The same utilities (described in Chapter 10, STREAMS Modules) and mechanisms used for module flow control are used by drivers.
When the message is queued, putq(9F) increments the value of q_count by the size of the message and compares the result to the driver's write high-watermark (q_hiwat) value. If the count reaches q_hiwat, putq(9F) sets the internal FULL indicator for the driver write queue. This causes messages from upstream to be halted (canputnext(9F) returns FALSE) until the write queue count drops below q_lowat. The driver messages waiting to be output through lpout are dequeued by the driver output interrupt routine with getq(9F), which decrements the count. If the resulting count is below q_lowat, getq(9F) back-enables any upstream queue that had been blocked.
For priority band data, qb_count, qb_hiwat, and qb_lowat are used.
STREAMS with flow control can be used on the driver read side to handle temporary upstream blocks.
To some extent, a driver or a module can control when its upstream transmission becomes blocked. Control is available through the M_SETOPTS message (see Appendix A, Message Types) to modify the stream head read-side flow control limits.