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Revision: 1.17
Committed: Mon Jun 26 14:53:55 2006 UTC (17 years, 10 months ago) by root
Branch: MAIN
Changes since 1.16: +30 -0 lines
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# User Rev Content
1 root 1.1 NAME
2     IO::AIO - Asynchronous Input/Output
3    
4     SYNOPSIS
5     use IO::AIO;
6    
7 root 1.5 aio_open "/etc/passwd", O_RDONLY, 0, sub {
8     my ($fh) = @_;
9     ...
10     };
11    
12     aio_unlink "/tmp/file", sub { };
13    
14     aio_read $fh, 30000, 1024, $buffer, 0, sub {
15     $_[0] > 0 or die "read error: $!";
16     };
17    
18 root 1.14 # AnyEvent
19     open my $fh, "<&=" . IO::AIO::poll_fileno or die "$!";
20     my $w = AnyEvent->io (fh => $fh, poll => 'r', cb => sub { IO::AIO::poll_cb });
21    
22 root 1.5 # Event
23     Event->io (fd => IO::AIO::poll_fileno,
24     poll => 'r',
25     cb => \&IO::AIO::poll_cb);
26    
27     # Glib/Gtk2
28     add_watch Glib::IO IO::AIO::poll_fileno,
29 root 1.7 in => sub { IO::AIO::poll_cb; 1 };
30 root 1.5
31     # Tk
32     Tk::Event::IO->fileevent (IO::AIO::poll_fileno, "",
33     readable => \&IO::AIO::poll_cb);
34    
35 root 1.6 # Danga::Socket
36     Danga::Socket->AddOtherFds (IO::AIO::poll_fileno =>
37     \&IO::AIO::poll_cb);
38    
39 root 1.1 DESCRIPTION
40     This module implements asynchronous I/O using whatever means your
41 root 1.2 operating system supports.
42 root 1.1
43 root 1.2 Currently, a number of threads are started that execute your read/writes
44     and signal their completion. You don't need thread support in your libc
45     or perl, and the threads created by this module will not be visible to
46     the pthreads library. In the future, this module might make use of the
47     native aio functions available on many operating systems. However, they
48     are often not well-supported (Linux doesn't allow them on normal files
49     currently, for example), and they would only support aio_read and
50     aio_write, so the remaining functionality would have to be implemented
51     using threads anyway.
52 root 1.1
53     Although the module will work with in the presence of other threads, it
54 root 1.7 is currently not reentrant, so use appropriate locking yourself, always
55     call "poll_cb" from within the same thread, or never call "poll_cb" (or
56     other "aio_" functions) recursively.
57 root 1.1
58 root 1.4 FUNCTIONS
59     AIO FUNCTIONS
60 root 1.1 All the "aio_*" calls are more or less thin wrappers around the syscall
61     with the same name (sans "aio_"). The arguments are similar or
62 root 1.6 identical, and they all accept an additional (and optional) $callback
63     argument which must be a code reference. This code reference will get
64     called with the syscall return code (e.g. most syscalls return -1 on
65     error, unlike perl, which usually delivers "false") as it's sole
66     argument when the given syscall has been executed asynchronously.
67 root 1.1
68 root 1.8 All functions expecting a filehandle keep a copy of the filehandle
69     internally until the request has finished.
70 root 1.1
71 root 1.9 The pathnames you pass to these routines *must* be absolute and encoded
72     in byte form. The reason for the former is that at the time the request
73     is being executed, the current working directory could have changed.
74     Alternatively, you can make sure that you never change the current
75     working directory.
76    
77     To encode pathnames to byte form, either make sure you either: a) always
78     pass in filenames you got from outside (command line, readdir etc.), b)
79     are ASCII or ISO 8859-1, c) use the Encode module and encode your
80     pathnames to the locale (or other) encoding in effect in the user
81     environment, d) use Glib::filename_from_unicode on unicode filenames or
82     e) use something else.
83 root 1.1
84 root 1.13 aio_open $pathname, $flags, $mode, $callback->($fh)
85 root 1.2 Asynchronously open or create a file and call the callback with a
86     newly created filehandle for the file.
87    
88     The pathname passed to "aio_open" must be absolute. See API NOTES,
89     above, for an explanation.
90 root 1.1
91 root 1.7 The $flags argument is a bitmask. See the "Fcntl" module for a list.
92     They are the same as used by "sysopen".
93    
94     Likewise, $mode specifies the mode of the newly created file, if it
95     didn't exist and "O_CREAT" has been given, just like perl's
96     "sysopen", except that it is mandatory (i.e. use 0 if you don't
97     create new files, and 0666 or 0777 if you do).
98 root 1.1
99     Example:
100    
101     aio_open "/etc/passwd", O_RDONLY, 0, sub {
102 root 1.2 if ($_[0]) {
103     print "open successful, fh is $_[0]\n";
104 root 1.1 ...
105     } else {
106     die "open failed: $!\n";
107     }
108     };
109    
110 root 1.13 aio_close $fh, $callback->($status)
111 root 1.1 Asynchronously close a file and call the callback with the result
112 root 1.2 code. *WARNING:* although accepted, you should not pass in a perl
113     filehandle here, as perl will likely close the file descriptor
114 root 1.7 another time when the filehandle is destroyed. Normally, you can
115     safely call perls "close" or just let filehandles go out of scope.
116    
117     This is supposed to be a bug in the API, so that might change. It's
118     therefore best to avoid this function.
119 root 1.1
120 root 1.13 aio_read $fh,$offset,$length, $data,$dataoffset, $callback->($retval)
121     aio_write $fh,$offset,$length, $data,$dataoffset, $callback->($retval)
122 root 1.1 Reads or writes "length" bytes from the specified "fh" and "offset"
123     into the scalar given by "data" and offset "dataoffset" and calls
124     the callback without the actual number of bytes read (or -1 on
125     error, just like the syscall).
126    
127 root 1.10 The $data scalar *MUST NOT* be modified in any way while the request
128     is outstanding. Modifying it can result in segfaults or WW3 (if the
129     necessary/optional hardware is installed).
130    
131 root 1.6 Example: Read 15 bytes at offset 7 into scalar $buffer, starting at
132 root 1.1 offset 0 within the scalar:
133    
134     aio_read $fh, 7, 15, $buffer, 0, sub {
135 root 1.5 $_[0] > 0 or die "read error: $!";
136     print "read $_[0] bytes: <$buffer>\n";
137 root 1.1 };
138    
139 root 1.17 aio_move $srcpath, $dstpath, $callback->($status)
140     [EXPERIMENTAL]
141    
142     Try to move the *file* (directories not supported as either source
143     or destination) from $srcpath to $dstpath and call the callback with
144     the 0 (error) or -1 ok.
145    
146     This is a composite request that tries to rename(2) the file first.
147     If rename files with "EXDEV", it creates the destination file with
148     mode 0200 and copies the contents of the source file into it using
149     "aio_sendfile", followed by restoring atime, mtime, access mode and
150     uid/gid, in that order, and unlinking the $srcpath.
151    
152     If an error occurs, the partial destination file will be unlinked,
153     if possible, except when setting atime, mtime, access mode and
154     uid/gid, where errors are being ignored.
155    
156 root 1.13 aio_sendfile $out_fh, $in_fh, $in_offset, $length, $callback->($retval)
157 root 1.12 Tries to copy $length bytes from $in_fh to $out_fh. It starts
158     reading at byte offset $in_offset, and starts writing at the current
159     file offset of $out_fh. Because of that, it is not safe to issue
160     more than one "aio_sendfile" per $out_fh, as they will interfere
161     with each other.
162    
163     This call tries to make use of a native "sendfile" syscall to
164     provide zero-copy operation. For this to work, $out_fh should refer
165     to a socket, and $in_fh should refer to mmap'able file.
166    
167     If the native sendfile call fails or is not implemented, it will be
168     emulated, so you can call "aio_sendfile" on any type of filehandle
169     regardless of the limitations of the operating system.
170    
171     Please note, however, that "aio_sendfile" can read more bytes from
172     $in_fh than are written, and there is no way to find out how many
173     bytes have been read from "aio_sendfile" alone, as "aio_sendfile"
174     only provides the number of bytes written to $out_fh. Only if the
175     result value equals $length one can assume that $length bytes have
176     been read.
177    
178 root 1.13 aio_readahead $fh,$offset,$length, $callback->($retval)
179 root 1.7 "aio_readahead" populates the page cache with data from a file so
180     that subsequent reads from that file will not block on disk I/O. The
181 root 1.1 $offset argument specifies the starting point from which data is to
182     be read and $length specifies the number of bytes to be read. I/O is
183     performed in whole pages, so that offset is effectively rounded down
184     to a page boundary and bytes are read up to the next page boundary
185 root 1.7 greater than or equal to (off-set+length). "aio_readahead" does not
186 root 1.1 read beyond the end of the file. The current file offset of the file
187     is left unchanged.
188    
189 root 1.9 If that syscall doesn't exist (likely if your OS isn't Linux) it
190     will be emulated by simply reading the data, which would have a
191     similar effect.
192    
193 root 1.13 aio_stat $fh_or_path, $callback->($status)
194     aio_lstat $fh, $callback->($status)
195 root 1.1 Works like perl's "stat" or "lstat" in void context. The callback
196     will be called after the stat and the results will be available
197     using "stat _" or "-s _" etc...
198    
199     The pathname passed to "aio_stat" must be absolute. See API NOTES,
200     above, for an explanation.
201    
202     Currently, the stats are always 64-bit-stats, i.e. instead of
203     returning an error when stat'ing a large file, the results will be
204     silently truncated unless perl itself is compiled with large file
205     support.
206    
207     Example: Print the length of /etc/passwd:
208    
209     aio_stat "/etc/passwd", sub {
210     $_[0] and die "stat failed: $!";
211     print "size is ", -s _, "\n";
212     };
213    
214 root 1.13 aio_unlink $pathname, $callback->($status)
215 root 1.1 Asynchronously unlink (delete) a file and call the callback with the
216     result code.
217    
218 root 1.17 aio_link $srcpath, $dstpath, $callback->($status)
219     Asynchronously create a new link to the existing object at $srcpath
220     at the path $dstpath and call the callback with the result code.
221    
222     aio_symlink $srcpath, $dstpath, $callback->($status)
223     Asynchronously create a new symbolic link to the existing object at
224     $srcpath at the path $dstpath and call the callback with the result
225     code.
226    
227     aio_rename $srcpath, $dstpath, $callback->($status)
228     Asynchronously rename the object at $srcpath to $dstpath, just as
229     rename(2) and call the callback with the result code.
230    
231 root 1.13 aio_rmdir $pathname, $callback->($status)
232 root 1.9 Asynchronously rmdir (delete) a directory and call the callback with
233     the result code.
234    
235 root 1.15 aio_readdir $pathname, $callback->($entries)
236 root 1.13 Unlike the POSIX call of the same name, "aio_readdir" reads an
237     entire directory (i.e. opendir + readdir + closedir). The entries
238     will not be sorted, and will NOT include the "." and ".." entries.
239    
240     The callback a single argument which is either "undef" or an
241     array-ref with the filenames.
242    
243     aio_scandir $path, $maxreq, $callback->($dirs, $nondirs)
244     Scans a directory (similar to "aio_readdir") and tries to separate
245     the entries of directory $path into two sets of names, ones you can
246     recurse into (directories), and ones you cannot recurse into
247     (everything else).
248    
249     "aio_scandir" is a composite request that consists of many
250     aio-primitives. $maxreq specifies the maximum number of outstanding
251     aio requests that this function generates. If it is "<= 0", then a
252     suitable default will be chosen (currently 8).
253    
254     On error, the callback is called without arguments, otherwise it
255     receives two array-refs with path-relative entry names.
256    
257     Example:
258    
259     aio_scandir $dir, 0, sub {
260     my ($dirs, $nondirs) = @_;
261     print "real directories: @$dirs\n";
262     print "everything else: @$nondirs\n";
263     };
264    
265     Implementation notes.
266    
267     The "aio_readdir" cannot be avoided, but "stat()"'ing every entry
268     can.
269    
270     After reading the directory, the modification time, size etc. of the
271     directory before and after the readdir is checked, and if they
272     match, the link count will be used to decide how many entries are
273     directories (if >= 2). Otherwise, no knowledge of the number of
274     subdirectories will be assumed.
275    
276     Then entires will be sorted into likely directories (everything
277     without a non-initial dot) and likely non-directories (everything
278     else). Then every entry + "/." will be "stat"'ed, likely directories
279     first. This is often faster because filesystems might detect the
280 root 1.16 type of the entry without reading the inode data (e.g. ext2fs
281 root 1.13 filetype feature). If that succeeds, it assumes that the entry is a
282     directory or a symlink to directory (which will be checked
283     seperately).
284    
285     If the known number of directories has been reached, the rest of the
286     entries is assumed to be non-directories.
287    
288     aio_fsync $fh, $callback->($status)
289 root 1.1 Asynchronously call fsync on the given filehandle and call the
290     callback with the fsync result code.
291    
292 root 1.13 aio_fdatasync $fh, $callback->($status)
293 root 1.1 Asynchronously call fdatasync on the given filehandle and call the
294 root 1.9 callback with the fdatasync result code.
295    
296     If this call isn't available because your OS lacks it or it couldn't
297     be detected, it will be emulated by calling "fsync" instead.
298 root 1.1
299 root 1.4 SUPPORT FUNCTIONS
300     $fileno = IO::AIO::poll_fileno
301 root 1.7 Return the *request result pipe file descriptor*. This filehandle
302     must be polled for reading by some mechanism outside this module
303     (e.g. Event or select, see below or the SYNOPSIS). If the pipe
304     becomes readable you have to call "poll_cb" to check the results.
305 root 1.4
306     See "poll_cb" for an example.
307    
308     IO::AIO::poll_cb
309     Process all outstanding events on the result pipe. You have to call
310     this regularly. Returns the number of events processed. Returns
311     immediately when no events are outstanding.
312    
313 root 1.7 Example: Install an Event watcher that automatically calls
314     IO::AIO::poll_cb with high priority:
315 root 1.4
316     Event->io (fd => IO::AIO::poll_fileno,
317     poll => 'r', async => 1,
318     cb => \&IO::AIO::poll_cb);
319    
320     IO::AIO::poll_wait
321     Wait till the result filehandle becomes ready for reading (simply
322 root 1.7 does a "select" on the filehandle. This is useful if you want to
323 root 1.4 synchronously wait for some requests to finish).
324    
325     See "nreqs" for an example.
326    
327     IO::AIO::nreqs
328 root 1.7 Returns the number of requests currently outstanding (i.e. for which
329     their callback has not been invoked yet).
330 root 1.4
331     Example: wait till there are no outstanding requests anymore:
332    
333     IO::AIO::poll_wait, IO::AIO::poll_cb
334     while IO::AIO::nreqs;
335    
336 root 1.6 IO::AIO::flush
337     Wait till all outstanding AIO requests have been handled.
338    
339     Strictly equivalent to:
340    
341     IO::AIO::poll_wait, IO::AIO::poll_cb
342     while IO::AIO::nreqs;
343    
344     IO::AIO::poll
345     Waits until some requests have been handled.
346    
347     Strictly equivalent to:
348    
349     IO::AIO::poll_wait, IO::AIO::poll_cb
350     if IO::AIO::nreqs;
351    
352 root 1.4 IO::AIO::min_parallel $nthreads
353 root 1.11 Set the minimum number of AIO threads to $nthreads. The current
354     default is 4, which means four asynchronous operations can be done
355     at one time (the number of outstanding operations, however, is
356     unlimited).
357    
358     IO::AIO starts threads only on demand, when an AIO request is queued
359     and no free thread exists.
360 root 1.4
361     It is recommended to keep the number of threads low, as some Linux
362     kernel versions will scale negatively with the number of threads
363     (higher parallelity => MUCH higher latency). With current Linux 2.6
364     versions, 4-32 threads should be fine.
365    
366 root 1.11 Under most circumstances you don't need to call this function, as
367     the module selects a default that is suitable for low to moderate
368     load.
369 root 1.4
370     IO::AIO::max_parallel $nthreads
371     Sets the maximum number of AIO threads to $nthreads. If more than
372 root 1.11 the specified number of threads are currently running, this function
373     kills them. This function blocks until the limit is reached.
374    
375     While $nthreads are zero, aio requests get queued but not executed
376     until the number of threads has been increased again.
377 root 1.4
378     This module automatically runs "max_parallel 0" at program end, to
379     ensure that all threads are killed and that there are no outstanding
380     requests.
381    
382     Under normal circumstances you don't need to call this function.
383    
384     $oldnreqs = IO::AIO::max_outstanding $nreqs
385     Sets the maximum number of outstanding requests to $nreqs. If you
386     try to queue up more than this number of requests, the caller will
387     block until some requests have been handled.
388    
389     The default is very large, so normally there is no practical limit.
390 root 1.11 If you queue up many requests in a loop it often improves speed if
391     you set this to a relatively low number, such as 100.
392 root 1.4
393     Under normal circumstances you don't need to call this function.
394 root 1.1
395 root 1.9 FORK BEHAVIOUR
396 root 1.11 Before the fork, IO::AIO enters a quiescent state where no requests can
397 root 1.10 be added in other threads and no results will be processed. After the
398     fork the parent simply leaves the quiescent state and continues
399     request/result processing, while the child clears the request/result
400 root 1.11 queue (so the requests started before the fork will only be handled in
401     the parent). Threats will be started on demand until the limit ste in
402     the parent process has been reached again.
403 root 1.9
404 root 1.1 SEE ALSO
405 root 1.2 Coro, Linux::AIO.
406 root 1.1
407     AUTHOR
408     Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
409     http://home.schmorp.de/
410