1
linux/drivers/usb
Alan Cox 33f0f88f1c [PATCH] TTY layer buffering revamp
The API and code have been through various bits of initial review by
serial driver people but they definitely need to live somewhere for a
while so the unconverted drivers can get knocked into shape, existing
drivers that have been updated can be better tuned and bugs whacked out.

This replaces the tty flip buffers with kmalloc objects in rings. In the
normal situation for an IRQ driven serial port at typical speeds the
behaviour is pretty much the same, two buffers end up allocated and the
kernel cycles between them as before.

When there are delays or at high speed we now behave far better as the
buffer pool can grow a bit rather than lose characters. This also means
that we can operate at higher speeds reliably.

For drivers that receive characters in blocks (DMA based, USB and
especially virtualisation) the layer allows a lot of driver specific
code that works around the tty layer with private secondary queues to be
removed. The IBM folks need this sort of layer, the smart serial port
people do, the virtualisers do (because a virtualised tty typically
operates at infinite speed rather than emulating 9600 baud).

Finally many drivers had invalid and unsafe attempts to avoid buffer
overflows by directly invoking tty methods extracted out of the innards
of work queue structs. These are no longer needed and all go away. That
fixes various random hangs with serial ports on overflow.

The other change in here is to optimise the receive_room path that is
used by some callers. It turns out that only one ldisc uses receive room
except asa constant and it updates it far far less than the value is
read. We thus make it a variable not a function call.

I expect the code to contain bugs due to the size alone but I'll be
watching and squashing them and feeding out new patches as it goes.

Because the buffers now dynamically expand you should only run out of
buffering when the kernel runs out of memory for real.  That means a lot of
the horrible hacks high performance drivers used to do just aren't needed any
more.

Description:

tty_insert_flip_char is an old API and continues to work as before, as does
tty_flip_buffer_push() [this is why many drivers dont need modification].  It
does now also return the number of chars inserted

There are also

tty_buffer_request_room(tty, len)

which asks for a buffer block of the length requested and returns the space
found.  This improves efficiency with hardware that knows how much to
transfer.

and tty_insert_flip_string_flags(tty, str, flags, len)

to insert a string of characters and flags

For a smart interface the usual code is

    len = tty_request_buffer_room(tty, amount_hardware_says);
    tty_insert_flip_string(tty, buffer_from_card, len);

More description!

At the moment tty buffers are attached directly to the tty.  This is causing a
lot of the problems related to tty layer locking, also problems at high speed
and also with bursty data (such as occurs in virtualised environments)

I'm working on ripping out the flip buffers and replacing them with a pool of
dynamically allocated buffers.  This allows both for old style "byte I/O"
devices and also helps virtualisation and smart devices where large blocks of
data suddenely materialise and need storing.

So far so good.  Lots of drivers reference tty->flip.*.  Several of them also
call directly and unsafely into function pointers it provides.  This will all
break.  Most drivers can use tty_insert_flip_char which can be kept as an API
but others need more.

At the moment I've added the following interfaces, if people think more will
be needed now is a good time to say

 int tty_buffer_request_room(tty, size)

Try and ensure at least size bytes are available, returns actual room (may be
zero).  At the moment it just uses the flipbuf space but that will change.
Repeated calls without characters being added are not cumulative.  (ie if you
call it with 1, 1, 1, and then 4 you'll have four characters of space.  The
other functions will also try and grow buffers in future but this will be a
more efficient way when you know block sizes.

 int tty_insert_flip_char(tty, ch, flag)

As before insert a character if there is room.  Now returns 1 for success, 0
for failure.

 int tty_insert_flip_string(tty, str, len)

Insert a block of non error characters.  Returns the number inserted.

 int tty_prepare_flip_string(tty, strptr, len)

Adjust the buffer to allow len characters to be added.  Returns a buffer
pointer in strptr and the length available.  This allows for hardware that
needs to use functions like insl or mencpy_fromio.

Signed-off-by: Alan Cox <alan@redhat.com>
Cc: Paul Fulghum <paulkf@microgate.com>
Signed-off-by: Hirokazu Takata <takata@linux-m32r.org>
Signed-off-by: Serge Hallyn <serue@us.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Jeff Dike <jdike@addtoit.com>
Signed-off-by: John Hawkes <hawkes@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Martin Schwidefsky <schwidefsky@de.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-01-10 08:01:59 -08:00
..
atm [PATCH] turn "const static" into "static const" 2006-01-10 08:01:55 -08:00
class [PATCH] TTY layer buffering revamp 2006-01-10 08:01:59 -08:00
core [PATCH] mutex subsystem, semaphore to mutex: VFS, ->i_sem 2006-01-09 15:59:24 -08:00
gadget [PATCH] TTY layer buffering revamp 2006-01-10 08:01:59 -08:00
host Small fixups to the EHCI Kconfig help text 2006-01-10 00:35:22 +01:00
image [PATCH] turn "const static" into "static const" 2006-01-10 08:01:55 -08:00
input Input: add missing keys from input.h to hid-debug.h 2006-01-05 23:00:26 -05:00
media V4L (926_2): Moves compat32 functions from fs to v4l subsystem 2006-01-09 15:24:57 -02:00
misc [PATCH] USB: Remove unneeded kmalloc() return value casts 2006-01-04 13:51:43 -08:00
mon [PATCH] USB: Let usbmon collect less garbage 2006-01-04 13:51:41 -08:00
net [PATCH] USB: zd1201: make sysfs device symlink 2006-01-04 13:51:44 -08:00
serial [PATCH] TTY layer buffering revamp 2006-01-10 08:01:59 -08:00
storage [PATCH] USB Storage: Fix unusual_devs.h order 2006-01-04 13:51:44 -08:00
Kconfig [PATCH] USB: add S3C24XX USB Host driver support 2005-07-29 13:12:53 -07:00
Makefile [PATCH] USB: drivers/usb/storage/libusual 2006-01-04 13:48:31 -08:00
README
usb-skeleton.c [PATCH] USB: fix usb-skeleton limit resource usage patch. 2006-01-04 13:51:45 -08:00

To understand all the Linux-USB framework, you'll use these resources:

    * This source code.  This is necessarily an evolving work, and
      includes kerneldoc that should help you get a current overview.
      ("make pdfdocs", and then look at "usb.pdf" for host side and
      "gadget.pdf" for peripheral side.)  Also, Documentation/usb has
      more information.

    * The USB 2.0 specification (from www.usb.org), with supplements
      such as those for USB OTG and the various device classes.
      The USB specification has a good overview chapter, and USB
      peripherals conform to the widely known "Chapter 9".

    * Chip specifications for USB controllers.  Examples include
      host controllers (on PCs, servers, and more); peripheral
      controllers (in devices with Linux firmware, like printers or
      cell phones); and hard-wired peripherals like Ethernet adapters.

    * Specifications for other protocols implemented by USB peripheral
      functions.  Some are vendor-specific; others are vendor-neutral
      but just standardized outside of the www.usb.org team.

Here is a list of what each subdirectory here is, and what is contained in
them.

core/		- This is for the core USB host code, including the
		  usbfs files and the hub class driver ("khubd").

host/		- This is for USB host controller drivers.  This
		  includes UHCI, OHCI, EHCI, and others that might
		  be used with more specialized "embedded" systems.

gadget/		- This is for USB peripheral controller drivers and
		  the various gadget drivers which talk to them.


Individual USB driver directories.  A new driver should be added to the
first subdirectory in the list below that it fits into.

image/		- This is for still image drivers, like scanners or
		  digital cameras.
input/		- This is for any driver that uses the input subsystem,
		  like keyboard, mice, touchscreens, tablets, etc.
media/		- This is for multimedia drivers, like video cameras,
		  radios, and any other drivers that talk to the v4l
		  subsystem.
net/		- This is for network drivers.
serial/		- This is for USB to serial drivers.
storage/	- This is for USB mass-storage drivers.
class/		- This is for all USB device drivers that do not fit
		  into any of the above categories, and work for a range
		  of USB Class specified devices. 
misc/		- This is for all USB device drivers that do not fit
		  into any of the above categories.