On 05/07/2009 01:08 PM, Ralf Baechle wrote: > On Thu, May 07, 2009 at 03:10:19PM +0530, Maxin John wrote: > > The man page indeed deserved some polishing 15 years after I wrote it. > Guess I have to thank Maxin for kicking me to finally do that :-) > > Unlike to his patch I've chosen to document the actual behaviour in the > BUGS section and elaborated on the history of the call on MIPS and > differences on other architectures. In this context I found it preferable > to not delete the section about error returns for invalid cache args. Edited this patch, and applied. Cheers, Michael > --- cacheflush.2.orig 2009-05-07 11:12:34.000000000 +0100 > +++ cacheflush.2 2009-05-07 11:49:34.000000000 +0100 > @@ -1,5 +1,6 @@ > -.\" Written by Ralf Baechle (ralf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx), > +.\" Written by Ralf Baechle (ralf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx), > .\" Copyright (c) 1994, 1995 Waldorf GMBH > +.\" Copyright (c) 2009 Wind River Systems > .\" > .\" This is free documentation; you can redistribute it and/or > .\" modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as > @@ -21,7 +22,7 @@ > .\" Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, > .\" USA. > .\" > -.TH CACHEFLUSH 2 2007-05-26 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual" > +.TH CACHEFLUSH 2 2009-05-07 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual" > .SH NAME > cacheflush \- flush contents of instruction and/or data cache > .SH SYNOPSIS > @@ -73,18 +74,35 @@ > .BR BCACHE . > .SH CONFORMING TO > This Linux-specific system call is only available on MIPS based systems. > -.\" FIXME This system call was only on MIPS back in 1.2 days, but > -.\" by now it is on a number of other architectures (but not i386). > -.\" Investigate the details and update this page. > -It should not be used in programs intended to be portable. > +Historically the system calls was available on all MIPS UNIX variants > +including RISC/os, IRIX, Ultrix, NetBSD, OpenBSD and FreeBSD as well as > +some non-UNIX MIPS operating systems have implemented > +.BR cacheflush () > +that the existence of this call in MIPS operating systems is a de-facto > +standard. > +.SH CAVEAT > +.BR cacheflush () > +should not be used in programs intended to be portable. > +Linux on several other architectures does support a > +.BR cacheflush () > +systems call but with different arguments. > .\" Irix 6.5 appears to have a cacheflush() syscall -- mtk > .SH BUGS > -The current implementation ignores the > +Kernels older than 2.6.11 ignores the > .I addr > and > .I nbytes > arguments. > -Therefore, the whole cache is always flushed. > +Therefore, the whole cache is always flushed making this function fairly > +expensive. > + > +This function is always behaving as if > +.BR BCACHE > +has been passed for the > +.I cache > +argument and does not do any error checking on the > +.I cache > +argument. > .SH COLOPHON > This page is part of release 3.09 of the Linux > .I man-pages > -- Michael Kerrisk Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/ Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/ -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-man" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
