Hi all, I know that kernel routines can be activated in several ways and many different things can be executed in the kernel: . A process invokes a system call (a system call is executed in the kernel). . The CPU executing a process, signals an exception (e.g. due to an invalid instruction). In this case, an exception handler is executed under the kernel on behalf of the process that caused it. . A peripheral device issues an interrupt signal to the CPU and the kernel executes the corresponding interrupt handler. . A kernel thread is executed in the kernel. What I want to do is to find a way of identifying what is currently executed under the kernel by either looking the values of CPU registers (I am talking about the x86 architecture) or by looking at particular flags or values being set in various Linux structures (such as the task_struct). In particular, I want to know if a kernel thread, an interrupt handler, an exception handler, etc is executed at a particular time instant in the kernel. For example, is there a way to tell that a system call is executed (and ideally, which one)? Would the execution of a system call set a particular value to a CPU register or to the task_struct of the process of which is executed under? Regarding the peripheral interrupt case, I guess we can tell if an interrupt handler is executed by looking at the ISR flags of the used by Linux interrupt controller(s). What I would like is to find out similar tricks for identifying any other possible kernel routines that could be executed (e.g. system call, exception handler, etc.). Any help will be much appreciated. Kind regards, John K. _______________________________________________ Kernelnewbies mailing list Kernelnewbies@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.kernelnewbies.org/mailman/listinfo/kernelnewbies
