xref: /freebsd/share/man/man9/physio.9 (revision 952d112864d8008aa87278a30a539d888a8493cd)
1.\"	$NetBSD: physio.9,v 1.2 1996/11/11 00:05:12 lukem 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
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37.Dd June 15, 1996
38.Dt PHYSIO 9
39.Os FreeBSD
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 process into memory.  This is done by setting the
71.Dv P_PHYSIO
72flag on the process.
73.Fn physio
74always awaits the completion of the entire requested transfer before
75returning, unless an error condition is detected earlier. In all cases,
76the buffer passed in
77.Fa bp
78is locked (marked as
79.Dq busy )
80for the duration of the entire transfer.
81.Pp
82A break-down of the arguments follows:
83.Bl -tag -width indent
84.It Fa strategy
85The device strategy routine to call for each chunk of data to initiate
86device I/O.
87.It Fa bp
88The buffer to use with the strategy routine. The buffer flags will have
89.Dv B_BUSY ,
90and
91.Dv B_PHYS
92set when passed to the strategy routine. If
93.Dv NULL ,
94a buffer is allocated from a system pool.
95.It Fa dev
96The device number identifying the device to interact with.
97.It Fa flags
98Direction of transfer; the only valid settings are
99.Dv B_READ
100or
101.Dv B_WRITE .
102.It Fa minphys
103A device specific routine called to determine the maximum transfer size
104that the device's strategy routine can handle.
105.It Fa uio
106The description of the entire transfer as requested by the user process.
107Currently, the results of passing a
108.Fa uio
109structure with the
110.Sq uio_segflg
111set to anything other than
112.Dv UIO_USERSPACE ,
113are undefined.
114.El
115.Pp
116.Sh RETURN VALUES
117If successful
118.Fn physio
119returns 0.
120.Er EFAULT
121is returned if the address range described by
122.Fa uio
123is not accessible by the requesting process.
124.Fn physio
125will return any error resulting from calls to the device strategy routine,
126by examining the
127.Dv B_ERROR
128buffer flag and the
129.Va b_error
130field. Note that the actual transfer size may be less than requested by
131.Fa uio
132if the device signals an
133.Dq end of file
134condition.
135.Sh SEE ALSO
136.Xr read 2 ,
137.Xr write 2
138