I found the manual pages really confusing so I had a go at rewriting them - there were places in the manual page that didn't match the functionality provided by your code as well as I could tell). My apologies for a few formatting issues though. I still don't like parts of epoll_pwait1 but it's less confusing than it was. You are free to take some or all or none of the changes. I did have a question I marked with **** below about what you describe and what your code does. 1) epoll_ctl_batch ------------------ NAME epoll_ctl_batch - batch control interface for an epoll descriptor SYNOPSIS #include <sys/epoll.h> int epoll_ctl_batch(int epfd, int flags, int ncmds, struct epoll_ctl_cmd *cmds); DESCRIPTION This system call is an extension of epoll_ctl(). The primary difference is that this system call allows you to batch multiple operations with the one system call. This provides a more efficient interface for updating events on this epoll file descriptor epfd. The flags argument is reserved and must be 0. The argument ncmds is the number of cmds entries being passed in. This number must be greater than 0. Each operation is specified as an element in the cmds array, defined as: struct epoll_ctl_cmd { /* Reserved flags for future extension, must be 0. */ int flags; /* The same as epoll_ctl() op parameter. */ int op; /* The same as epoll_ctl() fd parameter. */ int fd; /* The same as the "events" field in struct epoll_event. */ uint32_t events; /* The same as the "data" field in struct epoll_event. */ uint64_t data; /* Output field, will be set to the return code after this * command is executed by kernel */ int result; }; This system call is not atomic when updating the epoll descriptor. All entries in cmds are executed in the order provided. If any cmds entry fails to be processed no further entries are processed and the number of successfully processed entries is returned. Each single operation defined by a struct epoll_ctl_cmd has the same semantics as an epoll_ctl(2) call. See the epoll_ctl() manual page for more information about how to correctly setup the members of a struct epoll_ctl_cmd. Upon completion of the call the result member of each struct epoll_ctl_cmd may be set to 0 (sucessfully completed) or an error code depending on the result of the command. If the kernel fails to change the result (for example the location of the cmds argument is fully or partly read only) the result member of each struct epoll_ctl_cmd may be unchanged. RETURN VALUE epoll_ctl_batch() returns a number greater than 0 to indicate the number of cmnd entries processed. If all entries have been processed this will equal the ncmds parameter passed in. If one or more parameters are incorrect the value returned is -1 with errno set appropriately - no cmds entries have been processed when this happens. If processing any entry in the cmds argument results in an error the number returned is the number of the failing entry - this number will be less than ncmds. Since ncmds must be greater than 0 a return value of 0 indicates an error associated with the very first cmds entry. A return value of 0 does not indicate a successful system call. To correctly test the return value from epoll_ctl_batch() use code similar to the following: ret=epoll_ctl_batch(epfd, flags, ncmds, &cmds); if (ret < ncmds) { if (ret == -1) { /* An argument was invalid */ } else { /* ret contains the number of successful entries * processed. If you (mis?)use it as a C index it * will index directly to the failing entry to * get the result use cmds[ret].result which may * contain the errno value associated with the * entry. */ } } else { /* Success */ } ERRORS EINVAL flags is non-zero, or ncmds is less than or equal to zero, or cmds is NULL. ENOMEM There was insufficient memory to handle the requested op control operation. EFAULT The memory area pointed to by cmds is not accessible with read permissions. In the event that the return value is not the same as the ncmds parameter the result member of the failing struct epoll_ctl_cmd will contain a negative errno value related to the error. The errno values that can be set are those documented on the epoll_ctl(2) manual page. CONFORMING TO epoll_ctl_batch() is Linux-specific. SEE ALSO epoll_create(2), epoll_ctl(2), epoll_wait(2), epoll_pwait(2), epoll(7) 2) epoll_pwait1 --------------- NAME epoll_pwait1 - wait for an I/O event on an epoll file descriptor SYNOPSIS #include <sys/epoll.h> int epoll_pwait1(int epfd, int flags, struct epoll_event *events, int maxevents, struct epoll_wait_params *params); DESCRIPTION The epoll_pwait1() syscall differs from epoll_pwait() only in parameter list. The epfd, events and maxevents parameters are the same as in epoll_wait() and epoll_pwait(). The flags and params are new. The flags is reserved and must be zero. The params is a pointer to a struct epoll_wait_params which is defined as: struct epoll_wait_params { int clockid; struct timespec timeout; sigset_t *sigmask; size_t sigsetsize; }; The clockid member must be either CLOCK_REALTIME or CLOCK_MONOTONIC. This will choose the clock type to use for timeout. This differs to epoll_pwait(2) which has an implicit clock type of CLOCK_MONOTONIC. The timeout member specifies the minimum time that epoll_wait(2) will block. The time spent waiting will be rounded up to the clock granularity. Kernel scheduling delays mean that the blocking interval may overrun by a small amount. Specifying a -1 for either tv_sec or tv_nsec member of the struct timespec timeout will cause causes epoll_pwait1(2) to block indefinitely. Specifying a timeout equal to zero (both tv_sec or tv_nsec member of the struct timespec timeout are zero) causes epoll_wait(2) to return immediately, even if no events are available. **** Are you really really sure about this for the -1 stuff? your code copies in the timespec and just passes it to timespec_to_ktime: + if (copy_from_user(&p, params, sizeof(p))) + return -EFAULT; ... + kt = timespec_to_ktime(p.timeout); Compare that to something like the futex syscall which does this: if (copy_from_user(&ts, utime, sizeof(ts)) != 0) return -EFAULT; if (!timespec_valid(&ts)) return -EINVAL; t = timespec_to_ktime(ts); If the timespec is not valid it returns -EINVAL back to user space. With your settings of tv_sec and/or tv_usec to -1 are you relying on a side effect of the conversion that could break your code in the future if in the unlikely event someone changes timespec_to_ktime() and should it be: + if (copy_from_user(&p, params, sizeof(p))) + return -EFAULT; + if ((p.timeout.tv_sec == -1) || (p.timeout.tv_nsec == -1)) { + /* this is off the top of my head no idea if it will compile */ + p.timeout.tv_sec = KTIME_SEC_MAX; + p.timeout.tv_nsec = 0; + } + if (!timespec_valid(&p.timeout)) + return -EINVAL; ... + kt = timespec_to_ktime(p.timeout); I could of course be worried about nothing here is what I've suggested the right thing to do? Anyone feel free to chime in. Both sigmask and sigsetsize have the same semantics as epoll_pwait(2). The sigmask field may be specified as NULL, in which case epoll_pwait1(2) will behave like epoll_wait(2). User visibility of sigsetsize In epoll_pwait(2) and other syscalls, sigsetsize is not visible to an application developer as glibc has a wrapper around epoll_pwait(2). Now we pack several parameters in epoll_wait_params. In order to hide sigsetsize from application code this system call also needs to be wrapped either by expanding parameters and building the structure in the wrapper function, or by only asking application to provide this part of the structure: struct epoll_wait_params_user { int clockid; struct timespec timeout; sigset_t *sigmask; }; In the wrapper function it would be copied to a full structure and sigsetsize filled in. RETURN VALUE When successful, epoll_wait1() returns the number of file descriptors ready for the requested I/O, or zero if no file descriptor became ready during the requested timeout nanoseconds. When an error occurs, epoll_wait1() returns -1 and errno is set appropriately. ERRORS This system call can set errno to the same values as epoll_pwait(2), as well as the following additional reasons: EINVAL flags is not zero, or clockid is not one of CLOCK_REALTIME or CLOCK_MONOTONIC. EFAULT The memory area pointed to by params is not accessible. CONFORMING TO epoll_pwait1() is Linux-specific. SEE ALSO epoll_create(2), epoll_ctl(2), epoll_wait(2), epoll_pwait(2), epoll(7) -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html