undefined | Better HN

0 pointstopspin1d ago0 comments

> It seems like it would be possible to implement this in userspace using shared memory

It is not. Perhaps this should be possible, but Linux doesn't provide userspace facilities that would be necessary to do this entirely in userspace.

This is not merely an API shim that allows Windows binary object to dynamically link and run. It’s an effort to recreate the behavior of NT kernel synchronization and waiting semantics. To do this, Linux kernel synchronization primitives and scheduler API must be used. You can read the code[1] and observe that this is a compatibility adapter that relies heavily on Linux kernel primitives and their coordination with the kernel scheduler. No approach using purely user space synchronization primitives can do this both efficiently and accurately.

[1] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/misc/n...

0 comments

lifis1d ago

The code doesn't really seem to use any kernel functionality other than spinlocks/mutexes and waiting and waking up tasks.

That same code should be portable to userspace by: - Allocating everything into shared memory, where the shared memory fd replaces the ntsync device fd

- Using an index into a global table of object pointers instead of object fds

- Using futex-based mutexes instead of kernel spinlocks

- Using a futex-based parking/unparking system like parking_lot does

Obviously this breaks if the shared memory is corrupted or if you SIGKILL any process while it's touching it, but for Wine getting that seems acceptable. A kernel driver is clearly better though for this reason.

topspinOP1d ago

People such as Figura and Bertazi have been attempting to do what you propose for most of a decade now[1]. They've ended up with this, after two previous implementations running in Wine for many years. Thier reasons are explained in their documentation[2]. Perhaps you know better. We all look forward to your work.

[1] https://lkml.org/lkml/2019/7/30/1399 [2] https://docs.kernel.org/userspace-api/ntsync.html

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse