Re: Interrupt handlers in NetBSD 5.0

[Hans Petter Selasky <hselasky%c2i.net@localhost>]

On Tuesday 09 June 2009 14:16:21 der Mouse wrote:
> >>> If I want to defer a hardware interrupt, how do I disable that
> >>> interrupt until the deferred interrupt handler gets executed[?]
> >>
> >> That depends on your device [...]
> >
> > I understand that, but it is very important to stop interrupts from
> > happening on the hardware vector, when deferring interrupts.
> >
> > Are you trying to explaing this is not possible?
>
> No...just that it's device-specific.  That is, instead of telling the
> OS or the interrupt routing hardware to ignore the interrupt, you need
> to tell the device to stop generating it.

If you could forward that message to the hardware engineers making those 
chips, that they really need to add a global interrupt disable bit, then I 
would be fine.

I would have hoped that there was a machine independent solution for this, how 
to mask an interrupt vector in the OS.

BTW: What is the preferred mechanism to exclude an interrupt handler from 
running? In NetBSD 4.0 you could use spl_net() and now you use ???

Thanks for sharing some insight into how NetBSD 5.0 works.

--HPS