From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] drawterm and linux 2.4.4 SMP
From: forsyth@caldo.demon.co.uk
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
	boundary="upas-ojcncnktkhbgsftwnuojfodfht"
Message-Id: <20010721074131.A63A2199C0@mail.cse.psu.edu>
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 08:37:09 +0100
Topicbox-Message-UUID: d2b2c236-eac9-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
--upas-ojcncnktkhbgsftwnuojfodfht
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

the pthreads implementations had several problems when we
tried to use them for inferno, so we stopped banging our heads
against them and did it ourselves.


--upas-ojcncnktkhbgsftwnuojfodfht
Content-Type: message/rfc822
Content-Disposition: inline

Received: from finch-punt-12.mail.demon.net ([194.217.242.36]) by lavoro; Sat Jul 21 06:06:11 BST 2001
Received: from punt-1.mail.demon.net by mailstore for forsyth@caldo.demon.co.uk
          id 995691631:10:18680:0; Sat, 21 Jul 2001 05:00:31 GMT
Received: from psuvax1.cse.psu.edu ([130.203.4.6]) by punt-1.mail.demon.net
           id aa1018506; 21 Jul 2001 5:00 GMT
Received: from psuvax1.cse.psu.edu (psuvax1.cse.psu.edu [130.203.20.6])
	by mail.cse.psu.edu (CSE Mail Server) with ESMTP
	id 7145819A60; Sat, 21 Jul 2001 01:00:13 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from honk.eecs.harvard.edu (honk.eecs.harvard.edu [140.247.60.101])
	by mail.cse.psu.edu (CSE Mail Server) with ESMTP id 75207199DC
	for <9fans@cse.psu.edu>; Sat, 21 Jul 2001 00:59:40 -0400 (EDT)
Received: by honk.eecs.harvard.edu (Postfix, from userid 1000)
	id E950D3C11C; Sat, 21 Jul 2001 00:59:32 -0400 (EDT)
From: "William K. Josephson" <wkj@eecs.harvard.edu>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] drawterm and linux 2.4.4 SMP
Message-ID: <20010721005932.A42689@honk.eecs.harvard.edu>
References: <20010721023834.60B961998A@mail.cse.psu.edu>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i
In-Reply-To: <20010721023834.60B961998A@mail.cse.psu.edu>; from jmk@plan9.bell-labs.com on Fri, Jul 20, 2001 at 10:38:30PM -0400
Sender: 9fans-admin@cse.psu.edu
Errors-To: 9fans-admin@cse.psu.edu
X-BeenThere: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.5
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
List-Id: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans.cse.psu.edu>
List-Archive: <http://lists.cse.psu.edu/archives/9fans/>
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 00:59:32 -0400

On Fri, Jul 20, 2001 at 10:38:30PM -0400, jmk@plan9.bell-labs.com wrote:
> On Fri Jul 20 21:16:24 EDT 2001, crdevilb@mtu.edu wrote:
> > Was there some suggestion or patch anybody had to fix this, or am I
> > going to be digging into the linux kernel to find yet another hack to
> > solve this?

> I haven't looked at that code but from the description it looks like
> the thread switch hack Phil Winterbottom and I did when we ported Inferno
> to Linux a very long time ago. At that time Linux used the task

I haven't looked at the drawterm code in quite a while, but I'd
suggest using the pthreads version.  I'm fairly sure that that is what
is done under FreeBSD instead of using their rfork(2) (or the new libc
wrapper in 4.3-stable).  The pthreads implementation for Linux is a
good example of how not to use #ifdef (or it was last I looked), but
in general the implementations I've seen appear to be compatible and
stable enough to use on almost all the major Unix derivatives that
mucking around with the tss stuff probably isn't worth it for
something like drawterm.  Especially when the kernel changes as often
as it does under Linux.

 -WJ
--upas-ojcncnktkhbgsftwnuojfodfht--