On Fri, Mar 10, 2006 at 09:53:53AM -0500, jamal wrote: > On Thu, 2006-09-03 at 20:07 +0530, Balbir Singh wrote: > > Please let us know if we missed something out. > > Design still shaky IMO - now that i think i may understand what your end > goal is. > Using the principles i described in earlier email, the problem you are > trying to solve is: > > a) shipping of the taskstats from kernel to user-space asynchronously to > all listeners on multicast channel/group TASKSTATS_LISTEN_GRP > at the point when some process exits. > b) responding to queries issued by the user to the kernel for taskstats > of a particular defined tgid and/or pid combination. > > Did i summarize your goals correctly?
Yes, you did. > > So lets stat with #b: > i) the message is multicast; there has to be a user space app registered > to the multicast group otherwise nothing goes to user space. > ii) user space issues a GET and it seems to me the appropriate naming > for the response is a NEW. > > Lets go to #a: > The issued multicast messages are also NEW and no different from the > ones sent in response to a GET. > > Having said that then, you have the following commands: > > enum { > TASKSTATS_CMD_UNSPEC, /* Reserved */ > TASKSTATS_CMD_GET, /* user -> kernel query*/ > TASKSTATS_CMD_NEW, /* kernel -> user update */ > }; > > You also need the following TLVs > > enum { > TASKSTATS_TYPE_UNSPEC, /* Reserved */ > TASKSTATS_TYPE_TGID, /* The TGID */ > TASKSTATS_TYPE_PID, /* The PID */ > TASKSTATS_TYPE_STATS, /* carries the taskstats */ > TASKSTATS_TYPE_VERS, /* carries the version */ > }; > > Refer to the doc i passed you and provide feedback if how to use the > above is not obvious. > I will look at the document, just got hold of it. > The use of TLVs above implies that any of these can be optionally > appearing. > So when you are going from user->kernel with a GET a in #a above, then > you can specify the PID and/or TGID and you dont need to specify the > STATS and this would be perfectly legal. > > On kernel->user (in the case of response to #a or async notifiation as > in #b) you really dont need to specify the TG/PID since they appear in > the STATS etc. I see your point now. I am looking at other users of netlink like rtnetlink and I see the classical usage. We can implement TLV's in our code, but for the most part the data we exchange between the user <-> kernel has all the TLV's listed in the enum above. The major differnece is the type (pid/tgid). Hence we created a structure (taskstats) instead of using TLV's. > I take it you dont want to configure the values of taskstats from user > space, otherwise user->kernel will send a NEW as well. Your understanding is correct. > I also take it dumping doesnt apply to you, so you dont need a dump > callback in your kernel code. Yes, this is correct as well. > >From what i described so far, you dont really need a header for yourself > either (maybe you need one to just store the VERSION?) > True, we do not need a header. > I didnt understand the point to the err field you had in the reply. > Netlink already does issue errors which can be read via perror. If this > is different from what you need, it may be an excuse to have your own > header. > Hmm.. Will look into this. > I hope this helps. > Yes, it does immensely. Thanks for the detailed feedback. > cheers, > jamal > > Warm Regards, Balbir - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe netdev" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html