The main purpose of this character device driver  is to ilustrate how to 
share big blocks of memory between kernel and user space. It is based
on Alan Cox's advice to look for the "heavy wizardry" in bttv.c driver.

I have added some locking (mbuff pointer) and deallocation support. 

Licenced to all under GPL.

--
Tomasz Motylewski, 24.03.1999
<motyl@stan.chemie.unibas.ch>

v0.2 27.03.1999
Code split to kvmem.h and kvmem.c
Tester checks whether pages were really unmapped - dumps core (OK, it should).
The module should allow for multiple maps. The first mmap allocates memory.

v0.3 24.04.1999
Cleaned up a bit. Does not do automatic allocation on mmap().
API: (warning - changed in v0.6 - see init_module and mbuff.h)
  in the kernel:
    extern int shm_allocate(unsigned int size, void **shm);
    extern int shm_deallocate(void * shm);
    example:
      struct myshm *shm;
      shm_allocate(1024*1024*32,(void **) &shm);
      at this point you can mmap it from user program (see tester.c).
      shm->a =20; use it any way;
      shm_deallocate(shm); /* the memory will be freed after the last unmap 
                              by the user */
  user space: see tester.c example.
  access through misc device (enable MISC in the kernel):
crw-r--r--   1 root     root      10, 254 Apr 24 14:19 rtl_shm

v0.4 31.05.1999
"make test" works again, officially released on 
http://crds.chemie.unibas.ch/PCI-MIO-E/

  IMPORTANT: comment out "-DSHM_DEMO" from Makefile if you want to use 
             shm_allocate in your code. You may also wish to remove some funny
             debug messages.
      
v0.5 07.07.1999
Ported to 2.2 kernel while preserving compatibility with 2.0. Thanks to David
Schleef.

v0.5-ds 09.07.1999 [ds]
Had a lot of fun hacking around and such.  Added support for multiple
mbuff areas, (de)allocation from user or kernel space.  Multiple areas
are referenced via a name that is specified when the area is created.
Probably managed to break it big time. [O, yeah... (tm)]

v0.6pre1 11.07.1999 <TM>
Lots of fun as well, but mutiple vma on a single mbuff was a paAaAaAaAaiN !
Seems to work on "default" mbuff (selected on open). ioctls still not
implemented.

v0.6pre4 
seems to work quite well, "make test" tries strange things and does not crash
rtl_nfifo.c does not compile yet.
For the new "multiple named areas" API see tester.c and the source code (shm_allocate).

v0.6pre4-rtl 27.08.1999 
integrated into RT-Linux v2beta14
reworked by <TM> to actually compile and perform "make test" correctly. 
Warning ! Do not deallocate areas more times then you have allocated them -
- one bug fix still to come.
Not tested with 2.0 kernel.
mbuff in rtl_nfifo defaults to RT-FIFO-00X for /dev/rtfX.
v0.6pre5-rtl 27.08.1999
Implemented checking for still mmaped pages before freeing memory.

v0.6pre6 22.09.1999
Decoupled from RTL for standalone compilation. See lines marked ##RT 
in Makefileif you want it in RTL. Should be not possible to crash by 
any combination of allocate/mmap/dealocate in any order.
User space inline functions mbuff_alloc and mbuff_free added to mbuff.h

v0.6pre7 02.10.1999
Fixed mbuff_alloc and mbuff_free functions in mbuff.h. They are now 
the recommended method to use shared memory from user space.
Cleaned up debugging code. Tested OK.

v0.6 12.10.1999
Added mbuff_attach and mbuff_detach.
Written a short MANUAL.

v0.6.1 12.10.1999
Michael Barabanov pointed to inconsistent behaviour of DEALLOC ioctl - fixed.
Changes to Makefile - also from Michael.
Peter Wurmsdobler pointed to is_rtidle - removed.

v0.6.2 13.10.1999
Changed volatile char * to void * for mbuff_* functions.

v0.6.3 01.12.1999
Added -I/usr/src/linux/include and autodetection of __SMP__ to Makefile - this
should fix compile problems.
David Edwards <david-alh@excite.com> added /proc/mbuff/ support and fixed
few other compile problems (thanks!).

v0.6.4	02.12.1999
Exported  mbuff_list_lookup_name() and mbuff_list_lookup_buf();

v0.6.5 15.02.2000
Added extern "C" { wrapper around mbuff.h for C++ compilers.
Added mbuff_alloc_at and mbuff_attach_at (idea by Phil Wilshire 
<philwil@on-ramp.ior.com>)
Files moved: README->CHANGES, MANUAL->README

v0.7.0 01.04.2000
Experimental release.
Merged new version of the bttv.c code by David Miller (kvmem.h)
Merged changes from kernel_compat.h from comedi-0.7.39
Ported to 2.3 (code stolen from comedi).
Tested with 2.0.38, 2.2.15pre9, 2.2.15pre16, 2.3.47, 2.3.99pre3

v0.7.1 06.04.2000
Same fixes as 0.6.6:
Fixed _cplusplus to __cplusplus.
Added check file->private_data != NULL on mbuff_close.
Explanation of usage count in FAQ.
Moved #include's earlier in mbuff.h.

v0.7.2 04.06.2000
Same fixes as 0.6.7:
Changed VERSION to MBUFF_VERSION
Added open_cnt++ in 2 places.
CONFIG_RTL autodetection in Makefile.
