the relevant user pages) can be significant, and the benefits of buffered I/O are lost. For example, the use of direct I/O requires that the write system call operate synchronously; otherwise the application does not know when it can reuse its I/O buffer. Stopping the application until each write completes can slow things down, which is why applications that use direct I/O often use asynchronous I/O operations as well.
The real moral of the story, in any case, is that implementing direct I/O in a char driver is usually unnecessary and can be hurtful. You should take that step only if you are sure that the overhead of buffered I/O is truly slowing things down. Note also that block and network drivers need not worry about implementing direct I/O at all; in both cases, higher-level code in the kernel sets up and makes use of direct I/O when it is indicated, and driver-level code need not even know that direct I/O is being performed.
The key to implementing direct I/O in the 2.6 kernel is a function called get_user_pages , which is declared in <linux/mm.h> with the following prototype:
int get_user_pages(struct task_struct *tsk,
struct mm_struct *mm,
unsigned long start,
int len,
int write,
int force,
struct page **pages,
struct vm_area_struct **vmas);This function has several arguments:
tskA pointer to the task performing the I/O; its main purpose is to tell the kernel who should be charged for any page faults incurred while setting up the buffer. This argument is almost always passed as
current.mmA pointer to the memory management structure describing the address space to be mapped. The
mm_structstructure is the piece that ties together all of the parts (VMAs) of a processâs virtual address space. For driver use, this argument should always becurrent->mm.startlenstartis the (page-aligned) address of the user-space buffer, andlenis the length of the buffer in pages.writeforceIf
writeis nonzero, the pages are mapped for write access (implying, of course, that user space is performing a read operation). Theforceflag tells get_user_pages to override the protections on the given pages to provide the requested access; drivers should always pass0here.pagesvmasOutput parameters. Upon successful completion,
pagescontain a list of pointers to thestruct pagestructures describing the user-space buffer, andvmascontains pointers to the associated VMAs. The parameters should, obviously, point to arrays capable of holding at leastlenpointers. Either parameter can beNULL, but you need, at least, thestructpagepointers to actually operate on the buffer.
get_user_pages is a low-level memory management function, with a suitably complex interface. It also requires that the mmap reader/writer semaphore for the address space be obtained in read mode before the call. As a result, calls to get_user_pages usually look something like:
down_read(¤t->mm->mmap_sem); result = get_user_pages(current, current->mm, ...); up_read(¤t->mm->mmap_sem);
The return value is the number of pages actually mapped, which could be fewer than the number requested (but greater than zero).
Upon successful completion, the caller has a pages
array pointing to the user-space buffer, which is locked into memory. To operate on the buffer
directly, the kernel-space code must turn each struct
page pointer into a kernel virtual address with
kmap or kmap_atomic. Usually, however, devices
for which direct I/O is justified are using DMA operations, so your driver will probably
want to create a scatter/gather list from the array of struct
page pointers. We discuss how to do this in the section,
Section 15.4.4.7.
Once your direct I/O operation is complete, you must release the user pages. Before doing so, however, you must inform the kernel if you changed the contents of those pages. Otherwise, the kernel may think that the pages are âclean,â meaning that they match a copy found on the swap device, and free them without writing them out to backing store. So, if you have changed the pages (in response to a user-space read request), you must mark each affected page dirty with a call to:
void SetPageDirty(struct page *page);
(This macro is defined in <linux/page-flags.h>). Most code that performs this operation checks first to ensure that the page is not in the reserved part of the memory map, which is never swapped out. Therefore, the code usually looks like:
if (! PageReserved(page))
SetPageDirty(page);Since user-space memory is not normally marked reserved, this check should not strictly be necessary, but when you are getting your hands dirty deep within the memory management subsystem, it is best to be thorough and careful.
Regardless of whether the pages have been changed, they must be freed from the page cache, or they stay there forever. The call to use is:
void page_cache_release(struct page *page);
This call should, of course, be made after the page has been marked dirty, if need be.
One of the new features added to the 2.6 kernel was the asynchronous I/O capability. Asynchronous I/O allows user space to initiate operations without waiting for their completion; thus, an application can do other processing while its I/O is in flight. A complex, high-performance application can also use asynchronous I/O to have multiple operations going at the same time.
The implementation of asynchronous I/O is optional, and very few driver authors bother; most devices do not benefit from this capability. As we will see in the coming chapters, block and network drivers are fully asynchronous at all times, so only char drivers are candidates for explicit asynchronous I/O support. A char device can benefit from this support if there are good reasons for having more than one I/O operation outstanding at any given time. One good example is streaming tape drives, where the drive can stall and slow down significantly if I/O operations do not arrive quickly enough. An application trying to get the best performance out of a streaming drive could use asynchronous I/O to have multiple operations ready to go at any given time.
For the rare driver author who needs to implement asynchronous I/O, we present a quick overview of how it works. We cover asynchronous I/O in this chapter, because its implementation almost always involves direct I/O operations as well (if you are buffering data in the kernel, you can usually implement asynchronous behavior without imposing the added complexity on user space).
Drivers supporting asynchronous I/O should include <linux/aio.h>. There are three file_operations methods for the implementation of asynchronous I/O:
ssize_t (*aio_read) (struct kiocb *iocb, char *buffer,
size_t count, loff_t offset);
ssize_t (*aio_write) (struct kiocb *iocb, const char *buffer,
size_t count, loff_t offset);
int (*aio_fsync) (struct kiocb *iocb, int datasync);The aio_fsync
operation is only of interest to filesystem code, so we do not discuss it further here.
The other two, aio_read and aio_write, look very
much like the regular read and write methods but
with a couple of exceptions. One is that the offset
parameter is passed by value; asynchronous operations never change the file position, so
there is no reason to pass a pointer to it. These methods also take the iocb (âI/O control blockâ) parameter, which we get to in a
moment.
The purpose of the aio_read and aio_write methods is to initiate a read or write operation that may or may not be complete by the time they return. If it is possible to complete the operation immediately, the method should do so and return the usual status: the number of bytes transferred or a negative error code. Thus, if your driver has a read method called my_read, the following aio_read method is entirely correct (though rather pointless):
static ssize_t my_aio_read(struct kiocb *iocb, char *buffer,
ssize_t count, loff_t offset)
{
return my_read(iocb->ki_filp, buffer, count, &offset);
}Note that the struct
file pointer is found in the ki_filp field of the kiocb
structure.
If you support asynchronous I/O, you must be aware of the fact that the kernel can, on occasion, create âsynchronous IOCBs.â These are, essentially, asynchronous operations that must actually be executed synchronously. One may well wonder why things are done this way, but itâs best to just do what the kernel asks. Synchronous operations are marked in the IOCB; your driver should query that status with:
int is_sync_kiocb(struct kiocb *iocb);
If this function returns a nonzero value, your driver must execute the operation synchronously.
In the end, however, the point of all this structure is to enable asynchronous
operations. If your driver is able to initiate the operation (or, simply, to queue it
until some future time when it can be executed), it must do two things: remember
everything it needs to know about the operation, and return -EIOCBQUEUED to the caller. Remembering the operation information includes
arranging access to the user-space buffer; once you return, you will not again have the
opportunity to access that buffer while running in the context of the calling process. In
general, that means you will likely have to set up a direct kernel mapping (with
get_user_pages) or a DMA mapping. The -EIOCBQUEUED error code indicates that the operation is not yet complete, and
its final status will be posted later.
When âlaterâ comes, your driver must inform the kernel that the operation has completed. That is done with a call to aio_complete:
int aio_complete(struct kiocb *iocb, long res, long res2);
Here, iocb is the same IOCB that was initially
passed to you, and res is the usual result status for
the operation. res2 is a second result code that will
be returned to user space; most asynchronous I/O implementations pass res2 as 0. Once you call
aio_complete, you should not touch the IOCB or user buffer
again.
The page-oriented scullp driver in the example source implements asynchronous I/O. The implementation is simple, but it is enough to show how asynchronous operations should be structured.
The aio_read and aio_write methods donât actually do much:
static ssize_t scullp_aio_read(struct kiocb *iocb, char *buf, size_t count,
loff_t pos)
{
return scullp_defer_op(0, iocb, buf, count, pos);
}
static ssize_t scullp_aio_write(struct kiocb *iocb, const char *buf,
size_t count, loff_t pos)
{
return scullp_defer_op(1, iocb, (char *) buf, count, pos);
}These methods simply call a common function:
struct async_work {
struct kiocb *iocb;
int result;
struct work_struct work;
};
static int scullp_defer_op(int write, struct kiocb *iocb, char *buf,
size_t count, loff_t pos)
{
struct async_work *stuff;
int result;
/* Copy now while we can access the buffer */
if (write)
result = scullp_write(iocb->ki_filp, buf, count, &pos);
else
result = scullp_read(iocb->ki_filp, buf, count, &pos);
/* If this is a synchronous IOCB, we return our status now. */
if (is_sync_kiocb(iocb))
return result;
/* Otherwise defer the completion for a few milliseconds. */
stuff = kmalloc (sizeof (*stuff), GFP_KERNEL);
if (stuff = = NULL)
return result; /* No memory, just complete now */
stuff->iocb = iocb;
stuff->result = result;
INIT_WORK(&stuff->work, scullp_do_deferred_op, stuff);
schedule_delayed_work(&stuff->work, HZ/100);
return -EIOCBQUEUED;
}A more complete implementation would use get_user_pages to map
the user buffer into kernel space. We chose to keep life simple by just copying over the
data at the outset. Then a call is made to is_sync_kiocb to see if
this operation must be completed synchronously; if so, the result status is returned,
and we are done. Otherwise we remember the relevant information in a little structure,
arrange for âcompletionâ via a workqueue, and return -EIOCBQUEUED. At this point, control returns to user space.
Later on, the workqueue executes our completion function:
static void scullp_do_deferred_op(void *p)
{
struct async_work *stuff = (struct async_work *) p;
aio_complete(stuff->iocb, stuff->result, 0);
kfree(stuff);
}Here, it is simply a matter of calling aio_complete with our saved information. A real driverâs asynchronous I/O implementation is somewhat more complicated, of course, but it follows this sort of structure.
Direct memory access, or DMA , is the advanced topic that completes our overview of memory issues. DMA is the hardware mechanism that allows peripheral components to transfer their I/O data directly to and from main memory without the need to involve the system processor. Use of this mechanism can greatly increase throughput to and from a device, because a great deal of computational overhead is eliminated.
Before introducing the programming details, letâs review how a DMA transfer takes place, considering only input transfers to simplify the discussion.
Data transfer can be triggered in two ways: either the software asks for data (via a function such as read) or the hardware asynchronously pushes data to the system.
In the first case, the steps involved can be summarized as follows:
When a process calls read, the driver method allocates a DMA buffer and instructs the hardware to transfer its data into that buffer. The process is put to sleep.
The hardware writes data to the DMA buffer and raises an interrupt when itâs done.
The interrupt handler gets the input data, acknowledges the interrupt, and awakens the process, which is now able to read data.
The second case comes about when DMA is used asynchronously. This happens, for example, with data acquisition devices that go on pushing data even if nobody is reading them. In this case, the driver should maintain a buffer so that a subsequent read call will return all the accumulated data to user space. The steps involved in this kind of transfer are slightly different:
The hardware raises an interrupt to announce that new data has arrived.
The interrupt handler allocates a buffer and tells the hardware where to transfer its data.
The peripheral device writes the data to the buffer and raises another interrupt when itâs done.
The handler dispatches the new data, wakes any relevant process, and takes care of housekeeping.
A variant of the asynchronous approach is often seen with network cards. These cards often expect to see a circular buffer (often called a DMA ring buffer) established in memory shared with the processor; each incoming packet is placed in the next available buffer in the ring, and an interrupt is signaled. The driver then passes the network packets to the rest of the kernel and places a new DMA buffer in the ring.
The processing steps in all of these cases emphasize that efficient DMA handling relies on interrupt reporting. While it is possible to implement DMA with a polling driver, it wouldnât make sense, because a polling driver would waste the performance benefits that DMA offers over the easier processor-driven I/O.[4]
Another relevant item introduced here is the DMA buffer. DMA requires device drivers to allocate one or more special buffers suited to DMA. Note that many drivers allocate their buffers at initialization time and use them until shutdownâthe word allocate in the previous lists, therefore, means âget hold of a previously allocated buffer.â
This section covers the allocation of DMA buffers at a low level; we introduce a higher-level interface shortly, but it is still a good idea to understand the material presented here.
The main issue that arrises with DMA buffers is that, when they are bigger than one page, they must occupy contiguous pages in physical memory because the device transfers data using the ISA or PCI system bus, both of which carry physical addresses. Itâs interesting to note that this constraint doesnât apply to the SBus (see Section 12.5), which uses virtual addresses on the peripheral bus. Some architectures can also use virtual addresses on the PCI bus, but a portable driver cannot count on that capability.
Although DMA buffers can be allocated either at system boot or at runtime, modules can allocate their buffers only at runtime. Driver writers must take care to allocate the right kind of memory when it is used for DMA operations; not all memory zones are suitable. In particular, high memory may not work for DMA on some systems and with some devicesâthe peripherals simply cannot work with addresses that high.
Most devices on modern buses can handle 32-bit addresses, meaning that normal memory allocations work just fine for them. Some PCI devices, however, fail to implement the full PCI standard and cannot work with 32-bit addresses. And ISA devices, of course, are limited to 24-bit addresses only.
For devices with this kind of limitation, memory should be allocated from the DMA zone
by adding the GFP_DMA flag to the
kmalloc or get_free_pages call. When this flag
is present, only memory that can be addressed with 24 bits is allocated. Alternatively,
you can use the generic DMA layer (which we discuss shortly) to allocate buffers that work
around your deviceâs limitations.
We
have seen how get_free_pages can allocate up to a few megabytes (as
order can range up to MAX_ORDER, currently 11), but
high-order requests are prone to fail even when the requested buffer is far less than
128 KB, because system memory becomes fragmented over time.[5]
When the kernel cannot return the requested amount of memory or when you need more
than 128 KB (a common requirement for PCI frame grabbers, for example), an alternative
to returning -ENOMEM is to allocate memory at boot
time or reserve the top of physical RAM for your buffer. We described allocation at boot
time in Section 8.6, but it is not
available to modules. Reserving the top of RAM is accomplished by passing a mem= argument to the kernel at boot time. For example, if
you have 256 MB, the argument mem=255M keeps the
kernel from using the top megabyte. Your module could later use the following code to
gain access to such memory:
dmabuf = ioremap (0xFF00000 /* 255M */, 0x100000 /* 1M */);
The allocator, part of the sample code accompanying the book, offers a simple API to probe and manage such reserved RAM and has been used successfully on several architectures. However, this trick doesnât work when you have an high-memory system (i.e., one with more physical memory than could fit in the CPU address space).
Another option, of course, is to allocate your buffer with the GFP_NOFAIL allocation flag. This approach does, however,
severely stress the memory management subsystem, and it runs the risk of locking up the
system altogether; it is best avoided unless there is truly no other way.
If you are going to such lengths to allocate a large DMA buffer, however, it is worth putting some thought into alternatives. If your device can do scatter/gather I/O, you can allocate your buffer in smaller pieces and let the device do the rest. Scatter/gather I/O can also be used when performing direct I/O into user space, which may well be the best solution when a truly huge buffer is required.
A device driver using DMA has to talk to hardware connected to the interface bus, which uses physical addresses, whereas program code uses virtual addresses.
As a matter of fact, the situation is slightly more complicated than that. DMA-based hardware uses bus, rather than physical, addresses. Although ISA and PCI bus addresses are simply physical addresses on the PC, this is not true for every platform. Sometimes the interface bus is connected through bridge circuitry that maps I/O addresses to different physical addresses. Some systems even have a page-mapping scheme that can make arbitrary pages appear contiguous to the peripheral bus.
At the lowest level (again, weâll look at a higher-level solution shortly), the Linux kernel provides a portable solution by exporting the following functions, defined in <asm/io.h>. The use of these functions is strongly discouraged, because they work properly only on systems with a very simple I/O architecture; nonetheless, you may encounter them when working with kernel code.
unsigned long virt_to_bus(volatile void *address); void *bus_to_virt(unsigned long address);
These functions perform a simple conversion between kernel logical addresses and bus addresses. They do not work in any situation where an I/O memory management unit must be programmed or where bounce buffers must be used. The right way of performing this conversion is with the generic DMA layer, so we now move on to that topic.
DMA operations, in the end, come down to allocating a buffer and passing bus addresses to your device. However, the task of writing portable drivers that perform DMA safely and correctly on all architectures is harder than one might think. Different systems have different ideas of how cache coherency should work; if you do not handle this issue correctly, your driver may corrupt memory. Some systems have complicated bus hardware that can make the DMA task easierâor harder. And not all systems can perform DMA out of all parts of memory. Fortunately, the kernel provides a bus- and architecture-independent DMA layer that hides most of these issues from the driver author. We strongly encourage you to use this layer for DMA operations in any driver you write.
Many of the functions below require a pointer to a struct
device. This structure is the low-level representation of a device within the
Linux device model. It is not something that drivers often have to work with directly, but
you do need it when using the generic DMA layer. Usually, you can find this structure
buried inside the bus specific that describes your device. For example, it can be found as
the dev field in struct
pci_device or struct usb_device. The
device structure is covered in detail in Chapter 14.
Drivers that use the following functions should include <linux/dma-mapping.h>.
The first question that must be answered before attempting DMA is whether the given device is capable of such an operation on the current host. Many devices are limited in the range of memory they can address, for a number of reasons. By default, the kernel assumes that your device can perform DMA to any 32-bit address. If this is not the case, you should inform the kernel of that fact with a call to:
int dma_set_mask(struct device *dev, u64 mask);
The mask should show the bits that your device
can address; if it is limited to 24 bits, for example, you would pass mask as 0x0FFFFFF. The
return value is nonzero if DMA is possible with the given mask; if dma_set_mask returns 0, you are not able to use DMA operations with this device. Thus, the
initialization code in a driver for a device limited to 24-bit DMA operations might look
like:
if (dma_set_mask (dev, 0xffffff))
card->use_dma = 1;
else {
card->use_dma = 0; /* We'll have to live without DMA */
printk (KERN_WARN, "mydev: DMA not supported\n");
}Again, if your device supports normal, 32-bit DMA operations, there is no need to call dma_set_mask.
A DMA mapping is a combination of allocating a DMA buffer and generating an address for that buffer that is accessible by the device. It is tempting to get that address with a simple call to virt_to_bus, but there are strong reasons for avoiding that approach. The first of those is that reasonable hardware comes with an IOMMU that provides a set of mapping registers for the bus. The IOMMU can arrange for any physical memory to appear within the address range accessible by the device, and it can cause physically scattered buffers to look contiguous to the device. Making use of the IOMMU requires using the generic DMA layer; virt_to_bus is not up to the task.
Note that not all architectures have an IOMMU; in particular, the popular x86 platform has no IOMMU support. A properly written driver need not be aware of the I/O support hardware it is running over, however.
Setting up a useful address for the device may also, in some cases, require the establishment of a bounce buffer. Bounce buffers are created when a driver attempts to perform DMA on an address that is not reachable by the peripheral deviceâa high-memory address, for example. Data is then copied to and from the bounce buffer as needed. Needless to say, use of bounce buffers can slow things down, but sometimes there is no alternative.
DMA mappings must also address the issue of cache coherency. Remember that modern processors keep copies of recently accessed memory areas in a fast, local cache; without this cache, reasonable performance is not possible. If your device changes an area of main memory, it is imperative that any processor caches covering that area be invalidated; otherwise the processor may work with an incorrect image of main memory, and data corruption results. Similarly, when your device uses DMA to read data from main memory, any changes to that memory residing in processor caches must be flushed out first. These cache coherency issues can create no end of obscure and difficult-to-find bugs if the programmer is not careful. Some architectures manage cache coherency in the hardware, but others require software support. The generic DMA layer goes to great lengths to ensure that things work correctly on all architectures, but, as we will see, proper behavior requires adherence to a small set of rules.
The DMA mapping sets up a new type, dma_addr_t,
to represent bus addresses. Variables of type dma_addr_t should be treated as opaque by the driver; the only allowable
operations are to pass them to the DMA support routines and to the device itself. As a
bus address, dma_addr_t may lead to unexpected
problems if used directly by the CPU.
The PCI code distinguishes between two types of DMA mappings, depending on how long the DMA buffer is expected to stay around:
- Coherent DMA mappings
These mappings usually exist for the life of the driver. A coherent buffer must be simultaneously available to both the CPU and the peripheral (other types of mappings, as we will see later, can be available only to one or the other at any given time). As a result, coherent mappings must live in cache-coherent memory. Coherent mappings can be expensive to set up and use.
- Streaming DMA mappings
Streaming mappings are usually set up for a single operation. Some architectures allow for significant optimizations when streaming mappings are used, as we see, but these mappings also are subject to a stricter set of rules in how they may be accessed. The kernel developers recommend the use of streaming mappings over coherent mappings whenever possible. There are two reasons for this recommendation. The first is that, on systems that support mapping registers, each DMA mapping uses one or more of them on the bus. Coherent mappings, which have a long lifetime, can monopolize these registers for a long time, even when they are not being used. The other reason is that, on some hardware, streaming mappings can be optimized in ways that are not available to coherent mappings.
The two mapping types must be manipulated in different ways; itâs time to look at the details.
A driver can set up a coherent mapping with a call to dma_alloc_coherent:
void *dma_alloc_coherent(struct device *dev, size_t size,
dma_addr_t *dma_handle, int flag);This function handles both the allocation and the mapping of the buffer. The first
two arguments are the device structure and the size of the buffer needed. The function
returns the result of the DMA mapping in two places. The return value from the function
is a kernel virtual address for the buffer, which may be used by the driver; the
associated bus address, meanwhile, is returned in dma_handle. Allocation is handled in this function so that the buffer is
placed in a location that works with DMA; usually the memory is just allocated with
get_free_pages (but note that the size is in bytes, rather than
an order value). The flag argument is the usual
GFP_ value describing how the memory is to be
allocated; it should usually be GFP_KERNEL (usually)
or GFP_ATOMIC (when running in atomic
context).
When the buffer is no longer needed (usually at module unload time), it should be returned to the system with dma_free_coherent:
void dma_free_coherent(struct device *dev, size_t size,
void *vaddr, dma_addr_t dma_handle);Note that this function, like many of the generic DMA functions, requires that all of the size, CPU address, and bus address arguments be provided.
A DMA pool is an allocation mechanism for small, coherent DMA mappings. Mappings obtained from dma_alloc_coherent may have a minimum size of one page. If your device needs smaller DMA areas than that, you should probably be using a DMA pool. DMA pools are also useful in situations where you may be tempted to perform DMA to small areas embedded within a larger structure. Some very obscure driver bugs have been traced down to cache coherency problems with structure fields adjacent to small DMA areas. To avoid this problem, you should always allocate areas for DMA operations explicitly, away from other, non-DMA data structures.
The DMA pool functions are defined in <linux/dmapool.h>.
A DMA pool must be created before use with a call to:
struct dma_pool *dma_pool_create(const char *name, struct device *dev,
size_t size, size_t align,
size_t allocation);Here, name is a name for the pool, dev is your device structure, size is the size of the buffers to be allocated from this pool, align is the required hardware alignment for allocations
from the pool (expressed in bytes), and allocation
is, if nonzero, a memory boundary that allocations should not exceed. If allocation is passed as 4096, for example, the buffers
allocated from this pool do not cross 4-KB boundaries.
When you are done with a pool, it can be freed with:
void dma_pool_destroy(struct dma_pool *pool);
You should return all allocations to the pool before destroying it.
Allocations are handled with dma_pool_alloc:
void *dma_pool_alloc(struct dma_pool *pool, int mem_flags,
dma_addr_t *handle);For this call, mem_flags is the usual set of
GFP_ allocation flags. If all goes well, a region
of memory (of the size specified when the pool was created) is allocated and returned.
As with dma_alloc_coherent, the address of the resulting DMA buffer
is returned as a kernel virtual address and stored in handle as a bus address.
Unneeded buffers should be returned to the pool with:
void dma_pool_free(struct dma_pool *pool, void *vaddr, dma_addr_t addr);
Streaming mappings have a more complicated interface than the coherent variety, for a number of reasons. These mappings expect to work with a buffer that has already been allocated by the driver and, therefore, have to deal with addresses that they did not choose. On some architectures, streaming mappings can also have multiple, discontiguous pages and multipart âscatter/gatherâ buffers. For all of these reasons, streaming mappings have their own set of mapping functions.
When setting up a streaming mapping, you must tell the kernel in which direction the
data is moving. Some symbols (of type enum
dma_data_direction) have been defined for this
purpose:
DMA_TO_DEVICEDMA_FROM_DEVICEThese two symbols should be reasonably self-explanatory. If data is being sent to the device (in response, perhaps, to a write system call),
DMA_TO_DEVICEshould be used; data going to the CPU, instead, is marked withDMA_FROM_DEVICE.DMA_BIDIRECTIONALIf data can move in either direction, use
DMA_BIDIRECTIONAL.DMA_NONEThis symbol is provided only as a debugging aid. Attempts to use buffers with this âdirectionâ cause a kernel panic.
It may be tempting to just pick DMA_BIDIRECTIONAL
at all times, but driver authors should resist that temptation. On some architectures,
there is a performance penalty to pay for that choice.
When you have a single buffer to transfer, map it with dma_map_single:
dma_addr_t dma_map_single(struct device *dev, void *buffer, size_t size,
enum dma_data_direction direction);The return value is the bus address that you can pass to the device or NULL if something goes wrong.
Once the transfer is complete, the mapping should be deleted with dma_unmap_single:
void dma_unmap_single(struct device *dev, dma_addr_t dma_addr, size_t size,
enum dma_data_direction direction);Here, the size and direction arguments must match those used to map the buffer.
Some important rules apply to streaming DMA mappings:
The buffer must be used only for a transfer that matches the direction value given when it was mapped.
Once a buffer has been mapped, it belongs to the device, not the processor. Until the buffer has been unmapped, the driver should not touch its contents in any way. Only after dma_unmap_single has been called is it safe for the driver to access the contents of the buffer (with one exception that we see shortly). Among other things, this rule implies that a buffer being written to a device cannot be mapped until it contains all the data to write.
The buffer must not be unmapped while DMA is still active, or serious system instability is guaranteed.
You may be wondering why the driver can no longer work with a buffer once it has been mapped. There are actually two reasons why this rule makes sense. First, when a buffer is mapped for DMA, the kernel must ensure that all of the data in that buffer has actually been written to memory. It is likely that some data is in the processorâs cache when dma_unmap_single is issued, and must be explicitly flushed. Data written to the buffer by the processor after the flush may not be visible to the device.
Second,
consider what happens if the buffer to be mapped is in a region of memory that is not
accessible to the device. Some architectures simply fail in this case, but others create
a bounce buffer. The bounce buffer is just a separate region of memory that
is accessible to the device. If a buffer is mapped with a
direction of DMA_TO_DEVICE, and a bounce buffer is
required, the contents of the original buffer are copied as part of the mapping
operation. Clearly, changes to the original buffer after the copy are not seen by the
device. Similarly, DMA_FROM_DEVICE bounce buffers are
copied back to the original buffer by dma_unmap_single; the data
from the device is not present until that copy has been done.
Incidentally, bounce buffers are one reason why it is important to get the direction
right. DMA_BIDIRECTIONAL bounce buffers are copied
both before and after the operation, which is often an unnecessary waste of CPU
cycles.
Occasionally a driver needs to access the contents of a streaming DMA buffer without unmapping it. A call has been provided to make this possible:
void dma_sync_single_for_cpu(struct device *dev, dma_handle_t bus_addr,
size_t size, enum dma_data_direction direction);This function should be called before the processor accesses a streaming DMA buffer. Once the call has been made, the CPU âownsâ the DMA buffer and can work with it as needed. Before the device accesses the buffer, however, ownership should be transferred back to it with:
void dma_sync_single_for_device(struct device *dev, dma_handle_t bus_addr,
size_t size, enum dma_data_direction direction);The processor, once again, should not access the DMA buffer after this call has been made.
Occasionally, you may want
to set up a mapping on a
buffer for which you have a struct page pointer; this
can happen, for example, with user-space buffers mapped with
get_user_pages. To set up and tear down streaming mappings using
struct
page pointers, use the following:
dma_addr_t dma_map_page(struct device *dev, struct page *page,
unsigned long offset, size_t size,
enum dma_data_direction direction);
void dma_unmap_page(struct device *dev, dma_addr_t dma_address,
size_t size, enum dma_data_direction direction);The offset and size arguments can be used to map part of a page. It is recommended,
however, that partial-page mappings be avoided unless you are really sure of what you
are doing. Mapping part of a page can lead to cache coherency problems if the allocation
covers only part of a cache line; that, in turn, can lead to memory corruption and
extremely difficult-to-debug bugs.
Scatter/gather mappings are a special type of streaming DMA mapping. Suppose you have several buffers, all of which need to be transferred to or from the device. This situation can come about in several ways, including from a readv or writev system call, a clustered disk I/O request, or a list of pages in a mapped kernel I/O buffer. You could simply map each buffer, in turn, and perform the required operation, but there are advantages to mapping the whole list at once.
Many devices can accept a scatterlist of array pointers and lengths, and transfer them all in one DMA operation; for example, âzero-copyâ networking is easier if packets can be built in multiple pieces. Another reason to map scatterlists as a whole is to take advantage of systems that have mapping registers in the bus hardware. On such systems, physically discontiguous pages can be assembled into a single, contiguous array from the deviceâs point of view. This technique works only when the entries in the scatterlist are equal to the page size in length (except the first and last), but when it does work, it can turn multiple operations into a single DMA, and speed things up accordingly.
Finally, if a bounce buffer must be used, it makes sense to coalesce the entire list into a single buffer (since it is being copied anyway).
So now youâre convinced that mapping of scatterlists is worthwhile in some
situations. The first step in mapping a scatterlist is to create and fill in an array of
struct
scatterlist describing the buffers to be transferred.
This structure is architecture dependent, and is described in <asm/scatterlist.h>. However, it always contains three
fields:
struct page *page;The
structpagepointer corresponding to the buffer to be used in the scatter/gather operation.unsigned int length;unsigned int offset;The length of that buffer and its offset within the page
To map a
scatter/gather DMA operation, your driver should set the page, offset, and length fields in a struct
scatterlist entry for each buffer to be transferred.
Then call:
int dma_map_sg(struct device *dev, struct scatterlist *sg, int nents,
enum dma_data_direction direction)where nents is the number of scatterlist entries
passed in. The return value is the number of DMA buffers to transfer; it may be less
than nents.
For each buffer in the input scatterlist, dma_map_sg determines the proper bus address to give to the device. As part of that task, it also coalesces buffers that are adjacent to each other in memory. If the system your driver is running on has an I/O memory management unit, dma_map_sg also programs that unitâs mapping registers, with the possible result that, from your deviceâs point of view, you are able to transfer a single, contiguous buffer. You will never know what the resulting transfer will look like, however, until after the call.
Your driver should transfer each buffer returned by pci_map_sg.
The bus address and length of each buffer are stored in the struct scatterlist entries, but their location in the structure varies from
one architecture to the next. Two macros have been defined to make it possible to write
portable code:
Again, remember that the address and length of the buffers to transfer may be different from what was passed in to dma_map_sg.
Once the transfer is complete, a scatter/gather mapping is unmapped with a call to dma_unmap_sg:
void dma_unmap_sg(struct device *dev, struct scatterlist *list,
int nents, enum dma_data_direction direction);Note that nents must be the number of entries
that you originally passed to dma_map_sg and not the number of DMA
buffers the function returned to you.
Scatter/gather mappings are streaming DMA mappings, and the same access rules apply to them as to the single variety. If you must access a mapped scatter/gather list, you must synchronize it first:
void dma_sync_sg_for_cpu(struct device *dev, struct scatterlist *sg,
int nents, enum dma_data_direction direction);
void dma_sync_sg_for_device(struct device *dev, struct scatterlist *sg,
int nents, enum dma_data_direction direction);Normally, the DMA support layer works with 32-bit bus addresses, possibly restricted by a specific deviceâs DMA mask. The PCI bus, however, also supports a 64-bit addressing mode, the double-address cycle (DAC). The generic DMA layer does not support this mode for a couple of reasons, the first of which being that it is a PCI-specific feature. Also, many implementations of DAC are buggy at best, and, because DAC is slower than a regular, 32-bit DMA, there can be a performance cost. Even so, there are applications where using DAC can be the right thing to do; if you have a device that is likely to be working with very large buffers placed in high memory, you may want to consider implementing DAC support. This support is available only for the PCI bus, so PCI-specific routines must be used.
To use DAC, your driver must include <linux/pci.h>. You must set a separate DMA mask:
int pci_dac_set_dma_mask(struct pci_dev *pdev, u64 mask);
You can use DAC addressing only if this call returns 0.
A special type (dma64_addr_t) is used for DAC
mappings. To establish one of these mappings, call
pci_dac_page_to_dma:
dma64_addr_t pci_dac_page_to_dma(struct pci_dev *pdev, struct page *page,
unsigned long offset, int direction);DAC mappings, you will notice, can be made only from struct
page pointers (they should live in high memory, after
all, or there is no point in using them); they must be created a single page at a time.
The direction argument is the PCI equivalent of the
enum dma_data_direction used in the generic DMA
layer; it should be PCI_DMA_TODEVICE, PCI_DMA_FROMDEVICE, or PCI_DMA_BIDIRECTIONAL.
DAC mappings require no external resources, so there is no need to explicitly release them after use. It is necessary, however, to treat DAC mappings like other streaming mappings, and observe the rules regarding buffer ownership. There is a set of functions for synchronizing DMA buffers that is analogous to the generic variety:
void pci_dac_dma_sync_single_for_cpu(struct pci_dev *pdev,
dma64_addr_t dma_addr,
size_t len,
int direction);
void pci_dac_dma_sync_single_for_device(struct pci_dev *pdev,
dma64_addr_t dma_addr,
size_t len,
int direction);As an example of how the DMA mappings might be used, we present a simple example of DMA coding for a PCI device. The actual form of DMA operations on the PCI bus is very dependent on the device being driven. Thus, this example does not apply to any real device; instead, it is part of a hypothetical driver called dad (DMA Acquisition Device). A driver for this device might define a transfer function like this:
int dad_transfer(struct dad_dev *dev, int write, void *buffer,
size_t count)
{
dma_addr_t bus_addr;
/* Map the buffer for DMA */
dev->dma_dir = (write ? DMA_TO_DEVICE : DMA_FROM_DEVICE);
dev->dma_size = count;
bus_addr = dma_map_single(&dev->pci_dev->dev, buffer, count,
dev->dma_dir);
dev->dma_addr = bus_addr;
/* Set up the device */
writeb(dev->registers.command, DAD_CMD_DISABLEDMA);
writeb(dev->registers.command, write ? DAD_CMD_WR : DAD_CMD_RD);
writel(dev->registers.addr, cpu_to_le32(bus_addr));
writel(dev->registers.len, cpu_to_le32(count));
/* Start the operation */
writeb(dev->registers.command, DAD_CMD_ENABLEDMA);
return 0;
}This function maps the buffer to be transferred and starts the device operation. The other half of the job must be done in the interrupt service routine, which looks something like this:
void dad_interrupt(int irq, void *dev_id, struct pt_regs *regs)
{
struct dad_dev *dev = (struct dad_dev *) dev_id;
/* Make sure it's really our device interrupting */
/* Unmap the DMA buffer */
dma_unmap_single(dev->pci_dev->dev, dev->dma_addr,
dev->dma_size, dev->dma_dir);
/* Only now is it safe to access the buffer, copy to user, etc. */
...
}Obviously, a great deal of detail has been left out of this example, including whatever steps may be required to prevent attempts to start multiple, simultaneous DMA operations.
The ISA bus allows for two kinds of DMA transfers: native DMA and ISA bus master DMA. Native DMA uses standard DMA-controller circuitry on the motherboard to drive the signal lines on the ISA bus. ISA bus master DMA, on the other hand, is handled entirely by the peripheral device. The latter type of DMA is rarely used and doesnât require discussion here, because it is similar to DMA for PCI devices, at least from the driverâs point of view. An example of an ISA bus master is the 1542 SCSI controller, whose driver is drivers/scsi/aha1542.c in the kernel sources.
As far as native DMA is concerned, there are three entities involved in a DMA data transfer on the ISA bus:
- The 8237 DMA controller (DMAC)
The controller holds information about the DMA transfer, such as the direction, the memory address, and the size of the transfer. It also contains a counter that tracks the status of ongoing transfers. When the controller receives a DMA request signal, it gains control of the bus and drives the signal lines so that the device can read or write its data.
- The peripheral device
The device must activate the DMA request signal when itâs ready to transfer data. The actual transfer is managed by the DMAC; the hardware device sequentially reads or writes data onto the bus when the controller strobes the device. The device usually raises an interrupt when the transfer is over.
- The device driver
The driver has little to do; it provides the DMA controller with the direction, bus address, and size of the transfer. It also talks to its peripheral to prepare it for transferring the data and responds to the interrupt when the DMA is over.
The original DMA controller used in the PC could manage four âchannels,â each
associated with one set of DMA registers. Four devices could store their DMA information
in the controller at the same time. Newer PCs contain the equivalent of two DMAC
devices:[6] the second controller (master) is connected to the system processor, and the
first (slave) is connected to channel 0 of the second
controller.[7]
The channels are numbered from 0-7: channel 4 is not available to ISA peripherals, because it is used internally to cascade the slave controller onto the master. The available channels are, thus, 0-3 on the slave (the 8-bit channels) and 5-7 on the master (the 16-bit channels). The size of any DMA transfer, as stored in the controller, is a 16-bit number representing the number of bus cycles. The maximum transfer size is, therefore, 64 KB for the slave controller (because it transfers eight bits in one cycle) and 128 KB for the master (which does 16-bit transfers).
Because the DMA controller is a system-wide resource, the kernel helps deal with it. It uses a DMA registry to provide a request-and-free mechanism for the DMA channels and a set of functions to configure channel information in the DMA controller.
You should be used to kernel registriesâweâve already seen them for I/O ports and interrupt lines. The DMA channel registry is similar to the others. After <asm/dma.h> has been included, the following functions can be used to obtain and release ownership of a DMA channel:
int request_dma(unsigned int channel, const char *name); void free_dma(unsigned int channel);
The channel argument is a number between 0 and 7
or, more precisely, a positive number less than MAX_DMA_CHANNELS. On the PC, MAX_DMA_CHANNELS is defined as 8 to
match the hardware. The name argument is a string
identifying the device. The specified name appears in the file /proc/dma, which can be read by user programs.
The return value from request_dma is 0 for success and -EINVAL or -EBUSY if there was an error. The former means that the
requested channel is out of range, and the latter means that another device is holding
the channel.
We recommend that you take the same care with DMA channels as with I/O ports and interrupt lines; requesting the channel at open time is much better than requesting it from the module initialization function. Delaying the request allows some sharing between drivers; for example, your sound card and your analog I/O interface can share the DMA channel as long as they are not used at the same time.
We also suggest that you request the DMA channel after youâve requested the interrupt line and that you release it before the interrupt. This is the conventional order for requesting the two resources; following the convention avoids possible deadlocks. Note that every device using DMA needs an IRQ line as well; otherwise, it couldnât signal the completion of data transfer.
In a typical case, the code for open looks like the following, which refers to our hypothetical dad module. The dad device as shown uses a fast interrupt handler without support for shared IRQ lines.
int dad_open (struct inode *inode, struct file *filp)
{
struct dad_device *my_device;
/* ... */
if ( (error = request_irq(my_device.irq, dad_interrupt,
SA_INTERRUPT, "dad", NULL)) )
return error; /* or implement blocking open */
if ( (error = request_dma(my_device.dma, "dad")) ) {
free_irq(my_device.irq, NULL);
return error; /* or implement blocking open */
}
/* ... */
return 0;
}The close implementation that matches the open just shown looks like this:
void dad_close (struct inode *inode, struct file *filp)
{
struct dad_device *my_device;
/* ... */
free_dma(my_device.dma);
free_irq(my_device.irq, NULL);
/* ... */
}Hereâs how the /proc/dma file looks on a system with the sound card installed:
merlino% cat /proc/dma
1: Sound Blaster8
4: cascadeItâs interesting to note that the default sound driver gets the DMA channel at
system boot and never releases it. The cascade entry
is a placeholder, indicating that channel 4 is not available to drivers, as explained
earlier.
After registration, the main part of the driverâs job consists of configuring the DMA controller for proper operation. This task is not trivial, but fortunately, the kernel exports all the functions needed by the typical driver.
The driver needs to configure the DMA controller either when read or write is called, or when preparing for asynchronous transfers. This latter task is performed either at open time or in response to an ioctl command, depending on the driver and the policy it implements. The code shown here is the code that is typically called by the read or write device methods.
This subsection provides a quick overview of the internals of the DMA controller so you understand the code introduced here. If you want to learn more, weâd urge you to read <asm/dma.h> and some hardware manuals describing the PC architecture. In particular, we donât deal with the issue of 8-bit versus 16-bit data transfers. If you are writing device drivers for ISA device boards, you should find the relevant information in the hardware manuals for the devices.
The DMA controller is a shared
resource, and confusion could arise if more than one processor attempts to program it
simultaneously. For that reason, the controller is protected by a spinlock, called
dma_spin_lock. Drivers should not manipulate the
lock directly; however, two functions have been provided to do that for you:
unsigned long claim_dma_lock( );Acquires the DMA spinlock. This function also blocks interrupts on the local processor; therefore, the return value is a set of flags describing the previous interrupt state; it must be passed to the following function to restore the interrupt state when you are done with the lock.
void release_dma_lock(unsigned long flags);Returns the DMA spinlock and restores the previous interrupt status.
The spinlock should be held when using the functions described next. It should not be held during the actual I/O, however. A driver should never sleep when holding a spinlock.
The information that must be loaded into the controller consists of three items: the RAM address, the number of atomic items that must be transferred (in bytes or words), and the direction of the transfer. To this end, the following functions are exported by <asm/dma.h>:
void set_dma_mode(unsigned int channel, char mode);Indicates whether the channel must read from the device (
DMA_MODE_READ) or write to it (DMA_MODE_WRITE). A third mode exists,DMA_MODE_CASCADE, which is used to release control of the bus. Cascading is the way the first controller is connected to the top of the second, but it can also be used by true ISA bus-master devices. We wonât discuss bus mastering here.void set_dma_addr(unsigned int channel, unsigned int addr);Assigns the address of the DMA buffer. The function stores the 24 least significant bits of
addrin the controller. Theaddrargument must be a bus address (see the Section 15.4.3 earlier in this chapter).void set_dma_count(unsigned int channel, unsigned int count);Assigns the number of bytes to transfer. The
countargument represents bytes for 16-bit channels as well; in this case, the number must be even.
In addition to these functions, there are a number of housekeeping facilities that must be used when dealing with DMA devices:
void disable_dma(unsigned int channel);A DMA channel can be disabled within the controller. The channel should be disabled before the controller is configured to prevent improper operation. (Otherwise, corruption can occur because the controller is programmed via 8-bit data transfers and, therefore, none of the previous functions is executed atomically).
void enable_dma(unsigned int channel);This function tells the controller that the DMA channel contains valid data.
int get_dma_residue(unsigned int channel);The driver sometimes needs to know whether a DMA transfer has been completed. This function returns the number of bytes that are still to be transferred. The return value is
0after a successful transfer and is unpredictable (but not0) while the controller is working. The unpredictability springs from the need to obtain the 16-bit residue through two 8-bit input operations.void clear_dma_ff(unsigned int channel)This function clears the DMA flip-flop. The flip-flop is used to control access to 16-bit registers. The registers are accessed by two consecutive 8-bit operations, and the flip-flop is used to select the least significant byte (when it is clear) or the most significant byte (when it is set). The flip-flop automatically toggles when eight bits have been transferred; the programmer must clear the flip-flop (to set it to a known state) before accessing the DMA registers.
Using these functions, a driver can implement a function like the following to prepare for a DMA transfer:
int dad_dma_prepare(int channel, int mode, unsigned int buf,
unsigned int count)
{
unsigned long flags;
flags = claim_dma_lock( );
disable_dma(channel);
clear_dma_ff(channel);
set_dma_mode(channel, mode);
set_dma_addr(channel, virt_to_bus(buf));
set_dma_count(channel, count);
enable_dma(channel);
release_dma_lock(flags);
return 0;
}Then, a function like the next one is used to check for successful completion of DMA:
int dad_dma_isdone(int channel)
{
int residue;
unsigned long flags = claim_dma_lock ( );
residue = get_dma_residue(channel);
release_dma_lock(flags);
return (residue = = 0);
}The only thing that remains to be done is to configure the device board. This device-specific task usually consists of reading or writing a few I/O ports. Devices differ in significant ways. For example, some devices expect the programmer to tell the hardware how big the DMA buffer is, and sometimes the driver has to read a value that is hardwired into the device. For configuring the board, the hardware manual is your only friend.
This chapter introduced the following symbols related to memory handling.
#include <linux/mm.h>#include <asm/page.h>Most of the functions and structures related to memory management are prototyped and defined in these header files.
void *_ _va(unsigned long physaddr);unsigned long _ _pa(void *kaddr);Macros that convert between kernel logical addresses and physical addresses.
PAGE_SIZEPAGE_SHIFTConstants that give the size (in bytes) of a page on the underlying hardware and the number of bits that a page frame number must be shifted to turn it into a physical address.
struct pageStructure that represents a hardware page in the system memory map.
struct page *virt_to_page(void *kaddr);void *page_address(struct page *page);struct page *pfn_to_page(int pfn);Macros that convert between kernel logical addresses and their associated memory map entries. page_address works only for low-memory pages or high-memory pages that have been explicitly mapped. pfn_to_page converts a page frame number to its associated
structpagepointer.unsigned long kmap(struct page *page);void kunmap(struct page *page);kmap returns a kernel virtual address that is mapped to the given page, creating the mapping if need be. kunmap deletes the mapping for the given page.
#include <linux/highmem.h>#include <asm/kmap_types.h>void *kmap_atomic(struct page *page, enum km_type type);void kunmap_atomic(void *addr, enum km_type type);The high-performance version of kmap; the resulting mappings can be held only by atomic code. For drivers,
typeshould beKM_USER0,KM_USER1,KM_IRQ0, orKM_IRQ1.struct vm_area_struct;Structure describing a VMA.
int remap_pfn_range(struct vm_area_struct *vma, unsigned long virt_add,unsigned long pfn, unsigned long size, pgprot_t prot);int io_remap_page_range(struct vm_area_struct *vma, unsigned long virt_add,unsigned long phys_add, unsigned long size, pgprot_t prot);Functions that sit at the heart of mmap. They map
sizebytes of physical addresses, starting at the page number indicated bypfnto the virtual addressvirt_add. The protection bits associated with the virtual space are specified inprot. io_remap_page_range should be used when the target address is in I/O memory space.struct page *vmalloc_to_page(void *vmaddr);Converts a kernel virtual address obtained from vmalloc to its corresponding
struct pagepointer.
int get_user_pages(struct task_struct *tsk, struct mm_struct *mm, unsignedlong start, int len, int write, int force, struct page **pages, structvm_area_struct **vmas);Function that locks a user-space buffer into memory and returns the corresponding
struct pagepointers. The caller must holdmm->mmap_sem.SetPageDirty(struct page *page);Macro that marks the given page as âdirtyâ (modified) and in need of writing to its backing store before it can be freed.
void page_cache_release(struct page *page);Frees the given page from the page cache.
int is_sync_kiocb(struct kiocb *iocb);Macro that returns nonzero if the given IOCB requires synchronous execution.
int aio_complete(struct kiocb *iocb, long res, long res2);Function that indicates completion of an asynchronous I/O operation.
#include <asm/io.h>unsigned long virt_to_bus(volatile void * address);void * bus_to_virt(unsigned long address);Obsolete and deprecated functions that convert between kernel, virtual, and bus addresses. Bus addresses must be used to talk to peripheral devices.
#include <linux/dma-mapping.h>Header file required to define the generic DMA functions.
int dma_set_mask(struct device *dev, u64 mask);For peripherals that cannot address the full 32-bit range, this function informs the kernel of the addressable range and returns nonzero if DMA is possible.
void *dma_alloc_coherent(struct device *dev, size_t size, dma_addr_t*bus_addr, int flag)void dma_free_coherent(struct device *dev, size_t size, void *cpuaddr,dma_handle_t bus_addr);Allocate and free coherent DMA mappings for a buffer that will last the lifetime of the driver.
#include <linux/dmapool.h>struct dma_pool *dma_pool_create(const char *name, struct device *dev,size_tsize, size_t align, size_t allocation);void dma_pool_destroy(struct dma_pool *pool);void *dma_pool_alloc(struct dma_pool *pool, int mem_flags, dma_addr_t*handle);void dma_pool_free(struct dma_pool *pool, void *vaddr, dma_addr_t handle);Functions that create, destroy, and use DMA pools to manage small DMA areas.
enum dma_data_direction;DMA_TO_DEVICEDMA_FROM_DEVICEDMA_BIDIRECTIONALDMA_NONESymbols used to tell the streaming mapping functions the direction in which data is moving to or from the buffer.
dma_addr_t dma_map_single(struct device *dev, void *buffer, size_t size, enumdma_data_direction direction);void dma_unmap_single(struct device *dev, dma_addr_t bus_addr, size_t size,enum dma_data_direction direction);Create and destroy a single-use, streaming DMA mapping.
void dma_sync_single_for_cpu(struct device *dev, dma_handle_t bus_addr, size_tsize, enum dma_data_direction direction);void dma_sync_single_for_device(struct device *dev, dma_handle_t bus_addr,size_t size, enum dma_data_direction direction);Synchronizes a buffer that has a streaming mapping. These functions must be used if the processor must access a buffer while the streaming mapping is in place (i.e., while the device owns the buffer).
#include <asm/scatterlist.h>struct scatterlist { /* ... */ };dma_addr_t sg_dma_address(struct scatterlist *sg);unsigned int sg_dma_len(struct scatterlist *sg);The
scatterliststructure describes an I/O operation that involves more than one buffer. The macros sg_dma_address and sg_dma_len may be used to extract bus addresses and buffer lengths to pass to the device when implementing scatter/gather operations.dma_map_sg(struct device *dev, struct scatterlist *list, int nents,enum dma_data_direction direction);dma_unmap_sg(struct device *dev, struct scatterlist *list, int nents, enumdma_data_direction direction);void dma_sync_sg_for_cpu(struct device *dev, struct scatterlist *sg, intnents, enum dma_data_direction direction);void dma_sync_sg_for_device(struct device *dev, struct scatterlist *sg, intnents, enum dma_data_direction direction);dma_map_sg maps a scatter/gather operation, and dma_unmap_sg undoes that mapping. If the buffers must be accessed while the mapping is active, dma_sync_sg_* may be used to synchronize things.
/proc/dmaFile that contains a textual snapshot of the allocated channels in the DMA controllers. PCI-based DMA is not shown because each board works independently, without the need to allocate a channel in the DMA controller.
#include <asm/dma.h>Header that defines or prototypes all the functions and macros related to DMA. It must be included to use any of the following symbols.
int request_dma(unsigned int channel, const char *name);void free_dma(unsigned int channel);Access the DMA registry. Registration must be performed before using ISA DMA channels.
unsigned long claim_dma_lock( );void release_dma_lock(unsigned long flags);Acquire and release the DMA spinlock, which must be held prior to calling the other ISA DMA functions described later in this list. They also disable and reenable interrupts on the local processor.
void set_dma_mode(unsigned int channel, char mode);void set_dma_addr(unsigned int channel, unsigned int addr);void set_dma_count(unsigned int channel, unsigned int count);Program DMA information in the DMA controller.
addris a bus address.void disable_dma(unsigned int channel);void enable_dma(unsigned int channel);A DMA channel must be disabled during configuration. These functions change the status of the DMA channel.
int get_dma_residue(unsigned int channel);If the driver needs to know how a DMA transfer is proceeding, it can call this function, which returns the number of data transfers that are yet to be completed. After successful completion of DMA, the function returns
0; the value is unpredictable while data is being transferred.void clear_dma_ff(unsigned int channel)The DMA flip-flop is used by the controller to transfer 16-bit values by means of two 8-bit operations. It must be cleared before sending any data to the controller.
[1] Many non-x86 architectures are able to efficiently do without the kernel/user-space split described here, so they can work with up to a 4-GB kernel address space on 32-bit systems. The constraints described in this section still apply to such systems when more than 4 GB of memory are installed, however.
[2] The 2.6 kernel (with an added patch) can support a â4G/4Gâ mode on x86 hardware, which enables larger kernel and user virtual address spaces at a mild performance cost.
[3] The name BSS is a historical relic from an old assembly operator meaning âblock started by symbol.â The BSS segment of executable files isnât stored on disk, and the kernel maps the zero page to the BSS address range.
[4] There are, of course, exceptions to everything; see Section 15.2.6 for a demonstration of how high-performance network drivers are best implemented using polling.
[5] The word fragmentation is usually applied to disks to express the idea that files are not stored consecutively on the magnetic medium. The same concept applies to memory, where each virtual address space gets scattered throughout physical RAM, and it becomes difficult to retrieve consecutive free pages when a DMA buffer is requested.
[6] These circuits are now part of the motherboardâs chipset, but a few years ago they were two separate 8237 chips.
[7] The original PCs had only one controller; the second was added in 286-based platforms. However, the second controller is connected as the master because it handles 16-bit transfers; the first transfers only eight bits at a time and is there for backward compatibility.
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