kthreadd (was Re: nfsiod issues?)

Derek Fawcus (df@eyrie.demon.co.uk)
Thu, 18 Apr 1996 23:38:30 +0100 (BST)

Olaf Kirch wrote:
>
> The difficulty with kernel threads is that they are created by using
> sys_clone(), which means that they inherit everything from the process
> creating them, including its VM.

An idea I had for a similar problem is kthreadd. This would be a kernel
thread created on boot (just after kswapd), which would sit around waiting
for requests to spawn new kernel threads. These thread's would therefore
have no user VM.

I haven't decided upon the actual mechanism for talking to kthreadd,
almost anything would do - e.g an internally opened pipe, down which three
values (long & pointers) are shoved, or some other trick.

DF

-- 
Derek Fawcus (G7FVS)                                df@eyrie.demon.co.uk