A GEOM provider is the front gate at which a geom offers service.
A provider is
``a disk-like thing which appears in /dev
''
[en] a logical disk in other words.
All providers have three main properties: name, sectorsize and size.
The
g_new_providerf ();
function creates a new provider on given geom
Fa gp .
The name of the provider, which will appear as device in
devfs(5),
is created
in a
printf(3)
-like way from the rest of
the arguments.
After creation, the caller has to set the provider's
mediasize
and
sectorsize
as well as other desired initializations, and then call
g_error_provider ();
to reset the provider's error, which is initially set to
Er ENXIO .
The
g_destroy_provider ();
function destroys the given provider, cancels all related pending events and
removes the corresponding devfs entry.
The
g_error_provider ();
function is used to set the provider's error value.
If set to a nonzero, all I/O requests will be denied,
as well as increasing its access count will not be possible (error
Fa error
will be returned).
RESTRICTIONS/CONDITIONS
g_new_provider (:);
The provider name should be unique, but this is not enforced by GEOM.
If the name is not unique, one will end up with two (or more) files
with the same name, which is a programmer error.
The geom
Fa gp
has to have a
Fa start
method defined.
The topology lock has to be held.
g_destroy_provider (:);
The provider must not have consumers attached.
The access count has to be 0.
The topology lock has to be held.
RETURN VALUES
The
g_new_providerf ();
function returns a pointer to the newly created provider.
EXAMPLES
Create an example provider, set its parameters and make it usable.