timerfd_create(2) — Linux manual page

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timerfd_create(2)          System Calls Manual         timerfd_create(2)

NAME         top

       timerfd_create, timerfd_settime, timerfd_gettime - timers that
       notify via file descriptors

LIBRARY         top

       Standard C library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <sys/timerfd.h>

       int timerfd_create(int clockid, int flags);

       int timerfd_settime(int fd, int flags,
                           const struct itimerspec *new_value,
                           struct itimerspec *_Nullable old_value);
       int timerfd_gettime(int fd, struct itimerspec *curr_value);

DESCRIPTION         top

       These system calls create and operate on a timer that delivers
       timer expiration notifications via a file descriptor.  They
       provide an alternative to the use of setitimer(2) or
       timer_create(2), with the advantage that the file descriptor may
       be monitored by select(2), poll(2), and epoll(7).

       The use of these three system calls is analogous to the use of
       timer_create(2), timer_settime(2), and timer_gettime(2).  (There
       is no analog of timer_getoverrun(2), since that functionality is
       provided by read(2), as described below.)

   timerfd_create()
       timerfd_create() creates a new timer object, and returns a file
       descriptor that refers to that timer.  The clockid argument
       specifies the clock that is used to mark the progress of the
       timer, and must be one of the following:

       CLOCK_REALTIME
              A settable system-wide real-time clock.

       CLOCK_MONOTONIC
              A nonsettable monotonically increasing clock that measures
              time from some unspecified point in the past that does not
              change after system startup.

       CLOCK_BOOTTIME (Since Linux 3.15)
              Like CLOCK_MONOTONIC, this is a monotonically increasing
              clock.  However, whereas the CLOCK_MONOTONIC clock does
              not measure the time while a system is suspended, the
              CLOCK_BOOTTIME clock does include the time during which
              the system is suspended.  This is useful for applications
              that need to be suspend-aware.  CLOCK_REALTIME is not
              suitable for such applications, since that clock is
              affected by discontinuous changes to the system clock.

       CLOCK_REALTIME_ALARM (since Linux 3.11)
              This clock is like CLOCK_REALTIME, but will wake the
              system if it is suspended.  The caller must have the
              CAP_WAKE_ALARM capability in order to set a timer against
              this clock.

       CLOCK_BOOTTIME_ALARM (since Linux 3.11)
              This clock is like CLOCK_BOOTTIME, but will wake the
              system if it is suspended.  The caller must have the
              CAP_WAKE_ALARM capability in order to set a timer against
              this clock.

       See clock_getres(2) for some further details on the above clocks.

       The current value of each of these clocks can be retrieved using
       clock_gettime(2).

       Starting with Linux 2.6.27, the following values may be bitwise
       ORed in flags to change the behavior of timerfd_create():

       TFD_NONBLOCK
              Set the O_NONBLOCK file status flag on the open file
              description (see open(2)) referred to by the new file
              descriptor.  Using this flag saves extra calls to fcntl(2)
              to achieve the same result.

       TFD_CLOEXEC
              Set the close-on-exec (FD_CLOEXEC) flag on the new file
              descriptor.  See the description of the O_CLOEXEC flag in
              open(2) for reasons why this may be useful.

       In Linux versions up to and including 2.6.26, flags must be
       specified as zero.

   timerfd_settime()
       timerfd_settime() arms (starts) or disarms (stops) the timer
       referred to by the file descriptor fd.

       The new_value argument specifies the initial expiration and
       interval for the timer.  The itimerspec structure used for this
       argument is described in itimerspec(3type).

       new_value.it_value specifies the initial expiration of the timer,
       in seconds and nanoseconds.  Setting either field of
       new_value.it_value to a nonzero value arms the timer.  Setting
       both fields of new_value.it_value to zero disarms the timer.

       Setting one or both fields of new_value.it_interval to nonzero
       values specifies the period, in seconds and nanoseconds, for
       repeated timer expirations after the initial expiration.  If both
       fields of new_value.it_interval are zero, the timer expires just
       once, at the time specified by new_value.it_value.

       By default, the initial expiration time specified in new_value is
       interpreted relative to the current time on the timer's clock at
       the time of the call (i.e., new_value.it_value specifies a time
       relative to the current value of the clock specified by clockid).
       An absolute timeout can be selected via the flags argument.

       The flags argument is a bit mask that can include the following
       values:

       TFD_TIMER_ABSTIME
              Interpret new_value.it_value as an absolute value on the
              timer's clock.  The timer will expire when the value of
              the timer's clock reaches the value specified in
              new_value.it_value.

       TFD_TIMER_CANCEL_ON_SET
              If this flag is specified along with TFD_TIMER_ABSTIME and
              the clock for this timer is CLOCK_REALTIME or
              CLOCK_REALTIME_ALARM, then mark this timer as cancelable
              if the real-time clock undergoes a discontinuous change
              (settimeofday(2), clock_settime(2), or similar).  When
              such changes occur, a current or future read(2) from the
              file descriptor will fail with the error ECANCELED.

       If the old_value argument is not NULL, then the itimerspec
       structure that it points to is used to return the setting of the
       timer that was current at the time of the call; see the
       description of timerfd_gettime() following.

   timerfd_gettime()
       timerfd_gettime() returns, in curr_value, an itimerspec structure
       that contains the current setting of the timer referred to by the
       file descriptor fd.

       The it_value field returns the amount of time until the timer
       will next expire.  If both fields of this structure are zero,
       then the timer is currently disarmed.  This field always contains
       a relative value, regardless of whether the TFD_TIMER_ABSTIME
       flag was specified when setting the timer.

       The it_interval field returns the interval of the timer.  If both
       fields of this structure are zero, then the timer is set to
       expire just once, at the time specified by curr_value.it_value.

   Operating on a timer file descriptor
       The file descriptor returned by timerfd_create() supports the
       following additional operations:

       read(2)
              If the timer has already expired one or more times since
              its settings were last modified using timerfd_settime(),
              or since the last successful read(2), then the buffer
              given to read(2) returns an unsigned 8-byte integer
              (uint64_t) containing the number of expirations that have
              occurred.  (The returned value is in host byte order—that
              is, the native byte order for integers on the host
              machine.)

              If no timer expirations have occurred at the time of the
              read(2), then the call either blocks until the next timer
              expiration, or fails with the error EAGAIN if the file
              descriptor has been made nonblocking (via the use of the
              fcntl(2) F_SETFL operation to set the O_NONBLOCK flag).

              A read(2) fails with the error EINVAL if the size of the
              supplied buffer is less than 8 bytes.

              If the associated clock is either CLOCK_REALTIME or
              CLOCK_REALTIME_ALARM, the timer is absolute
              (TFD_TIMER_ABSTIME), and the flag TFD_TIMER_CANCEL_ON_SET
              was specified when calling timerfd_settime(), then read(2)
              fails with the error ECANCELED if the real-time clock
              undergoes a discontinuous change.  (This allows the
              reading application to discover such discontinuous changes
              to the clock.)

              If the associated clock is either CLOCK_REALTIME or
              CLOCK_REALTIME_ALARM, the timer is absolute
              (TFD_TIMER_ABSTIME), and the flag TFD_TIMER_CANCEL_ON_SET
              was not specified when calling timerfd_settime(), then a
              discontinuous negative change to the clock (e.g.,
              clock_settime(2)) may cause read(2) to unblock, but return
              a value of 0 (i.e., no bytes read), if the clock change
              occurs after the time expired, but before the read(2) on
              the file descriptor.

       poll(2)
       select(2)
       (and similar)
              The file descriptor is readable (the select(2) readfds
              argument; the poll(2) POLLIN flag) if one or more timer
              expirations have occurred.

              The file descriptor also supports the other file-
              descriptor multiplexing APIs: pselect(2), ppoll(2), and
              epoll(7).

       ioctl(2)
              The following timerfd-specific command is supported:

              TFD_IOC_SET_TICKS (since Linux 3.17)
                     Adjust the number of timer expirations that have
                     occurred.  The argument is a pointer to a nonzero
                     8-byte integer (uint64_t*) containing the new
                     number of expirations.  Once the number is set, any
                     waiter on the timer is woken up.  The only purpose
                     of this command is to restore the expirations for
                     the purpose of checkpoint/restore.  This operation
                     is available only if the kernel was configured with
                     the CONFIG_CHECKPOINT_RESTORE option.

       close(2)
              When the file descriptor is no longer required it should
              be closed.  When all file descriptors associated with the
              same timer object have been closed, the timer is disarmed
              and its resources are freed by the kernel.

   fork(2) semantics
       After a fork(2), the child inherits a copy of the file descriptor
       created by timerfd_create().  The file descriptor refers to the
       same underlying timer object as the corresponding file descriptor
       in the parent, and read(2)s in the child will return information
       about expirations of the timer.

   execve(2) semantics
       A file descriptor created by timerfd_create() is preserved across
       execve(2), and continues to generate timer expirations if the
       timer was armed.

RETURN VALUE         top

       On success, timerfd_create() returns a new file descriptor.  On
       error, -1 is returned and errno is set to indicate the error.

       timerfd_settime() and timerfd_gettime() return 0 on success; on
       error they return -1, and set errno to indicate the error.

ERRORS         top

       timerfd_create() can fail with the following errors:

       EINVAL The clockid is not valid.

       EINVAL flags is invalid; or, in Linux 2.6.26 or earlier, flags is
              nonzero.

       EMFILE The per-process limit on the number of open file
              descriptors has been reached.

       ENFILE The system-wide limit on the total number of open files
              has been reached.

       ENODEV Could not mount (internal) anonymous inode device.

       ENOMEM There was insufficient kernel memory to create the timer.

       EPERM  clockid was CLOCK_REALTIME_ALARM or CLOCK_BOOTTIME_ALARM
              but the caller did not have the CAP_WAKE_ALARM capability.

       timerfd_settime() and timerfd_gettime() can fail with the
       following errors:

       EBADF  fd is not a valid file descriptor.

       EFAULT new_value, old_value, or curr_value is not a valid
              pointer.

       EINVAL fd is not a valid timerfd file descriptor.

       timerfd_settime() can also fail with the following errors:

       ECANCELED
              See NOTES.

       EINVAL new_value is not properly initialized (one of the tv_nsec
              falls outside the range zero to 999,999,999).

       EINVAL flags is invalid.

STANDARDS         top

       Linux.

HISTORY         top

       Linux 2.6.25, glibc 2.8.

NOTES         top

       Suppose the following scenario for CLOCK_REALTIME or
       CLOCK_REALTIME_ALARM timer that was created with
       timerfd_create():

       (1)  The timer has been started (timerfd_settime()) with the
            TFD_TIMER_ABSTIME and TFD_TIMER_CANCEL_ON_SET flags;

       (2)  A discontinuous change (e.g., settimeofday(2)) is
            subsequently made to the CLOCK_REALTIME clock; and

       (3)  the caller once more calls timerfd_settime() to rearm the
            timer (without first doing a read(2) on the file
            descriptor).

       In this case the following occurs:

       •  The timerfd_settime() returns -1 with errno set to ECANCELED.
          (This enables the caller to know that the previous timer was
          affected by a discontinuous change to the clock.)

       •  The timer is successfully rearmed with the settings provided
          in the second timerfd_settime() call.  (This was probably an
          implementation accident, but won't be fixed now, in case there
          are applications that depend on this behaviour.)

BUGS         top

       Currently, timerfd_create() supports fewer types of clock IDs
       than timer_create(2).

EXAMPLES         top

       The following program creates a timer and then monitors its
       progress.  The program accepts up to three command-line
       arguments.  The first argument specifies the number of seconds
       for the initial expiration of the timer.  The second argument
       specifies the interval for the timer, in seconds.  The third
       argument specifies the number of times the program should allow
       the timer to expire before terminating.  The second and third
       command-line arguments are optional.

       The following shell session demonstrates the use of the program:

           $ a.out 3 1 100
           0.000: timer started
           3.000: read: 1; total=1
           4.000: read: 1; total=2
           ^Z                  # type control-Z to suspend the program
           [1]+  Stopped                 ./timerfd3_demo 3 1 100
           $ fg                # Resume execution after a few seconds
           a.out 3 1 100
           9.660: read: 5; total=7
           10.000: read: 1; total=8
           11.000: read: 1; total=9
           ^C                  # type control-C to suspend the program

   Program source

       #include <err.h>
       #include <inttypes.h>
       #include <stdio.h>
       #include <stdlib.h>
       #include <sys/timerfd.h>
       #include <sys/types.h>
       #include <time.h>
       #include <unistd.h>

       static void
       print_elapsed_time(void)
       {
           int                     secs, nsecs;
           static int              first_call = 1;
           struct timespec         curr;
           static struct timespec  start;

           if (first_call) {
               first_call = 0;
               if (clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, &start) == -1)
                   err(EXIT_FAILURE, "clock_gettime");
           }

           if (clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, &curr) == -1)
               err(EXIT_FAILURE, "clock_gettime");

           secs = curr.tv_sec - start.tv_sec;
           nsecs = curr.tv_nsec - start.tv_nsec;
           if (nsecs < 0) {
               secs--;
               nsecs += 1000000000;
           }
           printf("%d.%03d: ", secs, (nsecs + 500000) / 1000000);
       }

       int
       main(int argc, char *argv[])
       {
           int                fd;
           ssize_t            s;
           uint64_t           exp, tot_exp, max_exp;
           struct timespec    now;
           struct itimerspec  new_value;

           if (argc != 2 && argc != 4) {
               fprintf(stderr, "%s init-secs [interval-secs max-exp]\n",
                       argv[0]);
               exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
           }

           if (clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, &now) == -1)
               err(EXIT_FAILURE, "clock_gettime");

           /* Create a CLOCK_REALTIME absolute timer with initial
              expiration and interval as specified in command line. */

           new_value.it_value.tv_sec = now.tv_sec + atoi(argv[1]);
           new_value.it_value.tv_nsec = now.tv_nsec;
           if (argc == 2) {
               new_value.it_interval.tv_sec = 0;
               max_exp = 1;
           } else {
               new_value.it_interval.tv_sec = atoi(argv[2]);
               max_exp = atoi(argv[3]);
           }
           new_value.it_interval.tv_nsec = 0;

           fd = timerfd_create(CLOCK_REALTIME, 0);
           if (fd == -1)
               err(EXIT_FAILURE, "timerfd_create");

           if (timerfd_settime(fd, TFD_TIMER_ABSTIME, &new_value, NULL) == -1)
               err(EXIT_FAILURE, "timerfd_settime");

           print_elapsed_time();
           printf("timer started\n");

           for (tot_exp = 0; tot_exp < max_exp;) {
               s = read(fd, &exp, sizeof(uint64_t));
               if (s != sizeof(uint64_t))
                   err(EXIT_FAILURE, "read");

               tot_exp += exp;
               print_elapsed_time();
               printf("read: %" PRIu64 "; total=%" PRIu64 "\n", exp, tot_exp);
           }

           exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
       }

SEE ALSO         top

       eventfd(2), poll(2), read(2), select(2), setitimer(2),
       signalfd(2), timer_create(2), timer_gettime(2), timer_settime(2),
       timespec(3), epoll(7), time(7)

COLOPHON         top

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       ⟨https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/tree/CONTRIBUTING⟩.
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Linux man-pages 6.9.1          2024-06-15              timerfd_create(2)

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