Windows NDIS Driver: Concurrent Read/Write on a single device (IRP_MJ_READ/WRITE)

Question

Starting with the ndisprot sample from Microsoft I try to write a NDIS protocol driver. From User space I try to read and write to the device simultaneous (out of two threads). Since I don't receive any packets, the ReadFile system call blocks. I'm not able to complete a WriteFile system call in this state.

CHAR            NdisProtDevice[] = "\\\\.\\\\NDISprot";
CHAR *          pNdisProtDevice = &NdisProtDevice[0];

this.iHandle = CreateFile(pNdisProtDevice,
            GENERIC_WRITE | GENERIC_READ, 0, 0, OPEN_EXISTING, FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL, 0);

// Blocks, because no frames arrive

bSuccess = (BOOLEAN)ReadFile(Handle,
                             (LPVOID)pReadBuf,
                             PacketLength,
                             &BytesRead,
                             NULL);

...
// Called some seconds later from another thread, while ReadFile still blocking...
bSuccess = (BOOLEAN)WriteFile(Handle,
                              pWriteBuf,
                              PacketLength,
                              &BytesWritten,
                              NULL); 

I added some debug messages and discovered that the driver function associated with IRP_MJ_WRITE (NdisprotWrite) gets not even called! Something between the user space application and the driver blocks concurrent access to the device \Device\NDISprot.

How can I concurrent Read and Write to the file?

Answer 1

By default, you can only have one outstanding I/O request per usermode handle. Either open multiple handles, or open your one handle with FILE_FLAG_OVERLAPPED. (Once you use FILE_FLAG_OVERLAPPED, you also generally need to use OVERLAPPED structures - make sure you've got the gist of it by skimming this and this.)