__pmaf(3) — Linux manual page

NAME | C SYNOPSIS | CAVEAT | DESCRIPTION | CAVEATS | DIAGNOSTICS | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

PMAF(3)                 Library Functions Manual                 PMAF(3)

NAME         top

       __pmAFsetup, __pmAFregister, __pmAFunregister, __pmAFblock,
       __pmAFunblock, __pmAFisempty - event queue services for periodic
       asynchronous callbacks

C SYNOPSIS         top

       #include "pmapi.h"
       #include "libpcp.h"

       int __pmAFsetup(const struct timeval *start, const struct timeval
               *delta, void *data, void (*func)(int, void *));
       int __pmAFregister(const struct timeval *delta, void *data,
               void (*func)(int, void *));
       int __pmAFunregister(int afid);
       void __pmAFblock(void);
       void __pmAFunblock(void);
       int __pmAFisempty(void);

       cc ... -lpcp

CAVEAT         top

       This documentation is intended for internal Performance Co-Pilot
       (PCP) developer use.

       These interfaces are not part of the PCP APIs that are guaranteed
       to remain fixed across releases, and they may not work, or may
       provide different semantics at some point in the future.

DESCRIPTION         top

       The routines implement an event queue and callback framework that
       supports periodic evaluation of a series of events with varying
       frequencies for Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) applications.

       The pmlogger(1) application, the pmdatrace(1) PMDA and the
       pmdahotproc(1) PMDA are the principal users of these services.

       An event is created by calling __pmAFsetup or __pmAFregister and
       on success the return value is an event number greater than zero.
       The event has associated event data identified by the opaque
       pointer data.  The event will occur with frequency delta and each
       time the event occurs the function func will be called with the
       event number and the event data as arguments.

       If __pmAFsetup is used then the first event is scheduled for the
       current time plus start, else if __pmAFregister is used then the
       first event is scheduled for the current time plus delta.

       func is called in a SIGALRM signal handler context and so the
       routines that may be safely called from func are restricted to
       the so-called async-signal-safe set.  In particular there must be
       no Standard I/O calls nor calls to any of the malloc(3) routines
       to modify the state of the heap.  Refer to the Pointer to a
       Function Section of the POSIX.1-2013 document at
       http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/V2_chap02.html
       for a fuller description.

       The safest and simplest class of func routines are those that do
       minimal processing, set some global state and return.  The real
       work associated with the event is done subsequently from the
       application's main loop when the global state change is detected.

       Once the event occurs and the callback has been executed, the
       event will be rescheduled for delta into the future, except if
       all the fields of delta are zero, in which case the event will
       not be rescheduled (a ``one trip'' event).

       Internally, events are processed serially so there is no
       possibility of nested callbacks or re-entrant callbacks from the
       event management routines.

       Given an event number afid, __pmAFunregister will permanently
       remove the corresponding entry from the event queue.

       To control the event queue processing, __pmAFblock and
       __pmAFunblock may be used to explicitly block and unblock the
       dispatch of events.  This is most useful when the caller wishes
       to set up a number of events via __pmAFsetup or __pmAFregister
       and complete the registration phase before the first event
       callback occurs.

       A call to __pmAFisempty returns 1 or 0 depending on whether the
       event queue is empty or not.

CAVEATS         top

       These routines rely on setitimer(2) and manipulate the handling
       of SIGALRM signals, and hence are probably ill-suited for
       applications that require direct and concurrent access to these
       services and resources.

       If the callback functions are slow, or delayed, it is possible
       that the event scheduling could fall behind and never catchup.
       When this begins to happen, events are silently skipped and
       rescheduled at the earliest possible time in the future according
       to the fixed schedule defined by the time of the call to
       __pmAFsetup and the value of the start and delta arguments (or
       defined by the time of the call to __pmAFregister and the value
       of the delta argument).

       In addition, the semantics of the interval timer(s) and the
       global state needed to support these services demand that
       applications calling these routines must do so from a single
       thread.  This restriction is enforced at the PMAPI(3), where
       routines may return the error code PM_ERR_THREAD if the library
       detects calls from more than one thread.

DIAGNOSTICS         top

       __pmAFsetup, __pmAFregister and __pmAFunregister return values
       less than zero in the case of an error.  These values are PCP
       error codes, and may be used to produce error messages via
       pmErrStr(3).

       The routines support the standard PCP debug tracing, and the af
       option (or -D af on the command line) will produce diagnostics on
       standard error that trace the enqueuing and execution of events.

SEE ALSO         top

       PMAPI(3)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the PCP (Performance Co-Pilot) project.
       Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://www.pcp.io/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this manual
       page, send it to pcp@groups.io.  This page was obtained from the
       project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/performancecopilot/pcp.git⟩ on 2023-12-22.
       (At that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found
       in the repository was 2023-12-16.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

Performance Co-Pilot               PCP                           PMAF(3)

Pages that refer to this page: pmapi_internal(3)