On 2/1/07, Ralf Baechle <email@example.com> wrote:
The values of those registers need to be preserved so they can later be
copied into the signal frame.
Let's take for example sys_sigreturn(). In my understanding this
syscall is used automatically when the signal handler returns. At this
time, I don't see the point to save the static registers since they
have been already saved by setup_sigcontext().
Actually I don't see why they need to be saved/restored at all...
Let's say that process P1 sends a signal X to process P2 which has a
handler defined for signal X and assume that the static registers are
not saved at all.
Signal X is received by P2. The signal handler is now executed in user
mode. At this point what are the values of the static registers ? I
would say they have the same values (let's call this state S) when P2
got interrupted. Once the signal handler returns into the kernel mode
by executing 'syscall __NR_sigreturn' instructions, static registers
still have state S and this state is normally preserved during
sys_sigreturn syscall execution. So when resuming the normal execution
of P2, the static registers have the correct values.
What am I missing ?