From b215e283992899650c4271e7385c79e26fb9a88e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Davide Libenzi Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 22:23:16 -0700 Subject: signal/timer/event: timerfd core This patch introduces a new system call for timers events delivered though file descriptors. This allows timer event to be used with standard POSIX poll(2), select(2) and read(2). As a consequence of supporting the Linux f_op->poll subsystem, they can be used with epoll(2) too. The system call is defined as: int timerfd(int ufd, int clockid, int flags, const struct itimerspec *utmr); The "ufd" parameter allows for re-use (re-programming) of an existing timerfd w/out going through the close/open cycle (same as signalfd). If "ufd" is -1, s new file descriptor will be created, otherwise the existing "ufd" will be re-programmed. The "clockid" parameter is either CLOCK_MONOTONIC or CLOCK_REALTIME. The time specified in the "utmr->it_value" parameter is the expiry time for the timer. If the TFD_TIMER_ABSTIME flag is set in "flags", this is an absolute time, otherwise it's a relative time. If the time specified in the "utmr->it_interval" is not zero (.tv_sec == 0, tv_nsec == 0), this is the period at which the following ticks should be generated. The "utmr->it_interval" should be set to zero if only one tick is requested. Setting the "utmr->it_value" to zero will disable the timer, or will create a timerfd without the timer enabled. The function returns the new (or same, in case "ufd" is a valid timerfd descriptor) file, or -1 in case of error. As stated before, the timerfd file descriptor supports poll(2), select(2) and epoll(2). When a timer event happened on the timerfd, a POLLIN mask will be returned. The read(2) call can be used, and it will return a u32 variable holding the number of "ticks" that happened on the interface since the last call to read(2). The read(2) call supportes the O_NONBLOCK flag too, and EAGAIN will be returned if no ticks happened. A quick test program, shows timerfd working correctly on my amd64 box: http://www.xmailserver.org/timerfd-test.c [akpm@linux-foundation.org: add sys_timerfd to sys_ni.c] Signed-off-by: Davide Libenzi Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds --- kernel/sys_ni.c | 1 + 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+) (limited to 'kernel') diff --git a/kernel/sys_ni.c b/kernel/sys_ni.c index 807e9bb..b18f625 100644 --- a/kernel/sys_ni.c +++ b/kernel/sys_ni.c @@ -144,3 +144,4 @@ cond_syscall(sys_ioprio_get); /* New file descriptors */ cond_syscall(sys_signalfd); +cond_syscall(sys_timerfd); -- cgit v1.1