Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2012 21:15:50 +0200 Subject: setup_thread_stack From: francesco.scali@gmail.com To: kernelnewbies@kernelnewbies.org Hi, I'm totally new to kernel code, just trying to understand the basics of the core subsystems. During the do_fork call, there is a call to dup_task_struct, which in turn calls setup_thread_stack. What's this call supposed to do? Inside I can see a call to the "task_thread_info" macro, but I don't quite understand it: #define task_thread_info(task) ((struct thread_info *)(task)->stack) can a task_struct be cast to a thread_info? perhaps my C knowledge should be improved..I know :( Sorry for the trivial question..just trying to understand :) it is nothing about C, but architecture of kernel. kernel put thread_info of every process at the bottom of stack. please reference thread_info.h for your specific cpu architecture: /* * how to get the thread information struct from C */ static inline struct thread_info *current_thread_info(void) __attribute_const__; static inline struct thread_info *current_thread_info(void) { register unsigned long sp asm ("sp"); return (struct thread_info *)(sp & ~(THREAD_SIZE - 1)); } because kernel put thread_info at the bottom of stack, so when one process is running, kernel can use above inline function to get the thread_info conveniently. Regards, Francesco _______________________________________________ Kernelnewbies mailing list Kernelnewbies@kernelnewbies.org http://lists.kernelnewbies.org/mailman/listinfo/kernelnewbies