🚀 go-pugleaf

gleason@mwk.uucp writes:
>
>  OK, I'm still converting thousands of lines of MACRO-32 to DEC C on
>an Alpha. I am now wondering about "library functions" such as memcpy,
>strncpy and the like.
>
>  Is there any reason to think they would be safe to call in kernel
>mode, at high IPL, and with spinlocks held? Or would that be more like
>expecting lib$get_input to work in the middle of a driver?
>
You might get lucky, but I wouldn't do it.  If nothing else, you'd
have problems locking down those routines to avoid pagefaults, since
they're in a shareable image.  Plus, you never know what else they're
going to call, which would also need to be locked down at elevated
IPL.

On the VAX, it's easy to generate the machine code to make sure a
particular C routine doesn't call an external routine.  It's not quite
as easy on Alpha just because of the sheer number of funky
instructions.  I'm going to have to learn a whole new way of thinking!
8-)

Hunter
------
Hunter Goatley, VMS Systems Programmer, Western Kentucky University
goathunter@WKUVX1.BITNET, 502-745-5251