table of contents
| UIO(9) | Kernel Developer's Manual | UIO(9) | 
NAME¶
uio, uiomove,
  uiomove_nofault —
SYNOPSIS¶
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/uio.h>
struct uio {
	struct	iovec *uio_iov;		/* scatter/gather list */
	int	uio_iovcnt;		/* length of scatter/gather list */
	off_t	uio_offset;		/* offset in target object */
	ssize_t	uio_resid;		/* remaining bytes to copy */
	enum	uio_seg uio_segflg;	/* address space */
	enum	uio_rw uio_rw;		/* operation */
	struct	thread *uio_td;		/* owner */
};
int
uiomove(void
  *buf, int howmuch,
  struct uio *uiop);
int
  
  uiomove_nofault(void
    *buf, int howmuch,
    struct uio *uiop);
DESCRIPTION¶
The functionsuiomove() and
  uiomove_nofault() are used to transfer data between
  buffers and I/O vectors that might possibly cross the user/kernel space
  boundary.
As a result of any read(2),
    write(2), readv(2), or
    writev(2) system call that is being passed to a
    character-device driver, the appropriate driver d_read
    or d_write entry will be called with a pointer to a
    struct uio being passed. The transfer request is
    encoded in this structure. The driver itself should use
    uiomove() or
    uiomove_nofault() to get at the data in this
    structure.
The fields in the uio structure are:
- uio_iov
 - The array of I/O vectors to be processed. In the case of scatter/gather I/O, this will be more than one vector.
 - uio_iovcnt
 - The number of I/O vectors present.
 - uio_offset
 - The offset into the device.
 - uio_resid
 - The remaining number of bytes to process, updated after transfer.
 - uio_segflg
 - One of the following flags:
    
UIO_USERSPACE- The I/O vector points into a process's address space.
 UIO_SYSSPACE- The I/O vector points into the kernel address space.
 UIO_NOCOPY- Do not copy, already in object.
 
 - uio_rw
 - The direction of the desired transfer, either
      
UIO_READorUIO_WRITE. - uio_td
 - The pointer to a struct thread for the associated thread; used if uio_segflg indicates that the transfer is to be made from/to a process's address space.
 
The function uiomove_nofault() requires
    that the buffer and I/O vectors be accessible without incurring a page
    fault. The source and destination addresses must be physically mapped for
    read and write access, respectively, and neither the source nor destination
    addresses may be pageable. Thus, the function
    uiomove_nofault() can be called from contexts where
    acquiring virtual memory system locks or sleeping are prohibited.
RETURN VALUES¶
On successuiomove() and
  uiomove_nofault() will return 0; on error they will
  return an appropriate error code.
EXAMPLES¶
The idea is that the driver maintains a private buffer for its data, and processes the request in chunks of maximal the size of this buffer. Note that the buffer handling below is very simplified and will not work (the buffer pointer is not being advanced in case of a partial read), it is just here to demonstrate theuio handling.
/* MIN() can be found there: */
#include <sys/param.h>
#define BUFSIZE 512
static char buffer[BUFSIZE];
static int data_available;	/* amount of data that can be read */
static int
fooread(struct cdev *dev, struct uio *uio, int flag)
{
	int rv, amnt;
	rv = 0;
	while (uio->uio_resid > 0) {
		if (data_available > 0) {
			amnt = MIN(uio->uio_resid, data_available);
			rv = uiomove(buffer, amnt, uio);
			if (rv != 0)
				break;
			data_available -= amnt;
		} else
			tsleep(...);	/* wait for a better time */
	}
	if (rv != 0) {
		/* do error cleanup here */
	}
	return (rv);
}
ERRORS¶
uiomove() and uiomove_nofault()
  will fail and return the following error code if:
- [
EFAULT] - The invoked copyin(9) or copyout(9)
      returned
      
EFAULT 
In addition, uiomove_nofault() will fail
    and return the following error code if:
- [
EFAULT] - A page fault occurs.
 
SEE ALSO¶
read(2), readv(2), write(2), writev(2), copyin(9), copyout(9), sleep(9)HISTORY¶
Theuio mechanism appeared in some early version of
  UNIX.
AUTHORS¶
This manual page was written by Jörg Wunsch.| January 19, 2012 | Linux 4.9.0-9-amd64 |