TIMER_CREATE(2)

NAME
timer_create - create a per-process timer (REALTIME)

LIBRARY
librt

SYNOPSIS
#include <time.h>
#include <signal.h>
int
timer_create(clockid_t clockid, struct sigevent *restrict evp, timer_t *restrict timerid);

DESCRIPTION
The timer_create() system call creates a per-process timer using the specified clock, clock_id, as the timing base. The timer_create() system call returns, in the location referenced by timerid, a timer ID of type timer_t used to identify the timer in timer requests. This timer ID is unique within the calling process until the timer is deleted. The particular clock, clock_id, is defined in <time.h>. The timer whose ID is returned is in a disarmed state upon return from timer_create().

The evp argument, if non-NULL, points to a sigevent structure. This structure, allocated by the application, defines the asynchronous notification to occur when the timer expires. If the evp argument is NULL, the effect is as if the evp argument pointed to a sigevent structure with the sigev_notify member having the value SIGEV_SIGNAL, the sigev_signo having a default signal number, and the sigev_value member having the value of the timer ID.

The implementations supports a clock_id of CLOCK_REALTIME or CLOCK_MONOTONIC.

If evp->sigev_notify is SIGEV_THREAD and sev->sigev_notify_attributes is not NULL, if the attribute pointed to by sev->sigev_notify_attributes has a thread stack address specified by a call to pthread_attr_setstack() or pthread_attr_setstackaddr(), the results are unspecified if the signal is generated more than once.

RETURN VALUES
If the call succeeds, timer_create() returns zero and updates the location referenced by timerid to a timer_t, which can be passed to the per-process timer calls. If an error occurs, the system call returns a value of -1 and the global variable errno is set to indicate the error. The value of timerid is undefined if an error occurs.

ERRORS
The timer_create() system call will fail if:

[EAGAIN]
    The calling process has already created all of the timers it is allowed by this implementation.

[EINVAL]
    The specified clock ID is not supported.

[EFAULT]
    Any arguments point outside the allocated address space or there is a memory protection fault.

SEE ALSO
clock_getres(2), timer_delete(2), timer_getoverrun(2), siginfo(3)

STANDARDS
The timer_create() system call conforms to p1003.1-2004

HISTORY
Support for POSIX per-process timer first appeared in FreeBSD 7.0.