Messages in this thread |  | | From | <> (Peeter Joot) | Subject | Re: proc fs and shared pids | Date | Tue, 6 Aug 1996 12:00:41 -0400 (EDT) |
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> There isn't. We discussed this some time ago (I don't remember with whom), > and it was felt to be generally a "good thing". It has the advantage of > allowing normal UNIX utilities to automatically work both on the whole > "process" (in the traditional thread meaning) while still allowing the same > utilities to handle individual threads if they wanted to. > > Traditional threads suck. The whole idea with the Linux "clone()" was to look > at the thread idea from a new perspective, and have something that makes the > difference between threads and processes fade away. We want to have threaded > programs, but we ALSO want to not think of the threads as anything special: > they are just another form of processes. As such I don't want special thread > system calls, instead I want _generic_ system calls that work both in a > thread and a process context. That's why I proposed the high-bits thread-ID > approach. > > The only problem as far as I'm concerned is that I don't actually use the > thread facilities, and as such I'm unlikely to start coding. I've been hoping > that people that are interested in threads start using clone() for them > (which finally has happened, thank God), and that as it becomes clear that we > need more support (like the thread ID thing) people start sending me patches. > Hint hint..
After playing around with the Xavier's clone() based pthreads package, for which the threads use different pids I made some small kernel modifications to put the thread information in the high bits of the pid as you suggested earlier.
Basically the "tid" is the position of the task_struct in the task array -- I thought this would be a simple and quick way to get a unique thread identifier since it is found anyways in the do_fork().
I can send or post a patch, but I wanted to test it out a bit more first.
Peeter -- Peeter Joot TOROLAB(PJOOT) joot@vnet.ibm.com IBM Canada Tie Line 778-3186 Phone 416-448-3186
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