xref: /netbsd/share/man/man9/physio.9 (revision bf9ec67e)
1.\"	$NetBSD: physio.9,v 1.9 2001/06/21 12:13:36 wiz Exp $
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37.Dd June 15, 1996
38.Dt PHYSIO 9
39.Os
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.
58It calls back on the provided
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.
67Since
68.Fa uio
69normally describes user space addresses,
70.Fn physio
71needs to lock the appropriate data area into memory before each transaction
72with
73.Fa strategy ( see
74.Xr uvm_vslock 9
75and
76.Xr uvm_vsunlock 9 ) .
77.Fn physio
78always awaits the completion of the entire requested transfer before
79returning, unless an error condition is detected earlier.
80In all cases, the buffer passed in
81.Fa bp
82is locked (marked as
83.Dq busy )
84for the duration of the entire transfer.
85.Pp
86A break-down of the arguments follows:
87.Bl -tag -width indent
88.It Fa strategy
89The device strategy routine to call for each chunk of data to initiate
90device I/O.
91.It Fa bp
92The buffer to use with the strategy routine.
93The buffer flags will have
94.Dv B_BUSY ,
95.Dv B_PHYS ,
96and
97.Dv B_RAW
98set when passed to the strategy routine.
99If
100.Dv NULL ,
101a buffer is allocated from a system pool.
102.It Fa dev
103The device number identifying the device to interact with.
104.It Fa flags
105Direction of transfer; the only valid settings are
106.Dv B_READ
107or
108.Dv B_WRITE .
109.It Fa minphys
110A device specific routine called to determine the maximum transfer size
111that the device's strategy routine can handle.
112.It Fa uio
113The description of the entire transfer as requested by the user process.
114Currently, the results of passing a
115.Fa uio
116structure with the
117.Sq uio_segflg
118set to anything other than
119.Dv UIO_USERSPACE ,
120are undefined.
121.El
122.Sh RETURN VALUES
123If successful
124.Fn physio
125returns 0.
126.Er EFAULT
127is returned if the address range described by
128.Fa uio
129is not accessible by the requesting process.
130.Fn physio
131will return any error resulting from calls to the device strategy routine,
132by examining the
133.Dv B_ERROR
134buffer flag and the
135.Sq b_error
136field.
137Note that the actual transfer size may be less than requested by
138.Fa uio
139if the device signals an
140.Dq end of file
141condition.
142.Sh SEE ALSO
143.Xr read 2 ,
144.Xr write 2
145