Message Queues and Message Priority

Message queues grow when the STREAMS scheduler is delayed from calling a service procedure by system activity, or when the procedure is blocked by flow control. When called by the scheduler, a module's service procedure processes queued messages in a FIFO manner (getq(9F)). However, some messages associated with certain conditions, such as M_ERROR, must reach their stream destination as rapidly as possible. This is accomplished by associating priorities with the messages. These priorities imply a certain ordering of messages in the queue, as shown in Figure 7–5.

Each message has a priority band associated with it. Ordinary messages have a priority band of zero. The priority band of high-priority messages is ignored since they are high priority and thus not affected by flow control. putq(9F) places high-priority messages at the head of the message queue, followed by priority band messages (expedited data) and ordinary messages.

Figure 7–5 Message Ordering in a Queue

When a message is queued, it is placed after the messages of the same priority already in the queue (in other words, FIFO within their order of queueing). This affects the flow-control parameters associated with the band of the same priority. Message priorities range from 0 (normal) to 255 (highest). This provides up to 256 bands of message flow within a stream. An example of how to implement expedited data would be with one extra band of data flow (priority band 1), is shown in the following figure. Queues are explained in detail in the next section.

Figure 7–6 Message Ordering with One Priority Band

High-priority messages are not subject to flow control. When they are queued by putq(9F), the associated queue is always scheduled, even if the queue has been disabled (noenable(9F)). When the service procedure is called by the stream's scheduler, the procedure uses getq(9F) to retrieve the first message on queue, which is a high-priority message. Service procedures must be implemented to act on high-priority messages immediately. The mechanisms just mentioned—priority message queueing, absence of flow control, and immediate processing by a procedure—result in rapid transport of high-priority messages between the originating and destination components in the stream.

In general, high-priority messages should be processed immediately by the module's put procedure and not placed on the service queue.

A service procedure must never queue a high-priority message on its own queue because an infinite loop results. The enqueuing triggers the queue to be immediately scheduled again.