TIMER_CREATE(2)



TIMER_CREATE(2)            Linux Programmer's Manual           TIMER_CREATE(2)

NAME
       timer_create - create a POSIX per-process timer

SYNOPSIS
       #include <signal.h>
       #include <time.h>

       int timer_create(clockid_t clockid, struct sigevent *sevp,
                        timer_t *timerid);

       Link with -lrt.

   Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):

       timer_create(): _POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 199309L

DESCRIPTION
       timer_create() creates a new per-process interval timer.  The ID of the
       new timer is returned in the buffer pointed to by timerid,  which  must
       be a non-null pointer.  This ID is unique within the process, until the
       timer is deleted.  The new timer is initially disarmed.

       The clockid argument specifies the clock that the  new  timer  uses  to
       measure time.  It can be specified as one of the following values:

       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 af-
              ter system startup.

       CLOCK_PROCESS_CPUTIME_ID (since Linux 2.6.12)
              A  clock  that  measures  (user and system) CPU time consumed by
              (all of the threads in) the calling process.

       CLOCK_THREAD_CPUTIME_ID (since Linux 2.6.12)
              A clock that measures (user and system) CPU time consumed by the
              calling thread.

       CLOCK_BOOTTIME (Since Linux 2.6.39)
              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 3.0)
              This  clock  is like CLOCK_REALTIME, but will wake the system if
              it is suspended.  The caller must have the CAP_WAKE_ALARM  capa-
              bility in order to set a timer against this clock.

       CLOCK_BOOTTIME_ALARM (since Linux 3.0)
              This  clock  is like CLOCK_BOOTTIME, but will wake the system if
              it is suspended.  The caller must have the CAP_WAKE_ALARM  capa-
              bility in order to set a timer against this clock.

       CLOCK_TAI (since Linux 3.10)
              A  system-wide  clock  derived from wall-clock time but ignoring
              leap seconds.

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

       As well as the above values, clockid can be specified  as  the  clockid
       returned   by  a  call  to  clock_getcpuclockid(3)  or  pthread_getcpu-
       clockid(3).

       The sevp argument points to a sigevent structure that specifies how the
       caller  should  be notified when the timer expires.  For the definition
       and general details of this structure, see sigevent(7).

       The sevp.sigev_notify field can have the following values:

       SIGEV_NONE
              Don't asynchronously notify when the timer expires.  Progress of
              the timer can be monitored using timer_gettime(2).

       SIGEV_SIGNAL
              Upon  timer  expiration, generate the signal sigev_signo for the
              process.  See sigevent(7)  for  general  details.   The  si_code
              field  of  the  siginfo_t structure will be set to SI_TIMER.  At
              any point in time, at most one signal is queued to  the  process
              for a given timer; see timer_getoverrun(2) for more details.

       SIGEV_THREAD
              Upon  timer  expiration,  invoke  sigev_notify_function as if it
              were the start function of a new thread.   See  sigevent(7)  for
              details.

       SIGEV_THREAD_ID (Linux-specific)
              As  for  SIGEV_SIGNAL,  but the signal is targeted at the thread
              whose ID is given in sigev_notify_thread_id,  which  must  be  a
              thread  in  the  same  process  as  the  caller.   The sigev_no-
              tify_thread_id field specifies a kernel thread ID, that is,  the
              value  returned by clone(2) or gettid(2).  This flag is intended
              only for use by threading libraries.

       Specifying sevp as NULL is equivalent to  specifying  a  pointer  to  a
       sigevent  structure  in which sigev_notify is SIGEV_SIGNAL, sigev_signo
       is SIGALRM, and sigev_value.sival_int is the timer ID.

RETURN VALUE
       On success, timer_create() returns 0, and the ID of the  new  timer  is
       placed  in  *timerid.   On failure, -1 is returned, and errno is set to
       indicate the error.

ERRORS
       EAGAIN Temporary error during kernel allocation of timer structures.

       EINVAL Clock ID, sigev_notify, sigev_signo,  or  sigev_notify_thread_id
              is invalid.

       ENOMEM Could not allocate memory.

       ENOTSUP
              The  kernel  does  not  support  creating  a  timer against this
              clockid.

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

VERSIONS
       This system call is available since Linux 2.6.

CONFORMING TO
       POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008.

NOTES
       A program may create multiple interval timers using timer_create().

       Timers  are  not  inherited by the child of a fork(2), and are disarmed
       and deleted during an execve(2).

       The kernel preallocates a "queued real-time signal" for each timer cre-
       ated  using timer_create().  Consequently, the number of timers is lim-
       ited by the RLIMIT_SIGPENDING resource limit (see setrlimit(2)).

       The timers created by timer_create() are commonly known as "POSIX  (in-
       terval) timers".  The POSIX timers API consists of the following inter-
       faces:

       *  timer_create(): Create a timer.

       *  timer_settime(2): Arm (start) or disarm (stop) a timer.

       *  timer_gettime(2): Fetch the time remaining until the next expiration
          of a timer, along with the interval setting of the timer.

       *  timer_getoverrun(2): Return the overrun count for the last timer ex-
          piration.

       *  timer_delete(2): Disarm and delete a timer.

       Since Linux 3.10, the /proc/[pid]/timers file can be used to  list  the
       POSIX timers for the process with PID pid.  See proc(5) for further in-
       formation.

       Since Linux 4.10, support for POSIX timers  is  a  configurable  option
       that  is  enabled  by  default.  Kernel support can be disabled via the
       CONFIG_POSIX_TIMERS option.

   C library/kernel differences
       Part of the implementation of the  POSIX  timers  API  is  provided  by
       glibc.  In particular:

       *  Much  of  the  functionality  for SIGEV_THREAD is implemented within
          glibc, rather than the kernel.  (This is necessarily so,  since  the
          thread  involved  in  handling  the notification is one that must be
          managed by the C library POSIX  threads  implementation.)   Although
          the  notification  delivered  to the process is via a thread, inter-
          nally  the  NPTL  implementation  uses  a  sigev_notify   value   of
          SIGEV_THREAD_ID  along  with  a real-time signal that is reserved by
          the implementation (see nptl(7)).

       *  The implementation of the default case where evp is NULL is  handled
          inside  glibc, which invokes the underlying system call with a suit-
          ably populated sigevent structure.

       *  The timer IDs presented at user level are maintained by glibc, which
          maps these IDs to the timer IDs employed by the kernel.

       The  POSIX  timers  system calls first appeared in Linux 2.6.  Prior to
       this, glibc provided an incomplete user-space implementation (CLOCK_RE-
       ALTIME  timers  only) using POSIX threads, and in glibc versions before
       2.17, the implementation falls back to this technique on  systems  run-
       ning pre-2.6 Linux kernels.

EXAMPLES
       The program below takes two arguments: a sleep period in seconds, and a
       timer frequency in nanoseconds.  The program establishes a handler  for
       the  signal it uses for the timer, blocks that signal, creates and arms
       a timer that expires with the given frequency, sleeps for the specified
       number  of  seconds, and then unblocks the timer signal.  Assuming that
       the timer expired at least once while the  program  slept,  the  signal
       handler  will  be  invoked,  and  the handler displays some information
       about the timer notification.  The program terminates after one invoca-
       tion of the signal handler.

       In  the  following  example run, the program sleeps for 1 second, after
       creating a timer that has a frequency of 100 nanoseconds.  By the  time
       the  signal is unblocked and delivered, there have been around ten mil-
       lion overruns.

           $ ./a.out 1 100
           Establishing handler for signal 34
           Blocking signal 34
           timer ID is 0x804c008
           Sleeping for 1 seconds
           Unblocking signal 34
           Caught signal 34
               sival_ptr = 0xbfb174f4;     *sival_ptr = 0x804c008
               overrun count = 10004886

   Program source

       #include <stdlib.h>
       #include <unistd.h>
       #include <stdio.h>
       #include <signal.h>
       #include <time.h>

       #define CLOCKID CLOCK_REALTIME
       #define SIG SIGRTMIN

       #define errExit(msg)    do { perror(msg); exit(EXIT_FAILURE); \
                               } while (0)

       static void
       print_siginfo(siginfo_t *si)
       {
           timer_t *tidp;
           int or;

           tidp = si->si_value.sival_ptr;

           printf("    sival_ptr = %p; ", si->si_value.sival_ptr);
           printf("    *sival_ptr = 0x%lx\n", (long) *tidp);

           or = timer_getoverrun(*tidp);
           if (or == -1)
               errExit("timer_getoverrun");
           else
               printf("    overrun count = %d\n", or);
       }

       static void
       handler(int sig, siginfo_t *si, void *uc)
       {
           /* Note: calling printf() from a signal handler is not safe
              (and should not be done in production programs), since
              printf() is not async-signal-safe; see signal-safety(7).
              Nevertheless, we use printf() here as a simple way of
              showing that the handler was called. */

           printf("Caught signal %d\n", sig);
           print_siginfo(si);
           signal(sig, SIG_IGN);
       }

       int
       main(int argc, char *argv[])
       {
           timer_t timerid;
           struct sigevent sev;
           struct itimerspec its;
           long long freq_nanosecs;
           sigset_t mask;
           struct sigaction sa;

           if (argc != 3) {
               fprintf(stderr, "Usage: %s <sleep-secs> <freq-nanosecs>\n",
                       argv[0]);
               exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
           }

           /* Establish handler for timer signal */

           printf("Establishing handler for signal %d\n", SIG);
           sa.sa_flags = SA_SIGINFO;
           sa.sa_sigaction = handler;
           sigemptyset(&sa.sa_mask);
           if (sigaction(SIG, &sa, NULL) == -1)
               errExit("sigaction");

           /* Block timer signal temporarily */

           printf("Blocking signal %d\n", SIG);
           sigemptyset(&mask);
           sigaddset(&mask, SIG);
           if (sigprocmask(SIG_SETMASK, &mask, NULL) == -1)
               errExit("sigprocmask");

           /* Create the timer */

           sev.sigev_notify = SIGEV_SIGNAL;
           sev.sigev_signo = SIG;
           sev.sigev_value.sival_ptr = &timerid;
           if (timer_create(CLOCKID, &sev, &timerid) == -1)
               errExit("timer_create");

           printf("timer ID is 0x%lx\n", (long) timerid);

           /* Start the timer */

           freq_nanosecs = atoll(argv[2]);
           its.it_value.tv_sec = freq_nanosecs / 1000000000;
           its.it_value.tv_nsec = freq_nanosecs % 1000000000;
           its.it_interval.tv_sec = its.it_value.tv_sec;
           its.it_interval.tv_nsec = its.it_value.tv_nsec;

           if (timer_settime(timerid, 0, &its, NULL) == -1)
                errExit("timer_settime");

           /* Sleep for a while; meanwhile, the timer may expire
              multiple times */

           printf("Sleeping for %d seconds\n", atoi(argv[1]));
           sleep(atoi(argv[1]));

           /* Unlock the timer signal, so that timer notification
              can be delivered */

           printf("Unblocking signal %d\n", SIG);
           if (sigprocmask(SIG_UNBLOCK, &mask, NULL) == -1)
               errExit("sigprocmask");

           exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
       }

SEE ALSO
       clock_gettime(2), setitimer(2), timer_delete(2), timer_getoverrun(2),
       timer_settime(2), timerfd_create(2), clock_getcpuclockid(3),
       pthread_getcpuclockid(3), pthreads(7), sigevent(7), signal(7), time(7)

COLOPHON
       This page is part of release 5.07 of the Linux man-pages project.  A
       description of the project, information about reporting bugs, and the
       latest version of this page, can be found at
       https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

Linux                             2020-04-11                   TIMER_CREATE(2)

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