I am trying to implement device driver for /dev/null & /dev/zero pseudo devices in C.
First, I would like to know how these two are different in usage?
My plan is to register these as /dev/null & /dev/zero and then in the corresponding write & read methods; just return success always.
Is above implementation correct?
This documentation covers these pseudo-device files pretty well:
http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/zeros.html
You won't be able to register them as /dev/null and /dev/zero, since those things already exist. Unless you arrange to remove them, which I don't recommend, unless you have some very specific scenario requiring it, which it does not sound like you do.
/dev/zero is supposed to produce zeros, so just returning in the kernel write (interface with user space read) functions would not be adequate. Also, /dev/null must be able to read() (be written to) so it can consume data. Etc. etc.
I'm just starting to repeat that link, which is pointless. Check that link for a full description of the intended behavior.
Related
Im trying to make a game on Scratch that will use a feature to generate a special code, and when that code is input into a certain area it will load the stats that were there when the code was generated. I've run into a problem however, I don't know how to make it and I couldn't find a clear cut answer for how to make it.
I would prefer that the solution be:
Able to save information for as long as needed (from 1 second to however long until it's input again.)
Doesn't take too many blocks to make, so that the project won't take forever to load it.
Of course i'm willing to take any solution in order to get my game up and running, those are just preferences.
You can put all of the programs in a custom block with "Run without screen refresh" on so that the program runs instantly.
If you save the stats using variables, you could combine those variable values into one string divided by /s. i.e. join([highscore]) (join("/") (join([kills]) (/))
NOTE: Don't add any "/" in your stats, you can probably guess why.
Now "bear" (pun) with me, this is going to take a while to read
Then you need the variables:
[read] for reading the inputted code
[input] for storing the numbers
Then you could make another function that reads the code like so: letter ([read]) of (code) and stores that information to the [input] variable like this: set [input] to (letter ([read]) of (code)). Then change [read] by (1) so the function can read the next character of the code. Once it letter ([read]) of (code) equals "/", this tells the program to set [*stat variable*] to (input) (in our example, this would be [highscore] since it was the first variable we saved) and set [input] to (0), and repeat again until all of the stats variables are filled (In this case, it repeats 2 times because we saved two variables: [highscore] and [kills]).
This is the least amount of code that it takes. Jumbling it up takes more code. I will later edit this answer with a screenshot showcasing whatever I just said before, hopefully clearing up the mess of words above.
The technique you mentioned is used in many scratch games but there is two option for you when making the save/load system. You can either do it the simpler way which makes the code SUPER long(not joking). The other way is most scratchers use, encoding the data into a string as short as possible so it's easy to transfer.
If you want to do the second way, you can have a look at griffpatch's video on the mario platformer remake where he used a encode system to save levels.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRtlrBnX-dY The tips is to encode your data (maybe score/items name/progress) into numbers and letters for example converting repeated letters to a shorter string which the game can still decode and read without errors
If you are worried it took too long to load, I am pretty sure it won't be a problem unless you really save a big load of data. The common compress method used by everyone works pretty well. If you want more data stored you may have to think of some other method. There is not an actual way to do that as different data have different unique methods for things working the best. Good luck.
I'm working on a dual OS system with STM32F103, I have two separate program that programmed on different FLASH locations. if both of the programs are the same, the only way to know which of them running is just by its start vector address.
But How I Can Read The Current Program Start Vector Address in STM32 ???
After reading the comments, it sounds like what you have/want is a bootloader. If your goal here is to have two different applications, one to do your main processing and real time handling and the other to just program new firmware, then you want to make a bootloader in your default boot flash space.
Bootloaders fundamentally do a few things, everything else is extra.
Check itself using some type of data integrity check like a CRC.
Checks the application
Jumps to the application.
Bootloaders will also program applications in the app space and verify they are programmed correctly before jumping as well. Colin gave some good advice about appending a CRC to the hex file before it is programmed in flash space to verify the applications.
There are a few things to look out for. The first would be the linker script and this is extremely important. A linker script will be used to map input objects to output objects and then determine based upon that script, what memory space they go into. For both of your applications, you need to create a memory map of how you want both programs to sit inside of the flash space. From this point, you can then make linker scripts for both programs so that a hex file can be generated within the parameters of what you deem acceptable flash space for the program. Each project you have will have its own linker script. An example would look something like this:
LR_IROM1 0x08000000 0x00010000 { ; load region size_region
ER_IROM1 0x08000000 0x00010000 { ; load address = execution address
*.o (RESET, +First)
*(InRoot$$Sections)
.ANY (+RO)
}
RW_IRAM1 0x20000000 0x00018000 { ; RW data
.ANY (+RW +ZI)
}
}
This will give RAM for the application to use as well as a starting point for the application.
After that, you can start the bootloader and give it information about where the application space lies for jumping and programming. Once again this is all determined by you from your memory map and both applications' linker scripts. You are going to need to add a separate entry inside of the linker for your CRC and length for a comparison of the calculated versus stored as well. Whatever tool you use to append the CRC to the hex file and have it programmed to flash space, remember to note the location and make it known to the linker script so you can reference those addresses to check integrity later.
After you check everything and it is determined that it is okay to go to the application, you can use some ARM assembly to jump to the starting application address. Before jumping, make sure to disable all peripherals and interrupts that were enabled in the bootloader. As Colin mentioned, these will share RAM, so it is important you de-initialize all used, otherwise, you'll end up with a hard fault.
At this point, the program used another hex file laid out by a linker script, so it should begin executing as planned, as long as you have the correct vector table offset, which gets into your question fully.
As far as your question on the "Flash vector address", I think what your really mean is your interrupt vector table address. An interrupt vector table is a data structure in memory that maps interrupt requests to the addresses of interrupt handlers. This is where the PC register grabs the next available instruction address upon hardware interrupt triggers, for example. You can see this by keeping track of the ARM pipeline in a few lines of assembly code. Each entry of this table is a handler's address. This offset must be aligned with your application, otherwise you will never go into the main function and the program will sit in the application space, but have nothing to do since all handlers addresses are unknown. This is what the SCB->VTOR is for. It is a vector interrupt table offset address register. In this case, there are a few things you can do. Luckily, these are hard-coded inside of STM generated files inside of the file "system_stm32(xx)xx.c" (xx is your microcontroller variant). There is a define for something called VECT_TAB_OFFSET which is the offset in the memory map of the vector table and is assigned to the SCB->VTOR register with the value that is chosen. Your interrupt vector table will always lie at the starting address of your main application, so for the bootloader it can be 0x00, but for the application, it will be the subtraction of the starting address of the application space, and the first addressable flash address of the microcontroller.
/************************* Miscellaneous Configuration ************************/
/*!< Uncomment the following line if you need to relocate your vector Table in
Internal SRAM. */
/* #define VECT_TAB_SRAM */
#define VECT_TAB_OFFSET 0x00 /*!< Vector Table base offset field.
This value must be a multiple of 0x200. */
/******************************************************************************/
Make sure you understand what is expected from the micro side using STM documentation before programming things. Vector tables in this chip can only be in multiples of 0x200. But to answer your question, this address can be determined by a few things. Your memory map, and eventually, you will have a hard-coded reference to it as a define. You can figure it out from there.
Hope this helps and good luck to you on your application.
If a technical indicator works very slow, and I wish to include it in an EA ( using iCustom() ), is there a some "wrapper" that could cache the indicator results to a file based on the particular indicator inputs?
This way I could get a better speed next time when I backtest it using the same set of parameters, since the "wrapper" could read the result from file rather than recalculate the result from the indicator.
I heard that some developers did that for their needs in order to speed up backtesting, but as far as i know, there's no publicly available solution.
If I had to solve this problem, I would create a class with two fields (datetime and indicator value, or N buffers of the indicator), and a collection class similar to CArrayObj.mqh but with an option to apply binary search, or to start looking for element from a specific index, not from the very beginning of the array.
Recent MT4 Builds added VERY restrictive conditions for Indicators
In early years of MT4, this was not so cruel as it is these days.
FACT#1: fileIO is 10.000x ~ 100.000x slower than memIO:
This means, there is no benefit from "pre-caching" values to disk.
FACT#2: Processing Performance has HARD CEILING:
All, yes ALL, Custom Indicators, that are being used in MetaTrader4 Terminal ( be it directly in GUI, or indirectly, via Template(s) or called via iCustom() calls & in Strategy Tester via .tpl + iCustom() ) ALL THESE SHARE A SINGLE THREAD ...
FACT#3: Strategy Tester has the most demanding needs for speed:
Thus - eliminate all, indeed ALL, non-core indicators from tester.tpl template and save it as "blank", to avoid any part of such non-core processing.
Next, re-design the Custom Indicator, where possible, so as to avoid any CPU-ops & MEM-allocation(s), that are not necessary.
I remember a Custom Indicatore designs with indeed deep-convolutions, which could have been re-engineered so as to keep just a triangular sparse-matrix with necessary updates, that has increased the speed of Indicator processing more than 10.000x, so code-revision is the way.
So, rather run a separate MetaTrader4 Terminal, just for BackTesting, than having to wait for many hours just due to un-compressible nature of numerical processing under a traffic-jam congestion in the shared use of the CustomIndicator-solo-Thread that none scheduling could improve.
FACT#4: O/S can increase a process priority:
Having got to the Devil's zone, it is a common practice to spin-up the PRIO for the StrategyTester MT4, up to the "RealTime PRIO" in the O/S tools.
One may even additionally "lock" this MT4-process onto a certain CPU-core(s) and setup all other processes with adjacent CPU-core-AFFINITY, so that these two distinct groups of processes do not jump one to the other group's CPU-core(s). Hard, but if squeezing the performance to the bleeding edge, this is a must.
i'm using valgrind to find and trace memory issues. Now i want to do something like this:
before = getValgrindState();
do_something_curious();
after = getValgrindState();
difference = after - before;
std::cout << difference;
Is something like this possible with valgrind?
The MS Visual C++ runtime provides the following functions:
_CrtMemCheckpoint (to gather the current state of the allocated memory)
_CrtMemDifference (to calculate the difference between two states)
And i would like to know if there's a way to implement a similar functionality with valgrind.
A primitive/destructive way to do what you want is to use _exit() (note the underscore) to avoid calling any of the destructors.
run valgrind/memcheck against your code that calls _exit() prior to do_something_curious();
run valgrind/memcheck again with _exit() after do_something_curious();
compare results to see what do_something_curious() has left around.
[I couldn't figure out how massif would do what you want (is there a way to have massif keep track of free/delete operations and reconcile with malloc/new operations that I missed?)]
What do you want to measure? What is "difference" supposed to be? If you want to examine memory usage, try with valgrind's massif tool. Massif Visualizer is useful for interpreting the results.
I tried using PARSE on a PORT! and it does not work:
>> parse open %test-data.r [to end]
** Script error: parse does not allow port! for its input argument
Of course, it works if you read the data in:
>> parse read open %test-data.r [to end]
== true
...but it seems it would be useful to be able to use PARSE on large files without first loading them into memory.
Is there a reason why PARSE couldn't work on a PORT! ... or is it merely not implemented yet?
the easy answer is no we can't...
The way parse works, it may need to roll-back to a prior part of the input string, which might in fact be the head of the complete input, when it meets the last character of the stream.
ports copy their data to a string buffer as they get their input from a port, so in fact, there is never any "prior" string for parse to roll-back to. its like quantum physics... just looking at it, its not there anymore.
But as you know in rebol... no isn't an answer. ;-)
This being said, there is a way to parse data from a port as its being grabbed, but its a bit more work.
what you do is use a buffer, and
APPEND buffer COPY/part connection amount
Depending on your data, amount could be 1 byte or 1kb, use what makes sense.
Once the new input is added to your buffer, parse it and add logic to know if you matched part of that buffer.
If something positively matched, you remove/part what matched from the buffer, and continue parsing until nothing parses.
you then repeat above until you reach the end of input.
I've used this in a real-time EDI tcp server which has an "always on" tcp port in order to break up a (potentially) continuous stream of input data, which actually piggy-backs messages end to end.
details
The best way to setup this system is to use /no-wait and loop until the port closes (you receive none instead of "").
Also make sure you have a way of checking for data integrity problems (like a skipped byte, or erroneous message) when you are parsing, otherwise, you will never reach the end.
In my system, when the buffer was beyond a specific size, I tried an alternate rule which skipped bytes until a pattern might be found further down the stream. If one was found, an error was logged, the partial message stored and a alert raised for sysadmin to sort out the message.
HTH !
I think that Maxim's answer is good enough. At this moment the parse on port is not implemented. I don't think it's impossible to implement it later, but we must solve other issues first.
Also as Maxim says, you can do it even now, but it very depends what exactly you want to do.
You can parse large files without need to read them completely to the memory, for sure. It's always good to know, what you expect to parse. For example all large files, like files for music and video, are divided into chunks, so you can just use copy|seek to get these chunks and parse them.
Or if you want to get just titles of multiple web pages, you can just read, let's say, first 1024 bytes and look for the title tag here, if it fails, read more bytes and try it again...
That's exactly what must be done to allow parse on port natively anyway.
And feel free to add a WISH in the CureCode database: http://curecode.org/rebol3/