Thread: Restarting an ISR in a transaction-like style

I am trying to implement restarting of an ISR from the beginning when it is interrupted by a higher priority handler (in Linux on an x86). To do so, I would like to set (while in the ISR) the instruction pointer (EIP) and offset (XCS) registers to point to the ISR so that it is restarted when it executes RET (It is ok to throw away the ISR's work). What is the best way to do this without erasing information about any handler that the IST itself has interrupted?

Code:

 
           /* regs is a pointer to registers saved when the interrupt occured */
void ISR(int irq, void *dev_id, struct pt_regs *regs)
{
/* do stuff here */

/* disable all interrupts */
if (was_interrupted) {
  long eip_;
  int xcs_;
  /* find where void ISR(...) is in memory (segment and offset) 
     and set registers on the stack */
  regs->eip = ?  /* BAD: this will rewrite saved data on the stack */
  regs->xcs = ?
                 /* perhaps jump to ISR? */
  }
/* enable all interrupts */

}

Thank you.

> Exactly how much work are you planning to do?
I am configuring a device and getting some data in a buffer. I want this to be atomic in the sense that I can be interrupted, and if I am, the higher level handler should run, but then I should restart my copying from the beginning.

Your code is a good approximation, but it will continue to run the remaining work and THEN restart. Could I avoid this by, say, immediately jumping to ISR again after the ISR knows it has been interrupted.

Code:

volatile int interrupted;
void ISR(int irq, void *dev_id, struct pt_regs *regs)
{
  do {
    interrupted = 0;
    // your work here
  } while ( interrupted );
}