epoll(7) Miscellaneous Information Manual epoll(7)
NAME
epoll - I/O event notification facility
SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/epoll.h>
DESCRIPTION
The epoll API performs a similar task to poll(2): monitoring multiple file descriptors to see if I/O is possible on any of
them. The epoll API can be used either as an edge-triggered or a level-triggered interface and scales well to large numbers
of watched file descriptors.
The central concept of the epoll API is the epoll instance, an in-kernel data structure which, from a user-space perspec‐
tive, can be considered as a container for two lists:
• The interest list (sometimes also called the epoll set): the set of file descriptors that the process has registered an
interest in monitoring.
• The ready list: the set of file descriptors that are "ready" for I/O. The ready list is a subset of (or, more precisely,
a set of references to) the file descriptors in the interest list. The ready list is dynamically populated by the kernel
as a result of I/O activity on those file descriptors.
The following system calls are provided to create and manage an epoll instance:
• epoll_create(2) creates a new epoll instance and returns a file descriptor referring to that instance. (The more recent
epoll_create1(2) extends the functionality of epoll_create(2).)
• Interest in particular file descriptors is then registered via epoll_ctl(2), which adds items to the interest list of the
epoll instance.
• epoll_wait(2) waits for I/O events, blocking the calling thread if no events are currently available. (This system call
can be thought of as fetching items from the ready list of the epoll instance.)
Level-triggered and edge-triggered
The epoll event distribution interface is able to behave both as edge-triggered (ET) and as level-triggered (LT). The dif‐
ference between the two mechanisms can be described as follows. Suppose that this scenario happens:
(1) The file descriptor that represents the read side of a pipe (rfd) is registered on the epoll instance.
(2) A pipe writer writes 2 kB of data on the write side of the pipe.
(3) A call to epoll_wait(2) is done that will return rfd as a ready file descriptor.
(4) The pipe reader reads 1 kB of data from rfd.
(5) A call to epoll_wait(2) is done.
If the rfd file descriptor has been added to the epoll interface using the EPOLLET (edge-triggered) flag, the call to
epoll_wait(2) done in step 5 will probably hang despite the available data still present in the file input buffer; meanwhile
the remote peer might be expecting a response based on the data it already sent. The reason for this is that edge-triggered
mode delivers events only when changes occur on the monitored file descriptor. So, in step 5 the caller might end up wait‐
ing for some data that is already present inside the input buffer. In the above example, an event on rfd will be generated
because of the write done in 2 and the event is consumed in 3. Since the read operation done in 4 does not consume the
whole buffer data, the call to epoll_wait(2) done in step 5 might block indefinitely.
An application that employs the EPOLLET flag should use nonblocking file descriptors to avoid having a blocking read or
write starve a task that is handling multiple file descriptors. The suggested way to use epoll as an edge-triggered (EPOL‐
LET) interface is as follows:
(1) with nonblocking file descriptors; and
(2) by waiting for an event only after read(2) or write(2) return EAGAIN.
By contrast, when used as a level-triggered interface (the default, when EPOLLET is not specified), epoll is simply a faster
poll(2), and can be used wherever the latter is used since it shares the same semantics.
Since even with edge-triggered epoll, multiple events can be generated upon receipt of multiple chunks of data, the caller
has the option to specify the EPOLLONESHOT flag, to tell epoll to disable the associated file descriptor after the receipt
of an event with epoll_wait(2). When the EPOLLONESHOT flag is specified, it is the caller's responsibility to rearm the
file descriptor using epoll_ctl(2) with EPOLL_CTL_MOD.
If multiple threads (or processes, if child processes have inherited the epoll file descriptor across fork(2)) are blocked
in epoll_wait(2) waiting on the same epoll file descriptor and a file descriptor in the interest list that is marked for
edge-triggered (EPOLLET) notification becomes ready, just one of the threads (or processes) is awoken from epoll_wait(2).
This provides a useful optimization for avoiding "thundering herd" wake-ups in some scenarios.
Interaction with autosleep
If the system is in autosleep mode via /sys/power/autosleep and an event happens which wakes the device from sleep, the de‐
vice driver will keep the device awake only until that event is queued. To keep the device awake until the event has been
processed, it is necessary to use the epoll_ctl(2) EPOLLWAKEUP flag.
When the EPOLLWAKEUP flag is set in the events field for a struct epoll_event, the system will be kept awake from the moment
the event is queued, through the epoll_wait(2) call which returns the event until the subsequent epoll_wait(2) call. If the
event should keep the system awake beyond that time, then a separate wake_lock should be taken before the second
epoll_wait(2) call.
/proc interfaces
The following interfaces can be used to limit the amount of kernel memory consumed by epoll:
/proc/sys/fs/epoll/max_user_watches (since Linux 2.6.28)
This specifies a limit on the total number of file descriptors that a user can register across all epoll instances on
the system. The limit is per real user ID. Each registered file descriptor costs roughly 90 bytes on a 32-bit ker‐
nel, and roughly 160 bytes on a 64-bit kernel. Currently, the default value for max_user_watches is 1/25 (4%) of the
available low memory, divided by the registration cost in bytes.
Example for suggested usage
While the usage of epoll when employed as a level-triggered interface does have the same semantics as poll(2), the edge-
triggered usage requires more clarification to avoid stalls in the application event loop. In this example, listener is a
nonblocking socket on which listen(2) has been called. The function do_use_fd() uses the new ready file descriptor until
EAGAIN is returned by either read(2) or write(2). An event-driven state machine application should, after having received
EAGAIN, record its current state so that at the next call to do_use_fd() it will continue to read(2) or write(2) from where
it stopped before.
#define MAX_EVENTS 10
struct epoll_event ev, events[MAX_EVENTS];
int listen_sock, conn_sock, nfds, epollfd;
/* Code to set up listening socket, 'listen_sock',
(socket(), bind(), listen()) omitted. */
epollfd = epoll_create1(0);
if (epollfd == -1) {
perror("epoll_create1");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
ev.events = EPOLLIN;
ev.data.fd = listen_sock;
if (epoll_ctl(epollfd, EPOLL_CTL_ADD, listen_sock, &ev) == -1) {
perror("epoll_ctl: listen_sock");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
for (;;) {
nfds = epoll_wait(epollfd, events, MAX_EVENTS, -1);
if (nfds == -1) {
perror("epoll_wait");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
for (n = 0; n < nfds; ++n) {
if (events[n].data.fd == listen_sock) {
conn_sock = accept(listen_sock,
(struct sockaddr *) &addr, &addrlen);
if (conn_sock == -1) {
perror("accept");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
setnonblocking(conn_sock);
ev.events = EPOLLIN | EPOLLET;
ev.data.fd = conn_sock;
if (epoll_ctl(epollfd, EPOLL_CTL_ADD, conn_sock,
&ev) == -1) {
perror("epoll_ctl: conn_sock");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
} else {
do_use_fd(events[n].data.fd);
}
}
}
When used as an edge-triggered interface, for performance reasons, it is possible to add the file descriptor inside the
epoll interface (EPOLL_CTL_ADD) once by specifying (EPOLLIN|EPOLLOUT). This allows you to avoid continuously switching be‐
tween EPOLLIN and EPOLLOUT calling epoll_ctl(2) with EPOLL_CTL_MOD.
Questions and answers
• What is the key used to distinguish the file descriptors registered in an interest list?
The key is the combination of the file descriptor number and the open file description (also known as an "open file han‐
dle", the kernel's internal representation of an open file).
• What happens if you register the same file descriptor on an epoll instance twice?
You will probably get EEXIST. However, it is possible to add a duplicate (dup(2), dup2(2), fcntl(2) F_DUPFD) file de‐
scriptor to the same epoll instance. This can be a useful technique for filtering events, if the duplicate file descrip‐
tors are registered with different events masks.
• Can two epoll instances wait for the same file descriptor? If so, are events reported to both epoll file descriptors?
Yes, and events would be reported to both. However, careful programming may be needed to do this correctly.
• Is the epoll file descriptor itself poll/epoll/selectable?
Yes. If an epoll file descriptor has events waiting, then it will indicate as being readable.
• What happens if one attempts to put an epoll file descriptor into its own file descriptor set?
The epoll_ctl(2) call fails (EINVAL). However, you can add an epoll file descriptor inside another epoll file descriptor
set.
• Can I send an epoll file descriptor over a UNIX domain socket to another process?
Yes, but it does not make sense to do this, since the receiving process would not have copies of the file descriptors in
the interest list.
• Will closing a file descriptor cause it to be removed from all epoll interest lists?
Yes, but be aware of the following point. A file descriptor is a reference to an open file description (see open(2)).
Whenever a file descriptor is duplicated via dup(2), dup2(2), fcntl(2) F_DUPFD, or fork(2), a new file descriptor refer‐
ring to the same open file description is created. An open file description continues to exist until all file descrip‐
tors referring to it have been closed.
A file descriptor is removed from an interest list only after all the file descriptors referring to the underlying open
file description have been closed. This means that even after a file descriptor that is part of an interest list has
been closed, events may be reported for that file descriptor if other file descriptors referring to the same underlying
file description remain open. To prevent this happening, the file descriptor must be explicitly removed from the inter‐
est list (using epoll_ctl(2) EPOLL_CTL_DEL) before it is duplicated. Alternatively, the application must ensure that all
file descriptors are closed (which may be difficult if file descriptors were duplicated behind the scenes by library
functions that used dup(2) or fork(2)).
• If more than one event occurs between epoll_wait(2) calls, are they combined or reported separately?
They will be combined.
• Does an operation on a file descriptor affect the already collected but not yet reported events?
You can do two operations on an existing file descriptor. Remove would be meaningless for this case. Modify will reread
available I/O.
• Do I need to continuously read/write a file descriptor until EAGAIN when using the EPOLLET flag (edge-triggered behav‐
ior)?
Receiving an event from epoll_wait(2) should suggest to you that such file descriptor is ready for the requested I/O op‐
eration. You must consider it ready until the next (nonblocking) read/write yields EAGAIN. When and how you will use
the file descriptor is entirely up to you.
For packet/token-oriented files (e.g., datagram socket, terminal in canonical mode), the only way to detect the end of
the read/write I/O space is to continue to read/write until EAGAIN.
For stream-oriented files (e.g., pipe, FIFO, stream socket), the condition that the read/write I/O space is exhausted can
also be detected by checking the amount of data read from / written to the target file descriptor. For example, if you
call read(2) by asking to read a certain amount of data and read(2) returns a lower number of bytes, you can be sure of
having exhausted the read I/O space for the file descriptor. The same is true when writing using write(2). (Avoid this
latter technique if you cannot guarantee that the monitored file descriptor always refers to a stream-oriented file.)
Possible pitfalls and ways to avoid them
• Starvation (edge-triggered)
If there is a large amount of I/O space, it is possible that by trying to drain it the other files will not get processed
causing starvation. (This problem is not specific to epoll.)
The solution is to maintain a ready list and mark the file descriptor as ready in its associated data structure, thereby
allowing the application to remember which files need to be processed but still round robin amongst all the ready files.
This also supports ignoring subsequent events you receive for file descriptors that are already ready.
• If using an event cache...
If you use an event cache or store all the file descriptors returned from epoll_wait(2), then make sure to provide a way
to mark its closure dynamically (i.e., caused by a previous event's processing). Suppose you receive 100 events from
epoll_wait(2), and in event #47 a condition causes event #13 to be closed. If you remove the structure and close(2) the
file descriptor for event #13, then your event cache might still say there are events waiting for that file descriptor
causing confusion.
One solution for this is to call, during the processing of event 47, epoll_ctl(EPOLL_CTL_DEL) to delete file descriptor
13 and close(2), then mark its associated data structure as removed and link it to a cleanup list. If you find another
event for file descriptor 13 in your batch processing, you will discover the file descriptor had been previously removed
and there will be no confusion.
VERSIONS
The epoll API was introduced in Linux kernel 2.5.44. Support was added in glibc 2.3.2.
STANDARDS
The epoll API is Linux-specific. Some other systems provide similar mechanisms, for example, FreeBSD has kqueue, and So‐
laris has /dev/poll.
NOTES
The set of file descriptors that is being monitored via an epoll file descriptor can be viewed via the entry for the epoll
file descriptor in the process's /proc/pid/fdinfo directory. See proc(5) for further details.
The kcmp(2) KCMP_EPOLL_TFD operation can be used to test whether a file descriptor is present in an epoll instance.
SEE ALSO
epoll_create(2), epoll_create1(2), epoll_ctl(2), epoll_wait(2), poll(2), select(2)
Linux man-pages 6.03 2023-02-05 epoll(7)