Q: 2.4 Scheduler

Hi.

I have some specific questions concering the implementation of the scheduler in 2.4.18, which I hope you would please answer for me.

Question #1:
Has anyone documented the functionality of the current scheduler? It seems that the algorithm used is very sparse explained (although very easy to understand by looking at the code), and the comments in the code does not always what the purpose of a function is, but rather how it works.

Question #2:
In the schedule function, a 'goodness' value is calculated for all processes, and the maximum is remembered. If this value is zero, tasks gets a new quantum. The question here is which tasks. Take a look at the code below. (shed.c, 617)

/* Do we need to re-calculate counters? */

if (unlikely(!c)) {
	struct task_struct *p;

	spin_unlock_irq(&runqueue_lock);
	read_lock(&tasklist_lock);
	for_each_task(p)
		p->counter = (p->counter >> 1) + NICE_TO_TICKS(p->nice);
	read_unlock(&tasklist_lock);
	spin_lock_irq(&runqueue_lock);
	goto repeat_schedule;
}

What I do not understand here is the 'for_all_tasks'. Its defined in sched.h, line 870:

#define for_each_task(p) \
	for (p = &init_task ; (p = p->next_task) != &init_task ; )

Would someone please explain the structure of this - Its very hard to
see what this list consists of. Also if anyone has the time to give some more general information on 'struct task' I would be happy - It's a big structure, and it's hard to track down where the structure is modified, and why.

Question #3:
What is the main purpose of 'reschedule_idle.'? In the UP case, its all about removing the current task from the CPU, but a more detailed explanation would be nice. Of course I'm interested in the SMP case.

I hope that some of you would be so kind as to spend some time to answer these questions. The reason for me asking is, that I'm trying to document the scheduler (from a theoretical point of view). I also plan to describe the works of Ingo's O(1) scheduler in 2.5, but I haven't started looking at that yet.

Thanks in advance
Anders Fugmann

Yes.

There is text about the scheduler in O'Reilly's
"understanding the linux kernel" as well as in
my "kernel tour" lecture.

You can get the latter from http://surriel.com/lectures/

regards,

Rik

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