mutex(9F)

NAME

mutex, mutex_enter, mutex_exit, mutex_init, mutex_destroy, mutex_owned, mutex_tryenter − mutual exclusion lock routines

SYNOPSIS

#include <sys/ksynch.h>

void mutex_init(kmutex_t ∗mp, char ∗name, kmutex_type_t type, void ∗arg);

void mutex_destroy(kmutex_t ∗mp);

void mutex_enter(kmutex_t ∗mp);

void mutex_exit(kmutex_t ∗mp);

int mutex_owned(kmutex_t ∗mp);

int mutex_tryenter(kmutex_t ∗mp);

INTERFACE LEVEL

Solaris DDI specific (Solaris DDI).

ARGUMENTS

mp Pointer to a kernel mutex lock (kmutex_t).

name Descriptive string. This is obsolete and should be NULL. (Non-NULL strings are legal, but they’re a waste of kernel memory.)

type Type of mutex lock.

arg Type-specific argument for initialization routine.

DESCRIPTION

A mutex enforces a policy of mutual exclusion. Only one thread at a time may hold a particular mutex. Threads trying to lock a held mutex will block until the mutex is unlocked.

Mutexes are strictly bracketing and may not be recursively locked. That is to say, mutexes should be exited in the opposite order they were entered, and cannot be reentered before exiting.

mutex_init() initializes a mutex. It is an error to initialize a mutex more than once. The type argument should be set to MUTEX_DRIVER.

arg provides type-specific information for a given variant type of mutex. When mutex_init() is called for driver mutexes, if the mutex is used by the interrupt handler, the arg should be the ddi_iblock_cookie returned from ddi_get_iblock_cookie(9F) or ddi_get_soft_iblock_cookie(9F). If the mutex is never used inside an interrupt handler, the argument should be NULL.

mutex_enter() is used to acquire a mutex. If the mutex is already held, then the caller blocks. After returning, the calling thread is the owner of the mutex. If the mutex is already held by the calling thread, a panic will ensue.

mutex_owned() should only be used in ASSERT()s, and may be enforced by not being defined unless the preprocessor symbol DEBUG is defined. Its return value is non-zero if the current thread (or, if that cannot be determined, at least some thread) holds the mutex pointed to by mp.

mutex_tryenter() is very similar to mutex_enter() except that it doesn’t block when the mutex is already held. mutex_tryenter() returns non-zero when it acquired the mutex and 0 when the mutex is already held.

mutex_exit() releases a mutex and will unblock another thread if any are blocked on the mutex.

mutex_destroy() releases any resources that might have been allocated by mutex_init(). mutex_destroy() must be called before freeing the memory containing the mutex, and should be called with the mutex unheld (not owned by any thread). The caller must somehow be sure that no other thread will attempt to use the mutex.

RETURN VALUES

mutex_tryenter() returns non-zero on success and zero of failure.

mutex_owned() returns non-zero if the calling thread currently holds the mutex pointed to by mp, or when that cannot be determined, if any thread holds the mutex. mutex_owned() returns zero otherwise.

CONTEXT

These functions can be called from user, kernel, or high-level interrupt context, except for mutex_init() and mutex_destroy(), which can be called from user or kernel context only.

EXAMPLES

Initialization

A driver might do this to initialize a mutex that is part of its unit structure and used in its interrupt routine:

ddi_get_iblock_cookie(dip, 0, &iblock);
mutex_init(&un->un_lock, NULL, MUTEX_DRIVER,
(void ∗)iblock);
ddi_add_intr(dip, 0, NULL, &dev_cookie, xxintr,
(caddr_t)un);

Also, a routine that expects to be called with a certain lock held might have the following ASSERT:

xxstart(struct xxunit ∗un)
{
ASSERT(mutex_owned(&un->un_lock));
...

NOTES

Compiling with _LOCKTEST or _MPSTATS defined no longer has any effect. To gather lock statistics, see lockstat(1M).

SunOS 5.6 — Last change: 7 May 1997

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