xref: /netbsd-src/share/man/man9/physio.9 (revision 2a399c6883d870daece976daec6ffa7bb7f934ce)
1.\"	$NetBSD: physio.9,v 1.3 1997/10/08 22:00:35 jtc Exp $
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3.\" Copyright (c) 1996 The NetBSD Foundation, Inc.
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6.\" This code is derived from software contributed to The NetBSD Foundation
7.\" by Paul Kranenburg.
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37.Dd June 15, 1996
38.Dt PHYSIO 9
39.Os NetBSD
40.Sh NAME
41.Nm physio
42.Nd initiate I/O on raw devices
43.Sh SYNOPSIS
44.Ft int
45.Fo "physio"
46.Fa "(*strategy)(struct buf *)"
47.Fa "struct buf *bp"
48.Fa "dev_t dev"
49.Fa "int flags"
50.Fa "(*minphys)(struct buf *)"
51.Fa "struct uio *uio"
52.Fc
53.Sh DESCRIPTION
54The
55.Fn physio
56is a helper function typically called from character device read and write
57routines to start I/O on a user process buffer. It calls back on the
58provided
59.Fa strategy
60routine one or more times to complete the transfer described by
61.Fa uio .
62The maximum amount of data to transfer with each call to
63.Fa strategy
64is determined by the
65.Fa minphys
66routine. Since
67.Fa uio
68normally describes user space addresses,
69.Fn physio
70needs to lock the appropriate data area into memory before each transaction
71with
72.Fa strategy ( see
73.Xr vslock 9
74and
75.Xr vsunlock 9 ).
76.Fn physio
77always awaits the completion of the entire requested transfer before
78returning, unless an error condition is detected earlier. In all cases,
79the buffer passed in
80.Fa bp
81is locked (marked as
82.Dq busy )
83for the duration of the entire transfer.
84.Pp
85A break-down of the arguments follows:
86.Bl -tag -width indent
87.It Fa strategy
88The device strategy routine to call for each chunk of data to initiate
89device I/O.
90.It Fa bp
91The buffer to use with the strategy routine. The buffer flags will have
92.Dv B_BUSY ,
93.Dv B_PHYS ,
94and
95.Dv B_RAW
96set when passed to the strategy routine. If
97.Dv NULL ,
98a buffer is allocated from a system pool.
99.It Fa dev
100The device number identifying the device to interact with.
101.It Fa flags
102Direction of transfer; the only valid settings are
103.Dv B_READ
104or
105.Dv B_WRITE .
106.It Fa minphys
107A device specific routine called to determine the maximum transfer size
108that the device's strategy rouinte can handle.
109.It Fa uio
110The description of the entire transfer as requested by the user process.
111Currently, the results of passing a
112.Fa uio
113structure with the
114.Sq uio_segflg
115set to anything other than
116.Dv UIO_USERSPACE ,
117are undefined.
118.El
119.Pp
120.Sh RETURN VALUES
121If successful
122.Fn physio
123returns 0.
124.Er EFAULT
125is returned if the address range described by
126.Fa uio
127is not accessable by the requesting process.
128.Fn physio
129will return any error resulting from calls to the device strategy routine,
130by examining the
131.Dv B_ERROR
132buffer flag and the
133.Sq b_error
134field. Note that the actual transfer size may be less than requested by
135.Fa uio
136if the device signals an
137.Dq end of file
138condition.
139.Sh SEE ALSO
140.Xr read 2 ,
141.Xr write 2
142