signal/timer/event: timerfd core

This patch introduces a new system call for timers events delivered though
file descriptors.  This allows timer event to be used with standard POSIX
poll(2), select(2) and read(2).  As a consequence of supporting the Linux
f_op->poll subsystem, they can be used with epoll(2) too.

The system call is defined as:

int timerfd(int ufd, int clockid, int flags, const struct itimerspec *utmr);

The "ufd" parameter allows for re-use (re-programming) of an existing timerfd
w/out going through the close/open cycle (same as signalfd).  If "ufd" is -1,
s new file descriptor will be created, otherwise the existing "ufd" will be
re-programmed.

The "clockid" parameter is either CLOCK_MONOTONIC or CLOCK_REALTIME.  The time
specified in the "utmr->it_value" parameter is the expiry time for the timer.

If the TFD_TIMER_ABSTIME flag is set in "flags", this is an absolute time,
otherwise it's a relative time.

If the time specified in the "utmr->it_interval" is not zero (.tv_sec == 0,
tv_nsec == 0), this is the period at which the following ticks should be
generated.

The "utmr->it_interval" should be set to zero if only one tick is requested.
Setting the "utmr->it_value" to zero will disable the timer, or will create a
timerfd without the timer enabled.

The function returns the new (or same, in case "ufd" is a valid timerfd
descriptor) file, or -1 in case of error.

As stated before, the timerfd file descriptor supports poll(2), select(2) and
epoll(2).  When a timer event happened on the timerfd, a POLLIN mask will be
returned.

The read(2) call can be used, and it will return a u32 variable holding the
number of "ticks" that happened on the interface since the last call to
read(2).  The read(2) call supportes the O_NONBLOCK flag too, and EAGAIN will
be returned if no ticks happened.

A quick test program, shows timerfd working correctly on my amd64 box:

http://www.xmailserver.org/timerfd-test.c

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: add sys_timerfd to sys_ni.c]
Signed-off-by: Davide Libenzi <davidel@xmailserver.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

1 files changed, 2 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/include/linux/syscalls.h b/include/linux/syscalls.h
index e049f14a75b..fc637be1d9c 100644
--- a/include/linux/syscalls.h
+++ b/include/linux/syscalls.h
@@ -605,6 +605,8 @@ asmlinkage long sys_set_robust_list(struct robust_list_head __user *head,
 				    size_t len);
 asmlinkage long sys_getcpu(unsigned __user *cpu, unsigned __user *node, struct getcpu_cache __user *cache);
 asmlinkage long sys_signalfd(int ufd, sigset_t __user *user_mask, size_t sizemask);
+asmlinkage long sys_timerfd(int ufd, int clockid, int flags,
+			    const struct itimerspec __user *utmr);
 
 int kernel_execve(const char *filename, char *const argv[], char *const envp[]);