Re: [PATCH 4/9] ARM: syscall: always store thread_info->syscall

Russell King - ARM Linux admin
2020-09-28T15:08:58Z

On Mon, Sep 28, 2020 at 02:42:43PM +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> > I need some idea how this numberspace is managed in order to
> > understand the code so I can review it, I guess it all makes perfect
> > sense but I need some background here.
>
> I also had never understood this part before, and I'm still not
> sure where the 0x900000 actually comes from, though my best
> guess is that this was intended as a an OS specific number space,
> with '9' being assigned to Linux (similar to the way Itanium and
> MIPS do with their respective offsets). By the time EABI got added,
> this was apparently no longer considered helpful.

It is an OS specific number space, originally designed to allow
RISC OS programs to be run under Linux. There was indeed such a
project, but that died and the code ripped out. EABI, by using
SWI 0 - or more accurately, not reading the SWI opcode, trampled
over the ability for RISC OS programs to be run under Linux.

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