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Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2000 11:48:56 +1100
From: Andrew Morton <andrewm@uow.edu.au>
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To: Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@mandrakesoft.com>
CC: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Rik van Riel <riel@conectiva.com.br>,
        netdev@oss.sgi.com
Subject: Re: PATCH: 8139too kernel thread
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Jeff Garzik wrote:
> 
> (note Linus, not for applying...)
> 
> Here is a patch, against 2.4.0-test11-pre2, that I wanted to forward
> to the lists for comment.
> 
> Many of the ethernet drivers have timer routines, which are
> called every three-five seconds or so.  These timer routines
> typically do stuff related to media selection or checking, and call
> mdio_{read,write} to interact with the phy.
> 

I think it's useful.  More generally, I'd like to have
"process context timers" - the ability to call a function
from process context at a set time.  Then a single kernel
thread could handle all things like this.  Pretty simple to do.


BTW: can the OOM killer possibly kill a kernel thread?
If it does, yenta_socket_thread() will nuke the machine.
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