xref: /freebsd/share/man/man9/physio.9 (revision a35d88931c87cfe6bd38f01d7bad22140b3b38f3)
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
7.\" by Paul Kranenburg.
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37.\" $FreeBSD$
38.\"
39.Dd July 8, 2004
40.Dt PHYSIO 9
41.Os
42.Sh NAME
43.Nm physio
44.Nd initiate I/O on raw devices
45.Sh SYNOPSIS
46.In sys/param.h
47.In sys/systm.h
48.In sys/bio.h
49.In sys/buf.h
50.Ft int
51.Fn physio "dev_t dev" "struct uio *uio" "int ioflag"
52.Sh DESCRIPTION
53The
54.Fn physio
55is a helper function typically called from character device
56.Fn read
57and
58.Fn write
59routines to start I/O on a user process buffer.
60The maximum amount of data to transfer with each call
61is determined by
62.Fa dev->si_iosize_max .
63The
64.Fn physio
65call converts the I/O request into a
66.Fn strategy
67request and passes the new request to the driver's
68.Fn strategy
69routine for processing.
70.Pp
71Since
72.Fa uio
73normally describes user space addresses,
74.Fn physio
75needs to lock the those pages into memory.
76This is done by calling
77.Fn vmapbuf
78for the appropriate pages.
79.Fn physio
80always awaits the completion of the entire requested transfer before
81returning, unless an error condition is detected earlier.
82.Pp
83A break-down of the arguments follows:
84.Bl -tag -width indent
85.It Fa dev
86The device number identifying the device to interact with.
87.It Fa uio
88The description of the entire transfer as requested by the user process.
89Currently, the results of passing a
90.Fa uio
91structure with the
92.Va uio_segflg
93set to anything other than
94.Dv UIO_USERSPACE
95are undefined.
96.It Fa ioflag
97The ioflag argument from the
98.Fn read
99or
100.Fn write
101function calling
102.Fn physio .
103.El
104.Sh RETURN VALUES
105If successful
106.Fn physio
107returns 0.
108.Er EFAULT
109is returned if the address range described by
110.Fa uio
111is not accessible by the requesting process.
112.Fn physio
113will return any error resulting from calls to the device strategy routine,
114by examining the
115.Dv B_ERROR
116buffer flag and the
117.Va b_error
118field.
119Note that the actual transfer size may be less than requested by
120.Fa uio
121if the device signals an
122.Dq "end of file"
123condition.
124.Sh SEE ALSO
125.Xr read 2 ,
126.Xr write 2
127.Sh HISTORY
128The
129.Nm
130manual page is originally from
131.Nx
132with minor changes for applicability with
133.Fx .
134.Pp
135The
136.Nm
137call has been completely re-written for providing higher
138I/O and paging performance.
139