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Date:      Mon, 29 Oct 2001 13:43:48 -0800 (PST)
From:      John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org>
To:        Jake Burkholder <jake@locore.ca>
Cc:        arch@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: syscall() ABI questions
Message-ID:  <XFMail.011029134348.jhb@FreeBSD.org>
In-Reply-To: <20011029151912.D14748@locore.ca>

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On 29-Oct-01 Jake Burkholder wrote:
> Apparently, On Mon, Oct 29, 2001 at 11:59:01AM -0800,
>       John Baldwin said words to the effect of;
> 
> [...]
> 
>> >> > 
>> >> > I think you're right about fork and rfork being able to use the MIASM
>> >> > code.  rfork with RFMEM is special but it can';t be safely called from
>> >> > C anyway.  The vfork wrapper needs to stay on x86 at least because both
>> >> > processes return to the same stack; if the retunr address is not saved
>> >> > in
>> >> > a register the child may clobber the parent's when it "rets" and pops
>> >> > the stack.
>> >> 
>> >> Same kernel stack?  The register is set in the trapframe which means it
>> >> is
>> >> saved on the kernel stack.   Is that shared in the vfork case?
>> > 
>> > Same user stack.  The trapframe is copied to the child's kernel stack.
>> 
>> Then the vfork case should be fine, b/c we fixup %eax in the child's kernel
>> stack so that when it returns from the syscall, %eax already has the right
>> value.
> 
> Sorry, maybe I wasn;t clear.  The problem is that the parent's return
> address can get clobbered unless its saved in a register and copied
> through the trapframe.  Otherwise if the child returns from the kernel
> and immediately executes a "ret", the parent's return address will be
> below %esp on the shared stack and could get clobbered.  It uses
> jmp *%ecx now to return, which works fine because both parent and
> child have a _copy_ of the value.
> 
> I hope this makes sense  :)

Oh, doh, yes.  For some reason I had forgotten vfork had more to it than fork
does.  I amend to mean that we remove the setting of %eax which means fork and
rfork go back to being standard (aside from the rfork_thread() case to handle
RFMEM)

-- 

John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> -- http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/
PGP Key: http://www.baldwin.cx/~john/pgpkey.asc
"Power Users Use the Power to Serve!"  -  http://www.FreeBSD.org/

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