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NAME
epoll - I/O event notification facility
SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/epoll.h>
DESCRIPTION
The epoll API performs a similar task to poll(2): monitoring multiple file descriptors to see if I/O is
possible on any of them. The epoll API can be used either as an edge-triggered or a level-triggered
interface and scales well to large numbers of watched file descriptors.
The central concept of the epoll API is the epoll instance, an in-kernel data structure which, from a
user-space perspective, can be considered as a container for two lists:
• The interest list (sometimes also called the epoll set): the set of file descriptors that the process
has registered an interest in monitoring.
• The ready list: the set of file descriptors that are "ready" for I/O. The ready list is a subset of
(or, more precisely, a set of references to) the file descriptors in the interest list. The ready list
is dynamically populated by the kernel as a result of I/O activity on those file descriptors.
The following system calls are provided to create and manage an epoll instance:
• epoll_create(2) creates a new epoll instance and returns a file descriptor referring to that instance.
(The more recent epoll_create1(2) extends the functionality of epoll_create(2).)
• Interest in particular file descriptors is then registered via epoll_ctl(2), which adds items to the
interest list of the epoll instance.
• epoll_wait(2) waits for I/O events, blocking the calling thread if no events are currently available.
(This system call can be thought of as fetching items from the ready list of the epoll instance.)
Level-triggered and edge-triggered
The epoll event distribution interface is able to behave both as edge-triggered (ET) and as level-
triggered (LT). The difference between the two mechanisms can be described as follows. Suppose that
this scenario happens:
1. The file descriptor that represents the read side of a pipe (rfd) is registered on the epoll instance.
2. A pipe writer writes 2 kB of data on the write side of the pipe.
3. A call to epoll_wait(2) is done that will return rfd as a ready file descriptor.
4. The pipe reader reads 1 kB of data from rfd.
5. A call to epoll_wait(2) is done.
If the rfd file descriptor has been added to the epoll interface using the EPOLLET (edge-triggered) flag,
the call to epoll_wait(2) done in step 5 will probably hang despite the available data still present in
the file input buffer; meanwhile the remote peer might be expecting a response based on the data it
already sent. The reason for this is that edge-triggered mode delivers events only when changes occur on
the monitored file descriptor. So, in step 5 the caller might end up waiting for some data that is
already present inside the input buffer. In the above example, an event on rfd will be generated because
of the write done in 2 and the event is consumed in 3. Since the read operation done in 4 does not
consume the whole buffer data, the call to epoll_wait(2) done in step 5 might block indefinitely.
An application that employs the EPOLLET flag should use nonblocking file descriptors to avoid having a
blocking read or write starve a task that is handling multiple file descriptors. The suggested way to
use epoll as an edge-triggered (EPOLLET) interface is as follows:
a) with nonblocking file descriptors; and
b) by waiting for an event only after read(2) or write(2) return EAGAIN.
By contrast, when used as a level-triggered interface (the default, when EPOLLET is not specified), epoll
is simply a faster poll(2), and can be used wherever the latter is used since it shares the same
semantics.
Since even with edge-triggered epoll, multiple events can be generated upon receipt of multiple chunks of
data, the caller has the option to specify the EPOLLONESHOT flag, to tell epoll to disable the associated
file descriptor after the receipt of an event with epoll_wait(2). When the EPOLLONESHOT flag is
specified, it is the caller's responsibility to rearm the file descriptor using epoll_ctl(2) with
EPOLL_CTL_MOD.
If multiple threads (or processes, if child processes have inherited the epoll file descriptor across
fork(2)) are blocked in epoll_wait(2) waiting on the same epoll file descriptor and a file descriptor in
the interest list that is marked for edge-triggered (EPOLLET) notification becomes ready, just one of the
threads (or processes) is awoken from epoll_wait(2). This provides a useful optimization for avoiding
"thundering herd" wake-ups in some scenarios.
Interaction with autosleep
If the system is in autosleep mode via /sys/power/autosleep and an event happens which wakes the device
from sleep, the device driver will keep the device awake only until that event is queued. To keep the
device awake until the event has been processed, it is necessary to use the epoll_ctl(2) EPOLLWAKEUP
flag.
When the EPOLLWAKEUP flag is set in the events field for a struct epoll_event, the system will be kept
awake from the moment the event is queued, through the epoll_wait(2) call which returns the event until
the subsequent epoll_wait(2) call. If the event should keep the system awake beyond that time, then a
separate wake_lock should be taken before the second epoll_wait(2) call.
/proc interfaces
The following interfaces can be used to limit the amount of kernel memory consumed by epoll:
/proc/sys/fs/epoll/max_user_watches (since Linux 2.6.28)
This specifies a limit on the total number of file descriptors that a user can register across all
epoll instances on the system. The limit is per real user ID. Each registered file descriptor
costs roughly 90 bytes on a 32-bit kernel, and roughly 160 bytes on a 64-bit kernel. Currently,
the default value for max_user_watches is 1/25 (4%) of the available low memory, divided by the
registration cost in bytes.
Example for suggested usage
While the usage of epoll when employed as a level-triggered interface does have the same semantics as
poll(2), the edge-triggered usage requires more clarification to avoid stalls in the application event
loop. In this example, listener is a nonblocking socket on which listen(2) has been called. The
function do_use_fd() uses the new ready file descriptor until EAGAIN is returned by either read(2) or
write(2). An event-driven state machine application should, after having received EAGAIN, record its
current state so that at the next call to do_use_fd() it will continue to read(2) or write(2) from where
it stopped before.
#define MAX_EVENTS 10
struct epoll_event ev, events[MAX_EVENTS];
int listen_sock, conn_sock, nfds, epollfd;
/* Code to set up listening socket, 'listen_sock',
(socket(), bind(), listen()) omitted */
epollfd = epoll_create1(0);
if (epollfd == -1) {
perror("epoll_create1");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
ev.events = EPOLLIN;
ev.data.fd = listen_sock;
if (epoll_ctl(epollfd, EPOLL_CTL_ADD, listen_sock, &ev) == -1) {
perror("epoll_ctl: listen_sock");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
for (;;) {
nfds = epoll_wait(epollfd, events, MAX_EVENTS, -1);
if (nfds == -1) {
perror("epoll_wait");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
for (n = 0; n < nfds; ++n) {
if (events[n].data.fd == listen_sock) {
conn_sock = accept(listen_sock,
(struct sockaddr *) &addr, &addrlen);
if (conn_sock == -1) {
perror("accept");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
setnonblocking(conn_sock);
ev.events = EPOLLIN | EPOLLET;
ev.data.fd = conn_sock;
if (epoll_ctl(epollfd, EPOLL_CTL_ADD, conn_sock,
&ev) == -1) {
perror("epoll_ctl: conn_sock");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
} else {
do_use_fd(events[n].data.fd);
}
}
}
When used as an edge-triggered interface, for performance reasons, it is possible to add the file
descriptor inside the epoll interface (EPOLL_CTL_ADD) once by specifying (EPOLLIN|EPOLLOUT). This allows
you to avoid continuously switching between EPOLLIN and EPOLLOUT calling epoll_ctl(2) with EPOLL_CTL_MOD.
Questions and answers
0. What is the key used to distinguish the file descriptors registered in an interest list?
The key is the combination of the file descriptor number and the open file description (also known as
an "open file handle", the kernel's internal representation of an open file).
1. What happens if you register the same file descriptor on an epoll instance twice?
You will probably get EEXIST. However, it is possible to add a duplicate (dup(2), dup2(2), fcntl(2)
F_DUPFD) file descriptor to the same epoll instance. This can be a useful technique for filtering
events, if the duplicate file descriptors are registered with different events masks.
2. Can two epoll instances wait for the same file descriptor? If so, are events reported to both epoll
file descriptors?
Yes, and events would be reported to both. However, careful programming may be needed to do this
correctly.
3. Is the epoll file descriptor itself poll/epoll/selectable?
Yes. If an epoll file descriptor has events waiting, then it will indicate as being readable.
4. What happens if one attempts to put an epoll file descriptor into its own file descriptor set?
The epoll_ctl(2) call fails (EINVAL). However, you can add an epoll file descriptor inside another
epoll file descriptor set.
5. Can I send an epoll file descriptor over a UNIX domain socket to another process?
Yes, but it does not make sense to do this, since the receiving process would not have copies of the
file descriptors in the interest list.
6. Will closing a file descriptor cause it to be removed from all epoll interest lists?
Yes, but be aware of the following point. A file descriptor is a reference to an open file
description (see open(2)). Whenever a file descriptor is duplicated via dup(2), dup2(2), fcntl(2)
F_DUPFD, or fork(2), a new file descriptor referring to the same open file description is created.
An open file description continues to exist until all file descriptors referring to it have been
closed.
A file descriptor is removed from an interest list only after all the file descriptors referring to
the underlying open file description have been closed. This means that even after a file descriptor
that is part of an interest list has been closed, events may be reported for that file descriptor if
other file descriptors referring to the same underlying file description remain open. To prevent
this happening, the file descriptor must be explicitly removed from the interest list (using
epoll_ctl(2) EPOLL_CTL_DEL) before it is duplicated. Alternatively, the application must ensure that
all file descriptors are closed (which may be difficult if file descriptors were duplicated behind
the scenes by library functions that used dup(2) or fork(2)).
7. If more than one event occurs between epoll_wait(2) calls, are they combined or reported separately?
They will be combined.
8. Does an operation on a file descriptor affect the already collected but not yet reported events?
You can do two operations on an existing file descriptor. Remove would be meaningless for this case.
Modify will reread available I/O.
9. Do I need to continuously read/write a file descriptor until EAGAIN when using the EPOLLET flag
(edge-triggered behavior)?
Receiving an event from epoll_wait(2) should suggest to you that such file descriptor is ready for
the requested I/O operation. You must consider it ready until the next (nonblocking) read/write
yields EAGAIN. When and how you will use the file descriptor is entirely up to you.
For packet/token-oriented files (e.g., datagram socket, terminal in canonical mode), the only way to
detect the end of the read/write I/O space is to continue to read/write until EAGAIN.
For stream-oriented files (e.g., pipe, FIFO, stream socket), the condition that the read/write I/O
space is exhausted can also be detected by checking the amount of data read from / written to the
target file descriptor. For example, if you call read(2) by asking to read a certain amount of data
and read(2) returns a lower number of bytes, you can be sure of having exhausted the read I/O space
for the file descriptor. The same is true when writing using write(2). (Avoid this latter technique
if you cannot guarantee that the monitored file descriptor always refers to a stream-oriented file.)
Possible pitfalls and ways to avoid them
o Starvation (edge-triggered)
If there is a large amount of I/O space, it is possible that by trying to drain it the other files will
not get processed causing starvation. (This problem is not specific to epoll.)
The solution is to maintain a ready list and mark the file descriptor as ready in its associated data
structure, thereby allowing the application to remember which files need to be processed but still round
robin amongst all the ready files. This also supports ignoring subsequent events you receive for file
descriptors that are already ready.
o If using an event cache...
If you use an event cache or store all the file descriptors returned from epoll_wait(2), then make sure
to provide a way to mark its closure dynamically (i.e., caused by a previous event's processing).
Suppose you receive 100 events from epoll_wait(2), and in event #47 a condition causes event #13 to be
closed. If you remove the structure and close(2) the file descriptor for event #13, then your event
cache might still say there are events waiting for that file descriptor causing confusion.
One solution for this is to call, during the processing of event 47, epoll_ctl(EPOLL_CTL_DEL) to delete
file descriptor 13 and close(2), then mark its associated data structure as removed and link it to a
cleanup list. If you find another event for file descriptor 13 in your batch processing, you will
discover the file descriptor had been previously removed and there will be no confusion.
VERSIONS
The epoll API was introduced in Linux kernel 2.5.44. Support was added to glibc in version 2.3.2.
CONFORMING TO
The epoll API is Linux-specific. Some other systems provide similar mechanisms, for example, FreeBSD has
kqueue, and Solaris has /dev/poll.
NOTES
The set of file descriptors that is being monitored via an epoll file descriptor can be viewed via the
entry for the epoll file descriptor in the process's /proc/[pid]/fdinfo directory. See proc(5) for
further details.
The kcmp(2) KCMP_EPOLL_TFD operation can be used to test whether a file descriptor is present in an epoll
instance.
SEE ALSO
epoll_create(2), epoll_create1(2), epoll_ctl(2), epoll_wait(2), poll(2), select(2)
COLOPHON
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