Communicating between Kernel Threads in Linux

Question

I am porting a app/PCI driver from vxWorks to Linux and I would like to keep the same architecture if possible. The current driver has 2 tasks(threads) that communicate with each other using message queues. Is there a mechanism to communicate between kernel threads? The message queues are being used to pass buffer addresses and size info so the tasks can use DMA to move large amounts of data.

Answer 1

I would strongly advise against keeping the VxWorks architecture on Linux. Kernel thread proliferation is frowned upon, your code will never make it into official kernel tree. Even if you don't care about that, are you 100% sure that you want to develop a driver in a non-standard way ? Things would be much simpler if you would just get rid of these two tasks. BTW, why on earth you need tasks for PCI driver to begin with ?

Answer 2

It sounds like the workqueue interface might be what you're after - or for something lighter-weight, a kfifo combined with a rwsem semaphore.