Software State Management Routines

To assist device driver writers in allocating state structures, the Solaris 7 DDI/DKI provides a set of memory management routines called the software state management routines (also known as the soft state routines). These routines dynamically allocate, retrieve, and destroy memory items of a specified size, and hide all the details of list management in a multithreaded kernel. An item number is used to identify the desired memory item; this number can be (and usually is) the instance number assigned by the system.

The driver must provide a state pointer, which is used by the soft state system to create the list of memory items:

	static void *statep;

Routines are provided to:

• Initialize the provided state pointer - ddi_soft_state_init(9F)

• Allocate space for a certain item - ddi_soft_state_zalloc(9F)

• Retrieve a pointer to the indicated item - ddi_get_soft_state(9F)

• Free the memory item - ddi_soft_state_free(9F)

• Finish using the state pointer - ddi_soft_state_fini(9F)

When the module is loaded, the driver calls ddi_soft_state_init(9F) to initialize the driver state pointer, passing a hint indicating how many items to pre-allocate. If more items are needed, the driver will allocate them as necessary. The driver must call ddi_soft_state_fini(9F) when the driver is unloaded.

To allocate an instance of the soft state structure, the driver calls ddi_soft_state_zalloc(9F). Once the item is allocated, the driver calls ddi_get_soft_state(9F) to retrieve the pointer to the allocated structure. This is usually done when the device is attached. When the device is detached, the driver calls ddi_soft_state_free(9F) to free the memory.

See "Loadable Driver Interface" for an example use of these routines.