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Revision: 1.2
Committed: Fri Jul 8 02:43:47 2005 UTC (18 years, 10 months ago) by root
Branch: MAIN
Changes since 1.1: +15 -1 lines
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# User Rev Content
1 root 1.1 NAME
2     Linux::AIO - linux-specific aio implemented using clone
3    
4     SYNOPSIS
5     use Linux::AIO;
6    
7     DESCRIPTION
8     This module implements asynchronous i/o using the means available to
9     linux - clone. It does not hook into the POSIX aio_* functions because
10     linux does not yet support these in the kernel (and even if, it would
11     only allow aio_read and write, not open and stat).
12    
13     Instead, in this module a number of (non-posix) threads are started that
14     execute your read/writes and signal their completion. You don't need
15     thread support in your libc or perl, and the threads created by this
16     module will not be visible to the pthreads library.
17    
18     NOTICE: the threads created by this module will automatically be killed
19     when the thread calling min_parallel exits. Make sure you only ever call
20     min_parallel from the same thread that loaded this module.
21    
22     Although the module will work with threads, it is not reentrant, so use
23     appropriate locking yourself.
24    
25     Linux::AIO::min_parallel $nthreads
26     Set the minimum number of AIO threads to $nthreads. The default is
27     1, which means a single asynchronous operation can be done at one
28     time (the number of outstanding operations, however, is unlimited).
29    
30 root 1.2 It is recommended to keep the number of threads low, as some linux
31 root 1.1 kernel versions will scale negatively with the number of threads
32     (higher parallelity => MUCH higher latency).
33    
34 root 1.2 Linux::AIO::max_parallel $nthreads
35     Sets the maximum number of AIO threads to $nthreads. If more than
36     the specified number of threads are currently running, kill them.
37     This function blocks until the limit is reached.
38    
39     This module automatically runs "max_parallel 0" at program end, to
40     ensure that all threads are killed and that there are no outstanding
41     requests.
42    
43 root 1.1 $fileno = Linux::AIO::poll_fileno
44     Return the *request result pipe filehandle*. This filehandle must be
45     polled for reading by some mechanism outside this module (e.g. Event
46     or select, see below). If the pipe becomes readable you have to call
47     "poll_cb" to check the results.
48    
49     Linux::AIO::poll_cb
50     Process all outstanding events on the result pipe. You have to call
51     this regularly. Returns the number of events processed. Returns
52     immediately when no events are outstanding.
53    
54     You can use Event to multiplex, e.g.:
55    
56     Event->io (fd => Linux::AIO::poll_fileno,
57     poll => 'r', async => 1,
58     cb => \&Linux::AIO::poll_cb );
59    
60 root 1.2 Linux::AIO::poll_wait
61     Wait till the result filehandle becomes ready for reading (simply
62     does a select on the filehandle. This is useful if you want to
63     synchronously wait for some requests to finish).
64    
65 root 1.1 Linux::AIO::nreqs
66     Returns the number of requests currently outstanding.
67    
68     aio_open $pathname, $flags, $mode, $callback
69     Asynchronously open or create a file and call the callback with the
70     filedescriptor (NOT a perl filehandle, sorry for that, but watch
71     out, this might change in the future).
72    
73     aio_close $fh, $callback
74     Asynchronously close a file and call the callback with the result
75     code.
76    
77     aio_read $fh,$offset,$length, $data,$dataoffset,$callback
78     aio_write $fh,$offset,$length, $data,$dataoffset,$callback
79     Reads or writes "length" bytes from the specified "fh" and "offset"
80     into the scalar given by "data" and offset "dataoffset" and calls
81     the callback without the actual number of bytes read (or "undef" on
82     error).
83    
84     aio_stat $fh_or_path, $callback
85     aio_lstat $fh, $callback
86     Works like perl's "stat" or "lstat" in void context. The callback
87     will be called after the stat and the results will be available
88     using "stat _" or "-s _" etc...
89    
90     Currently, the stats are always 64-bit-stats, i.e. instead of
91     returning an error when stat'ing a large file, the results will be
92     silently truncated unless perl itself is compiled with large file
93     support.
94    
95     aio_unlink $pathname, $callback
96     Asynchronously unlink a file.
97    
98     BUGS
99     This module has been extensively tested in a large and very busy
100     webserver for many years now.
101    
102     - aio_open gives a fd, but all other functions expect a perl filehandle.
103    
104     SEE ALSO
105     Coro.
106    
107     AUTHOR
108     Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
109     http://home.schmorp.de/
110