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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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File Contents

# Content
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 It is recommended to keep the number of threads low, as some linux
31 kernel versions will scale negatively with the number of threads
32 (higher parallelity => MUCH higher latency).
33
34 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 $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 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 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