Passing data to a thread

[Adam Lackorzynski]

On Tue Sep 02, 2014 at 16:31:33 +0200, Valentin Hauner wrote:
> I'm trying to pass some data to a newly created thread.
> Since l4_thread_ex_regs only accepts an instruction pointer, but no data
> pointer, it seems impossible to me to use a parameterized function such as:
> > thread1_func(void *data) { /* Read the data ... */ }
> 
> So far, my efforts are:
> 
> 1. I've tried filling the stack allocated to each newly created thread with
> > thread_stack = malloc(8 << 10);
> > thread_stack[0] = my_data;
> but then I'm not able to pop the data from the stack in thread1_func.
> 
> 2. I've tried using IPC: The main thread which is creating the new
> threads sends the data to the destination thread. I'm using l4_ipc_send
> in the main thread and l4_ipc_receive in thread1_func just like in your
> utcb-ipc example. It works great, but unfortunately the call of
> l4_ipc_send leads to an _immediate_ execution of thread1_func (timeouts:
> L4_IPC_NEVER), so my scheduling policy is not respected.
> 
> So how can I pass data to a thread in a way that is equivalent to
> passing arguments to functions?

For that we need to know the calling convention of functions. For
x86-32, the arguments are passed via the stack. So you'd do it like
this:

   l4_umword_t stack[2000];
   stack[1999] = (l4_umword_t)my_data;
   stack[1998] = 0;

And use &stack[1998] as an initial stack pointer for the thread.

On ARM the setup can be the same, however, arguments are passed in
registers, so you'll have a small asm stub for getting the argument from
the stack to the register before calling the thread function. The same
for x86-64.





Adam
-- 
Adam                 adam at os.inf.tu-dresden.de
  Lackorzynski         http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/~adam/