Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 07 Feb 2013 11:12:39 -0800 | From | Andy Lutomirski <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH 1/1] eventfd: implementation of EFD_MASK flag |
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On 02/06/2013 10:41 PM, Martin Sustrik wrote: > When implementing network protocols in user space, one has to implement > fake user-space file descriptors to represent the sockets for the protocol. > > While all the BSD socket API functionality for such descriptors may be faked as > well (myproto_send(), myproto_recv() etc.) this approach doesn't work for > polling (select, poll, epoll). For polling, real system-level file descriptor > is needed. > > In theory, eventfd may be used for this purpose, except that it is well suited > only for signaling POLLIN. With some hacking it can be also used to signal > POLLOUT and POLLERR, however: > > I. There's no way to signal POLLPRI, POLLHUP etc. > II. There's no way to signal arbitraty combination of POLL* flags. Most notably, > !POLLIN & !POLLOUT, which is a perfectly valid combination for a network > protocol (rx buffer is empty and tx buffer is full), cannot be signaled > using current implementation of eventfd. > > This patch implements new EFD_MASK flag which attempts to solve this problem. > > Additionally, when implementing network protocols in user space, there's a > need to associate user-space state with the each "socket". If eventfd object is > used as a reference to the socket, it should be possible to associate an opaque > pointer to user-space data with it. > > The semantics of EFD_MASK are as follows: > > eventfd(2): > > If eventfd is created with EFD_MASK flag set, it is initialised in such a way > as to signal no events on the file descriptor when it is polled on. 'initval' > argument is ignored. > > write(2): > > User is allowed to write only buffers containing the following structure: > > struct efd_mask { > short events; > void *ptr; > };
IMO that should be u64 ptr to avoid compat problems.
> > The value of 'events' should be any combination of event flags as defined by > poll(2) function (POLLIN, POLLOUT, POLLERR, POLLHUP etc.) Specified events will > be signaled when polling (select, poll, epoll) on the eventfd is done later on. > 'ptr' is an opaque pointer that is not interpreted by eventfd object.
How does this interact with EPOLLET?
--Andy
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