Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!uw-june!ka
From: ka@june.cs.washington.edu (Kenneth Almquist)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Ultrix tape job is unkillable!
Message-ID: <6758@june.cs.washington.edu>
Date: 17 Dec 88 09:52:13 GMT
References: <476@larry.UUCP> <43200057@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu>
Organization: U of Washington, Computer Science, Seattle
Lines: 12

Patrick Wolfe asks:
> Is this a problem in the device driver, kernel process management, or
> something else entirely?  It seems that if an event is being waited for,
> there ought to be a way to have the OS force the event to occur or fail.

The basic problem is that the device driver should be programmed to time
out after a while if it fails to receive an interrupt.  But UN*X doesn't
make this particularly easy to do, and a lot of device drivers don't
bother.  Perhaps a variant of the sleep routine with an additional
argument specifying a timeout would encourage writers of device drivers
to do things right.
				Kenneth Almquist