sd_journal_get_fd(3) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | SIGNAL SAFETY | NOTES | EXAMPLES | HISTORY | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

SD_JOURNAL_GET_FD(3)        sd_journal_get_fd       SD_JOURNAL_GET_FD(3)

NAME         top

       sd_journal_get_fd, sd_journal_get_events, sd_journal_get_timeout,
       sd_journal_process, sd_journal_wait, sd_journal_reliable_fd,
       SD_JOURNAL_NOP, SD_JOURNAL_APPEND, SD_JOURNAL_INVALIDATE -
       Journal change notification interface

SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <systemd/sd-journal.h>

       int sd_journal_get_fd(sd_journal *j);

       int sd_journal_get_events(sd_journal *j);

       int sd_journal_get_timeout(sd_journal *j,
                                  uint64_t *timeout_usec);

       int sd_journal_process(sd_journal *j);

       int sd_journal_wait(sd_journal *j, uint64_t timeout_usec);

       int sd_journal_reliable_fd(sd_journal *j);

DESCRIPTION         top

       sd_journal_get_fd() returns a file descriptor that may be
       asynchronously polled in an external event loop and is signaled
       as soon as the journal changes, because new entries or files were
       added, rotation took place, or files have been deleted, and
       similar. The file descriptor is suitable for usage in poll(2).
       Use sd_journal_get_events() for an events mask to watch for. The
       call takes one argument: the journal context object. Note that
       not all file systems are capable of generating the necessary
       events for wakeups from this file descriptor for changes to be
       noticed immediately. In particular network files systems do not
       generate suitable file change events in all cases. Cases like
       this can be detected with sd_journal_reliable_fd(), below.
       sd_journal_get_timeout() will ensure in these cases that wake-ups
       happen frequently enough for changes to be noticed, although with
       a certain latency.

       sd_journal_get_events() will return the poll() mask to wait for.
       This function will return a combination of POLLIN and POLLOUT and
       similar to fill into the ".events" field of struct pollfd.

       sd_journal_get_timeout() will return a timeout value for usage in
       poll(). This returns a value in microseconds since the epoch of
       CLOCK_MONOTONIC for timing out poll() in timeout_usec. See
       clock_gettime(2) for details about CLOCK_MONOTONIC. If there is
       no timeout to wait for, this will fill in (uint64_t) -1 instead.
       Note that poll() takes a relative timeout in milliseconds rather
       than an absolute timeout in microseconds. To convert the absolute
       'us' timeout into relative 'ms', use code like the following:

           uint64_t t;
           int msec;
           sd_journal_get_timeout(m, &t);
           if (t == (uint64_t) -1)
             msec = -1;
           else {
             struct timespec ts;
             uint64_t n;
             clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, &ts);
             n = (uint64_t) ts.tv_sec * 1000000 + ts.tv_nsec / 1000;
             msec = t > n ? (int) ((t - n + 999) / 1000) : 0;
           }

       The code above does not do any error checking for brevity's sake.
       The calculated msec integer can be passed directly as poll()'s
       timeout parameter.

       After each poll() wake-up sd_journal_process() needs to be called
       to process events. This call will also indicate what kind of
       change has been detected (see below; note that spurious wake-ups
       are possible).

       A synchronous alternative for using sd_journal_get_fd(),
       sd_journal_get_events(), sd_journal_get_timeout() and
       sd_journal_process() is sd_journal_wait(). It will synchronously
       wait until the journal gets changed. The maximum time this call
       sleeps may be controlled with the timeout_usec parameter. Pass
       (uint64_t) -1 to wait indefinitely. Internally this call simply
       combines sd_journal_get_fd(), sd_journal_get_events(),
       sd_journal_get_timeout(), poll() and sd_journal_process() into
       one.

       sd_journal_reliable_fd() may be used to check whether the wake-up
       events from the file descriptor returned by sd_journal_get_fd()
       are known to be quickly triggered. On certain file systems where
       file change events from the OS are not available (such as NFS)
       changes need to be polled for repeatedly, and hence are detected
       only with a considerable latency. This call will return a
       positive value if the journal changes are detected quickly and
       zero when they need to be polled for. Note that there is usually
       no need to invoke this function directly as
       sd_journal_get_timeout() will request appropriate timeouts
       anyway.

       Note that all of the above change notification interfaces do not
       report changes instantly. Latencies are introduced for multiple
       reasons: as mentioned certain storage backends require time-based
       polling, in other cases wake-ups are optimized by coalescing
       events, and the OS introduces additional IO/CPU scheduling
       latencies.

RETURN VALUE         top

       sd_journal_get_fd() returns a valid file descriptor on success or
       a negative errno-style error code.

       sd_journal_get_events() returns a combination of POLLIN, POLLOUT
       and suchlike on success or a negative errno-style error code.

       sd_journal_reliable_fd() returns a positive integer if the file
       descriptor returned by sd_journal_get_fd() will generate wake-ups
       immediately for all journal changes. Returns 0 if there might be
       a latency involved.

       sd_journal_process() and sd_journal_wait() return a negative
       errno-style error code, or one of SD_JOURNAL_NOP,
       SD_JOURNAL_APPEND or SD_JOURNAL_INVALIDATE on success:

       •   If SD_JOURNAL_NOP is returned, the journal did not change
           since the last invocation.

       •   If SD_JOURNAL_APPEND is returned, new entries have been
           appended to the end of the journal. In this case it is
           sufficient to simply continue reading at the previous end
           location of the journal, to read the newly added entries.

       •   If SD_JOURNAL_INVALIDATE, journal files were added to or
           removed from the set of journal files watched (e.g. due to
           rotation or vacuuming), and thus entries might have appeared
           or disappeared at arbitrary places in the log stream,
           possibly before or after the previous end of the log stream.
           If SD_JOURNAL_INVALIDATE is returned, live-view UIs that want
           to reflect on screen the precise state of the log data on
           disk should probably refresh their entire display (relative
           to the cursor of the log entry on the top of the screen).
           Programs only interested in a strictly sequential stream of
           log data may treat SD_JOURNAL_INVALIDATE the same way as
           SD_JOURNAL_APPEND, thus ignoring any changes to the log view
           earlier than the old end of the log stream.

SIGNAL SAFETY         top

       In general, sd_journal_get_fd(), sd_journal_get_events(), and
       sd_journal_get_timeout() are not "async signal safe" in the
       meaning of signal-safety(7). Nevertheless, only the first call to
       any of those three functions performs unsafe operations, so
       subsequent calls are safe.

       sd_journal_process() and sd_journal_wait() are not safe.
       sd_journal_reliable_fd() is safe.

NOTES         top

       All functions listed here are thread-agnostic and only a single
       specific thread may operate on a given object during its entire
       lifetime. It's safe to allocate multiple independent objects and
       use each from a specific thread in parallel. However, it's not
       safe to allocate such an object in one thread, and operate or
       free it from any other, even if locking is used to ensure these
       threads don't operate on it at the very same time.

       Functions described here are available as a shared library, which
       can be compiled against and linked to with the
       libsystemd pkg-config(1) file.

EXAMPLES         top

       Iterating through the journal, in a live view tracking all
       changes:

           /* SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT-0 */

           #include <errno.h>
           #include <stdio.h>
           #include <systemd/sd-journal.h>

           int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
             int r;
             sd_journal *j;

             r = sd_journal_open(&j, SD_JOURNAL_LOCAL_ONLY);
             if (r < 0) {
               fprintf(stderr, "Failed to open journal: %s\n", strerror(-r));
               return 1;
             }

             for (;;)  {
               const void *d;
               size_t l;
               r = sd_journal_next(j);
               if (r < 0) {
                 fprintf(stderr, "Failed to iterate to next entry: %s\n", strerror(-r));
                 break;
               }
               if (r == 0) {
                 /* Reached the end, let's wait for changes, and try again */
                 r = sd_journal_wait(j, (uint64_t) -1);
                 if (r < 0) {
                   fprintf(stderr, "Failed to wait for changes: %s\n", strerror(-r));
                   break;
                 }
                 continue;
               }
               r = sd_journal_get_data(j, "MESSAGE", &d, &l);
               if (r < 0) {
                 fprintf(stderr, "Failed to read message field: %s\n", strerror(-r));
                 continue;
               }
               printf("%.*s\n", (int) l, (const char*) d);
             }

             sd_journal_close(j);
             return 0;
           }

       Waiting with poll() (this example lacks all error checking for
       the sake of simplicity):

           /* SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT-0 */

           #define _GNU_SOURCE 1
           #include <poll.h>
           #include <time.h>
           #include <systemd/sd-journal.h>

           int wait_for_changes(sd_journal *j) {
             uint64_t t;
             int msec;
             struct pollfd pollfd;

             sd_journal_get_timeout(j, &t);
             if (t == (uint64_t) -1)
               msec = -1;
             else {
               struct timespec ts;
               uint64_t n;
               clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, &ts);
               n = (uint64_t) ts.tv_sec * 1000000 + ts.tv_nsec / 1000;
               msec = t > n ? (int) ((t - n + 999) / 1000) : 0;
             }

             pollfd.fd = sd_journal_get_fd(j);
             pollfd.events = sd_journal_get_events(j);
             poll(&pollfd, 1, msec);
             return sd_journal_process(j);
           }

HISTORY         top

       sd_journal_get_fd(), sd_journal_process(), and sd_journal_wait()
       were added in version 187.

       sd_journal_reliable_fd() was added in version 196.

       sd_journal_get_events() and sd_journal_get_timeout() were added
       in version 201.

SEE ALSO         top

       systemd(1), sd-journal(3), sd_journal_open(3),
       sd_journal_next(3), poll(2), clock_gettime(2)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the systemd (systemd system and service
       manager) project.  Information about the project can be found at
       ⟨http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd⟩.  If you have
       a bug report for this manual page, see
       ⟨http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/#bugreports⟩.
       This page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/systemd/systemd.git⟩ on 2024-06-14.  (At that
       time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2024-06-13.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

systemd 257~devel                                   SD_JOURNAL_GET_FD(3)

Pages that refer to this page: sd-journal(3)systemd.directives(7)systemd.index(7)