This patch implements a simple version of the futex (fast userspace
mutex) API in the kernel and uses it to make the pthread_cond_t API's
block instead of busily sched_yield().
An arbitrary userspace address is passed to the kernel as a "token"
that identifies the futex and you can then FUTEX_WAIT and FUTEX_WAKE
that specific userspace address.
FUTEX_WAIT corresponds to pthread_cond_wait() and FUTEX_WAKE is used
for pthread_cond_signal() and pthread_cond_broadcast().
I'm pretty sure I'm missing something in this implementation, but it's
hopefully okay for a start. :^)
The kernel now supports basic profiling of all the threads in a process
by calling profiling_enable(pid_t). You finish the profiling by calling
profiling_disable(pid_t).
This all works by recording thread stacks when the timer interrupt
fires and the current thread is in a process being profiled.
Note that symbolication is deferred until profiling_disable() to avoid
adding more noise than necessary to the profile.
A simple "/bin/profile" command is included here that can be used to
start/stop profiling like so:
$ profile 10 on
... wait ...
$ profile 10 off
After a profile has been recorded, it can be fetched in /proc/profile
There are various limits (or "bugs") on this mechanism at the moment:
- Only one process can be profiled at a time.
- We allocate 8MB for the samples, if you use more space, things will
not work, and probably break a bit.
- Things will probably fall apart if the profiled process dies during
profiling, or while extracing /proc/profile
It's now possible to load a .o file into the kernel via a syscall.
The kernel will perform all the necessary ELF relocations, and then
call the "module_init" symbol in the loaded module.