.\" Copyright (C) 2019 Jens Axboe .\" Copyright (C) 2019 Red Hat, Inc. .\" .\" SPDX-License-Identifier: LGPL-2.0-or-later .\" .TH IO_URING_ENTER 2 2019-01-22 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual" .SH NAME io_uring_enter \- initiate and/or complete asynchronous I/O .SH SYNOPSIS .nf .BR "#include " .PP .BI "int io_uring_enter(unsigned int " fd ", unsigned int " to_submit , .BI " unsigned int " min_complete ", unsigned int " flags , .BI " sigset_t *" sig ); .fi .PP .SH DESCRIPTION .PP .BR io_uring_enter () is used to initiate and complete I/O using the shared submission and completion queues setup by a call to .BR io_uring_setup (2). A single call can both submit new I/O and wait for completions of I/O initiated by this call or previous calls to .BR io_uring_enter (). .I fd is the file descriptor returned by .BR io_uring_setup (2). .I to_submit specifies the number of I/Os to submit from the submission queue. .I flags is a bitmask of the following values: .TP .B IORING_ENTER_GETEVENTS If this flag is set, then the system call will wait for the specificied number of events in .I min_complete before returning. This flag can be set along with .I to_submit to both submit and complete events in a single system call. .TP .B IORING_ENTER_SQ_WAKEUP If the ring has been created with .B IORING_SETUP_SQPOLL, then this flag asks the kernel to wakeup the SQ kernel thread to submit IO. .TP .B IORING_ENTER_SQ_WAIT If the ring has been created with .B IORING_SETUP_SQPOLL, then the application has no real insight into when the SQ kernel thread has consumed entries from the SQ ring. This can lead to a situation where the application can no longer get a free SQE entry to submit, without knowing when it one becomes available as the SQ kernel thread consumes them. If the system call is used with this flag set, then it will wait until at least one entry is free in the SQ ring. .TP .B IORING_ENTER_EXT_ARG Since kernel 5.11, the system calls arguments have been modified to look like the following: .nf .BI "int io_uring_enter(unsigned int " fd ", unsigned int " to_submit , .BI " unsigned int " min_complete ", unsigned int " flags , .BI " const void *" arg ", size_t " argsz ); .fi which is behaves just like the original definition by default. However, if .B IORING_ENTER_EXT_ARG is set, then instead of a .I sigset_t being passed in, a pointer to a .I struct io_uring_getevents_arg is used instead and .I argsz must be set to the size of this structure. The definition is as follows: .nf .BI "struct io_uring_getevents_args { .BI " __u64 sigmask; .BI " __u32 sigmask_sz; .BI " __u32 pad; .BI " __u64 ts; .BI "}; .fi which allows passing in both a signal mask as well as pointer to a .I struct __kernel_timespec timeout value. If .I ts is set to a valid pointer, then this time value indicates the timeout for waiting on events. If an application is waiting on events and wishes to stop waiting after a specified amount of time, then this can be accomplished directly in version 5.11 and newer by using this feature. .PP .PP If the io_uring instance was configured for polling, by specifying .B IORING_SETUP_IOPOLL in the call to .BR io_uring_setup (2), then min_complete has a slightly different meaning. Passing a value of 0 instructs the kernel to return any events which are already complete, without blocking. If .I min_complete is a non-zero value, the kernel will still return immediately if any completion events are available. If no event completions are available, then the call will poll either until one or more completions become available, or until the process has exceeded its scheduler time slice. Note that, for interrupt driven I/O (where .B IORING_SETUP_IOPOLL was not specified in the call to .BR io_uring_setup (2)), an application may check the completion queue for event completions without entering the kernel at all. .PP When the system call returns that a certain amount of SQEs have been consumed and submitted, it's safe to reuse SQE entries in the ring. This is true even if the actual IO submission had to be punted to async context, which means that the SQE may in fact not have been submitted yet. If the kernel requires later use of a particular SQE entry, it will have made a private copy of it. .I sig is a pointer to a signal mask (see .BR sigprocmask (2)); if .I sig is not NULL, .BR io_uring_enter () first replaces the current signal mask by the one pointed to by .IR sig , then waits for events to become available in the completion queue, and then restores the original signal mask. The following .BR io_uring_enter () call: .PP .in +4n .EX ret = io_uring_enter(fd, 0, 1, IORING_ENTER_GETEVENTS, &sig); .EE .in .PP is equivalent to .I atomically executing the following calls: .PP .in +4n .EX pthread_sigmask(SIG_SETMASK, &sig, &orig); ret = io_uring_enter(fd, 0, 1, IORING_ENTER_GETEVENTS, NULL); pthread_sigmask(SIG_SETMASK, &orig, NULL); .EE .in .PP See the description of .BR pselect (2) for an explanation of why the .I sig parameter is necessary. Submission queue entries are represented using the following data structure: .PP .in +4n .EX /* * IO submission data structure (Submission Queue Entry) */ struct io_uring_sqe { __u8 opcode; /* type of operation for this sqe */ __u8 flags; /* IOSQE_ flags */ __u16 ioprio; /* ioprio for the request */ __s32 fd; /* file descriptor to do IO on */ union { __u64 off; /* offset into file */ __u64 addr2; }; union { __u64 addr; /* pointer to buffer or iovecs */ __u64 splice_off_in; } __u32 len; /* buffer size or number of iovecs */ union { __kernel_rwf_t rw_flags; __u32 fsync_flags; __u16 poll_events; /* compatibility */ __u32 poll32_events; /* word-reversed for BE */ __u32 sync_range_flags; __u32 msg_flags; __u32 timeout_flags; __u32 accept_flags; __u32 cancel_flags; __u32 open_flags; __u32 statx_flags; __u32 fadvise_advice; __u32 splice_flags; __u32 rename_flags; __u32 unlink_flags; __u32 hardlink_flags; }; __u64 user_data; /* data to be passed back at completion time */ union { struct { /* index into fixed buffers, if used */ union { /* index into fixed buffers, if used */ __u16 buf_index; /* for grouped buffer selection */ __u16 buf_group; } /* personality to use, if used */ __u16 personality; union { __s32 splice_fd_in; __u32 file_index; }; }; __u64 __pad2[3]; }; }; .EE .in .PP The .I opcode describes the operation to be performed. It can be one of: .TP .B IORING_OP_NOP Do not perform any I/O. This is useful for testing the performance of the io_uring implementation itself. .TP .B IORING_OP_READV .TP .B IORING_OP_WRITEV Vectored read and write operations, similar to .BR preadv2 (2) and .BR pwritev2 (2). If the file is not seekable, .I off must be set to zero. .TP .B IORING_OP_READ_FIXED .TP .B IORING_OP_WRITE_FIXED Read from or write to pre-mapped buffers. See .BR io_uring_register (2) for details on how to setup a context for fixed reads and writes. .TP .B IORING_OP_FSYNC File sync. See also .BR fsync (2). Note that, while I/O is initiated in the order in which it appears in the submission queue, completions are unordered. For example, an application which places a write I/O followed by an fsync in the submission queue cannot expect the fsync to apply to the write. The two operations execute in parallel, so the fsync may complete before the write is issued to the storage. The same is also true for previously issued writes that have not completed prior to the fsync. .TP .B IORING_OP_POLL_ADD Poll the .I fd specified in the submission queue entry for the events specified in the .I poll_events field. Unlike poll or epoll without .BR EPOLLONESHOT , by default this interface always works in one shot mode. That is, once the poll operation is completed, it will have to be resubmitted. If .B IORING_POLL_ADD_MULTI is set in the SQE .I len field, then the poll will work in multi shot mode instead. That means it'll repatedly trigger when the requested event becomes true, and hence multiple CQEs can be generated from this single SQE. The CQE .I flags field will have .B IORING_CQE_F_MORE set on completion if the application should expect further CQE entries from the original request. If this flag isn't set on completion, then the poll request has been terminated and no further events will be generated. This mode is available since 5.13. If .B IORING_POLL_UPDATE_EVENTS is set in the SQE .I len field, then the request will update an existing poll request with the mask of events passed in with this request. The lookup is based on the .I user_data field of the original SQE submitted, and this values is passed in the .I addr field of the SQE. This mode is available since 5.13. If .B IORING_POLL_UPDATE_USER_DATA is set in the SQE .I len field, then the request will update the .I user_data of an existing poll request based on the value passed in the .I off field. This mode is available since 5.13. This command works like an async .BR poll(2) and the completion event result is the returned mask of events. For the variants that update .I user_data or .I events , the completion result will be similar to .B IORING_OP_POLL_REMOVE. .TP .B IORING_OP_POLL_REMOVE Remove an existing poll request. If found, the .I res field of the .I "struct io_uring_cqe" will contain 0. If not found, .I res will contain .B -ENOENT, or .B -EALREADY if the poll request was in the process of completing already. .TP .B IORING_OP_EPOLL_CTL Add, remove or modify entries in the interest list of .BR epoll (7). See .BR epoll_ctl (2) for details of the system call. .I fd holds the file descriptor that represents the epoll instance, .I addr holds the file descriptor to add, remove or modify, .I len holds the operation (EPOLL_CTL_ADD, EPOLL_CTL_DEL, EPOLL_CTL_MOD) to perform and, .I off holds a pointer to the .I epoll_events structure. Available since 5.6. .TP .B IORING_OP_SYNC_FILE_RANGE Issue the equivalent of a \fBsync_file_range\fR (2) on the file descriptor. The .I fd field is the file descriptor to sync, the .I off field holds the offset in bytes, the .I len field holds the length in bytes, and the .I sync_range_flags field holds the flags for the command. See also .BR sync_file_range (2) for the general description of the related system call. Available since 5.2. .TP .B IORING_OP_SENDMSG Issue the equivalent of a .BR sendmsg(2) system call. .I fd must be set to the socket file descriptor, .I addr must contain a pointer to the msghdr structure, and .I msg_flags holds the flags associated with the system call. See also .BR sendmsg (2) for the general description of the related system call. Available since 5.3. .TP .B IORING_OP_RECVMSG Works just like IORING_OP_SENDMSG, except for .BR recvmsg(2) instead. See the description of IORING_OP_SENDMSG. Available since 5.3. .TP .B IORING_OP_SEND Issue the equivalent of a .BR send(2) system call. .I fd must be set to the socket file descriptor, .I addr must contain a pointer to the buffer, .I len denotes the length of the buffer to send, and .I msg_flags holds the flags associated with the system call. See also .BR send(2) for the general description of the related system call. Available since 5.6. .TP .B IORING_OP_RECV Works just like IORING_OP_SEND, except for .BR recv(2) instead. See the description of IORING_OP_SEND. Available since 5.6. .TP .B IORING_OP_TIMEOUT This command will register a timeout operation. The .I addr field must contain a pointer to a struct timespec64 structure, .I len must contain 1 to signify one timespec64 structure, .I timeout_flags may contain IORING_TIMEOUT_ABS for an absolute timeout value, or 0 for a relative timeout. .I off may contain a completion event count. A timeout will trigger a wakeup event on the completion ring for anyone waiting for events. A timeout condition is met when either the specified timeout expires, or the specified number of events have completed. Either condition will trigger the event. If set to 0, completed events are not counted, which effectively acts like a timer. io_uring timeouts use the .B CLOCK_MONOTONIC clock source. The request will complete with .I -ETIME if the timeout got completed through expiration of the timer, or .I 0 if the timeout got completed through requests completing on their own. If the timeout was cancelled before it expired, the request will complete with .I -ECANCELED. Available since 5.4. Since 5.15, this command also supports the following modifiers in .I timeout_flags: .PP .in +12 .B IORING_TIMEOUT_BOOTTIME If set, then the clocksource used is .I CLOCK_BOOTTIME instead of .I CLOCK_MONOTONIC. This clocksource differs in that it includes time elapsed if the system was suspend while having a timeout request in-flight. .B IORING_TIMEOUT_REALTIME If set, then the clocksource used is .I CLOCK_BOOTTIME instead of .I CLOCK_MONOTONIC. .EE .in .PP .TP .B IORING_OP_TIMEOUT_REMOVE If .I timeout_flags are zero, then it attempts to remove an existing timeout operation. .I addr must contain the .I user_data field of the previously issued timeout operation. If the specified timeout request is found and cancelled successfully, this request will terminate with a result value of .I 0 If the timeout request was found but expiration was already in progress, this request will terminate with a result value of .I -EBUSY If the timeout request wasn't found, the request will terminate with a result value of .I -ENOENT Available since 5.5. If .I timeout_flags contain .I IORING_TIMEOUT_UPDATE, instead of removing an existing operation, it updates it. .I addr and return values are same as before. .I addr2 field must contain a pointer to a struct timespec64 structure. .I timeout_flags may also contain IORING_TIMEOUT_ABS, in which case the value given is an absolute one, not a relative one. Available since 5.11. .TP .B IORING_OP_ACCEPT Issue the equivalent of an .BR accept4(2) system call. .I fd must be set to the socket file descriptor, .I addr must contain the pointer to the sockaddr structure, and .I addr2 must contain a pointer to the socklen_t addrlen field. Flags can be passed using the .I accept_flags field. See also .BR accept4(2) for the general description of the related system call. Available since 5.5. If the .I file_index field is set to a positive number, the file won't be installed into the normal file table as usual but will be placed into the fixed file table at index .I file_index - 1. In this case, instead of returning a file descriptor, the result will contain either 0 on success or an error. If there is already a file registered at this index, the request will fail with .B -EBADF. Only io_uring has access to such files and no other syscall can use them. See .B IOSQE_FIXED_FILE and .B IORING_REGISTER_FILES. Available since 5.15. .TP .B IORING_OP_ASYNC_CANCEL Attempt to cancel an already issued request. .I addr must contain the .I user_data field of the request that should be cancelled. The cancellation request will complete with one of the following results codes. If found, the .I res field of the cqe will contain 0. If not found, .I res will contain -ENOENT. If found and attempted cancelled, the .I res field will contain -EALREADY. In this case, the request may or may not terminate. In general, requests that are interruptible (like socket IO) will get cancelled, while disk IO requests cannot be cancelled if already started. Available since 5.5. .TP .B IORING_OP_LINK_TIMEOUT This request must be linked with another request through .I IOSQE_IO_LINK which is described below. Unlike .I IORING_OP_TIMEOUT, .I IORING_OP_LINK_TIMEOUT acts on the linked request, not the completion queue. The format of the command is otherwise like .I IORING_OP_TIMEOUT, except there's no completion event count as it's tied to a specific request. If used, the timeout specified in the command will cancel the linked command, unless the linked command completes before the timeout. The timeout will complete with .I -ETIME if the timer expired and the linked request was attempted cancelled, or .I -ECANCELED if the timer got cancelled because of completion of the linked request. Like .B IORING_OP_TIMEOUT the clock source used is .B CLOCK_MONOTONIC Available since 5.5. .TP .B IORING_OP_CONNECT Issue the equivalent of a .BR connect(2) system call. .I fd must be set to the socket file descriptor, .I addr must contain the const pointer to the sockaddr structure, and .I off must contain the socklen_t addrlen field. See also .BR connect(2) for the general description of the related system call. Available since 5.5. .TP .B IORING_OP_FALLOCATE Issue the equivalent of a .BR fallocate(2) system call. .I fd must be set to the file descriptor, .I len must contain the mode associated with the operation, .I off must contain the offset on which to operate, and .I addr must contain the length. See also .BR fallocate(2) for the general description of the related system call. Available since 5.6. .TP .B IORING_OP_FADVISE Issue the equivalent of a .BR posix_fadvise(2) system call. .I fd must be set to the file descriptor, .I off must contain the offset on which to operate, .I len must contain the length, and .I fadvise_advice must contain the advice associated with the operation. See also .BR posix_fadvise(2) for the general description of the related system call. Available since 5.6. .TP .B IORING_OP_MADVISE Issue the equivalent of a .BR madvise(2) system call. .I addr must contain the address to operate on, .I len must contain the length on which to operate, and .I fadvise_advice must contain the advice associated with the operation. See also .BR madvise(2) for the general description of the related system call. Available since 5.6. .TP .B IORING_OP_OPENAT Issue the equivalent of a .BR openat(2) system call. .I fd is the .I dirfd argument, .I addr must contain a pointer to the .I *pathname argument, .I open_flags should contain any flags passed in, and .I len is access mode of the file. See also .BR openat(2) for the general description of the related system call. Available since 5.6. If the .I file_index field is set to a positive number, the file won't be installed into the normal file table as usual but will be placed into the fixed file table at index .I file_index - 1. In this case, instead of returning a file descriptor, the result will contain either 0 on success or an error. If there is already a file registered at this index, the request will fail with .B -EBADF. Only io_uring has access to such files and no other syscall can use them. See .B IOSQE_FIXED_FILE and .B IORING_REGISTER_FILES. Available since 5.15. .TP .B IORING_OP_OPENAT2 Issue the equivalent of a .BR openat2(2) system call. .I fd is the .I dirfd argument, .I addr must contain a pointer to the .I *pathname argument, .I len should contain the size of the open_how structure, and .I off should be set to the address of the open_how structure. See also .BR openat2(2) for the general description of the related system call. Available since 5.6. If the .I file_index field is set to a positive number, the file won't be installed into the normal file table as usual but will be placed into the fixed file table at index .I file_index - 1. In this case, instead of returning a file descriptor, the result will contain either 0 on success or an error. If there is already a file registered at this index, the request will fail with .B -EBADF. Only io_uring has access to such files and no other syscall can use them. See .B IOSQE_FIXED_FILE and .B IORING_REGISTER_FILES. Available since 5.15. .TP .B IORING_OP_CLOSE Issue the equivalent of a .BR close(2) system call. .I fd is the file descriptor to be closed. See also .BR close(2) for the general description of the related system call. Available since 5.6. .TP .B IORING_OP_STATX Issue the equivalent of a .BR statx(2) system call. .I fd is the .I dirfd argument, .I addr must contain a pointer to the .I *pathname string, .I statx_flags is the .I flags argument, .I len should be the .I mask argument, and .I off must contain a pointer to the .I statxbuf to be filled in. See also .BR statx(2) for the general description of the related system call. Available since 5.6. .TP .B IORING_OP_READ .TP .B IORING_OP_WRITE Issue the equivalent of a .BR pread(2) or .BR pwrite(2) system call. .I fd is the file descriptor to be operated on, .I addr contains the buffer in question, .I len contains the length of the IO operation, and .I offs contains the read or write offset. If .I fd does not refer to a seekable file, .I off must be set to zero. If .I offs is set to -1, the offset will use (and advance) the file position, like the .BR read(2) and .BR write(2) system calls. These are non-vectored versions of the .B IORING_OP_READV and .B IORING_OP_WRITEV opcodes. See also .BR read(2) and .BR write(2) for the general description of the related system call. Available since 5.6. .TP .B IORING_OP_SPLICE Issue the equivalent of a .BR splice(2) system call. .I splice_fd_in is the file descriptor to read from, .I splice_off_in is an offset to read from, .I fd is the file descriptor to write to, .I off is an offset from which to start writing to. A sentinel value of -1 is used to pass the equivalent of a NULL for the offsets to .BR splice(2). .I len contains the number of bytes to copy. .I splice_flags contains a bit mask for the flag field associated with the system call. Please note that one of the file descriptors must refer to a pipe. See also .BR splice(2) for the general description of the related system call. Available since 5.7. .TP .B IORING_OP_TEE Issue the equivalent of a .BR tee(2) system call. .I splice_fd_in is the file descriptor to read from, .I fd is the file descriptor to write to, .I len contains the number of bytes to copy, and .I splice_flags contains a bit mask for the flag field associated with the system call. Please note that both of the file descriptors must refer to a pipe. See also .BR tee(2) for the general description of the related system call. Available since 5.8. .TP .B IORING_OP_FILES_UPDATE This command is an alternative to using .B IORING_REGISTER_FILES_UPDATE which then works in an async fashion, like the rest of the io_uring commands. The arguments passed in are the same. .I addr must contain a pointer to the array of file descriptors, .I len must contain the length of the array, and .I off must contain the offset at which to operate. Note that the array of file descriptors pointed to in .I addr must remain valid until this operation has completed. Available since 5.6. .TP .B IORING_OP_PROVIDE_BUFFERS This command allows an application to register a group of buffers to be used by commands that read/receive data. Using buffers in this manner can eliminate the need to separate the poll + read, which provides a convenient point in time to allocate a buffer for a given request. It's often infeasible to have as many buffers available as pending reads or receive. With this feature, the application can have its pool of buffers ready in the kernel, and when the file or socket is ready to read/receive data, a buffer can be selected for the operation. .I fd must contain the number of buffers to provide, .I addr must contain the starting address to add buffers from, .I len must contain the length of each buffer to add from the range, .I buf_group must contain the group ID of this range of buffers, and .I off must contain the starting buffer ID of this range of buffers. With that set, the kernel adds buffers starting with the memory address in .I addr, each with a length of .I len. Hence the application should provide .I len * fd worth of memory in .I addr. Buffers are grouped by the group ID, and each buffer within this group will be identical in size according to the above arguments. This allows the application to provide different groups of buffers, and this is often used to have differently sized buffers available depending on what the expectations are of the individual request. When submitting a request that should use a provided buffer, the .B IOSQE_BUFFER_SELECT flag must be set, and .I buf_group must be set to the desired buffer group ID where the buffer should be selected from. Available since 5.7. .TP .B IORING_OP_REMOVE_BUFFERS Remove buffers previously registered with .B IORING_OP_PROVIDE_BUFFERS. .I fd must contain the number of buffers to remove, and .I buf_group must contain the buffer group ID from which to remove the buffers. Available since 5.7. .TP .B IORING_OP_SHUTDOWN Issue the equivalent of a .BR shutdown(2) system call. .I fd is the file descriptor to the socket being shutdown, no other fields should be set. Available since 5.11. .TP .B IORING_OP_RENAMEAT Issue the equivalent of a .BR renameat2(2) system call. .I fd should be set to the .I olddirfd, .I addr should be set to the .I oldpath, .I len should be set to the .I newdirfd, .I addr should be set to the .I oldpath, .I addr2 should be set to the .I newpath, and finally .I rename_flags should be set to the .I flags passed in to .BR renameat2(2). Available since 5.11. .TP .B IORING_OP_UNLINKAT Issue the equivalent of a .BR unlinkat2(2) system call. .I fd should be set to the .I dirfd, .I addr should be set to the .I pathname, and .I unlink_flags should be set to the .I flags being passed in to .BR unlinkat(2). Available since 5.11. .TP .B IORING_OP_MKDIRAT Issue the equivalent of a .BR mkdirat2(2) system call. .I fd should be set to the .I dirfd, .I addr should be set to the .I pathname, and .I len should be set to the .I mode being passed in to .BR mkdirat(2). Available since 5.15. .TP .B IORING_OP_SYMLINKAT Issue the equivalent of a .BR symlinkat2(2) system call. .I fd should be set to the .I newdirfd, .I addr should be set to the .I target and .I addr2 should be set to the .I linkpath being passed in to .BR symlinkat(2). Available since 5.15. .TP .B IORING_OP_LINKAT Issue the equivalent of a .BR linkat2(2) system call. .I fd should be set to the .I olddirfd, .I addr should be set to the .I oldpath, .I len should be set to the .I newdirfd, .I addr2 should be set to the .I newpath, and .I hardlink_flags should be set to the .I flags being passed in to .BR linkat(2). Available since 5.15. .PP The .I flags field is a bit mask. The supported flags are: .TP .B IOSQE_FIXED_FILE When this flag is specified, .I fd is an index into the files array registered with the io_uring instance (see the .B IORING_REGISTER_FILES section of the .BR io_uring_register (2) man page). Note that this isn't always available for all commands. If used on a command that doesn't support fixed files, the SQE will error with .B -EBADF. Available since 5.1. .TP .B IOSQE_IO_DRAIN When this flag is specified, the SQE will not be started before previously submitted SQEs have completed, and new SQEs will not be started before this one completes. Available since 5.2. .TP .B IOSQE_IO_LINK When this flag is specified, it forms a link with the next SQE in the submission ring. That next SQE will not be started before this one completes. This, in effect, forms a chain of SQEs, which can be arbitrarily long. The tail of the chain is denoted by the first SQE that does not have this flag set. This flag has no effect on previous SQE submissions, nor does it impact SQEs that are outside of the chain tail. This means that multiple chains can be executing in parallel, or chains and individual SQEs. Only members inside the chain are serialized. A chain of SQEs will be broken, if any request in that chain ends in error. io_uring considers any unexpected result an error. This means that, eg, a short read will also terminate the remainder of the chain. If a chain of SQE links is broken, the remaining unstarted part of the chain will be terminated and completed with .B -ECANCELED as the error code. Available since 5.3. .TP .B IOSQE_IO_HARDLINK Like IOSQE_IO_LINK, but it doesn't sever regardless of the completion result. Note that the link will still sever if we fail submitting the parent request, hard links are only resilient in the presence of completion results for requests that did submit correctly. IOSQE_IO_HARDLINK implies IOSQE_IO_LINK. Available since 5.5. .TP .B IOSQE_ASYNC Normal operation for io_uring is to try and issue an sqe as non-blocking first, and if that fails, execute it in an async manner. To support more efficient overlapped operation of requests that the application knows/assumes will always (or most of the time) block, the application can ask for an sqe to be issued async from the start. Available since 5.6. .TP .B IOSQE_BUFFER_SELECT Used in conjunction with the .B IORING_OP_PROVIDE_BUFFERS command, which registers a pool of buffers to be used by commands that read or receive data. When buffers are registered for this use case, and this flag is set in the command, io_uring will grab a buffer from this pool when the request is ready to receive or read data. If successful, the resulting CQE will have .B IORING_CQE_F_BUFFER set in the flags part of the struct, and the upper .B IORING_CQE_BUFFER_SHIFT bits will contain the ID of the selected buffers. This allows the application to know exactly which buffer was selected for the operation. If no buffers are available and this flag is set, then the request will fail with .B -ENOBUFS as the error code. Once a buffer has been used, it is no longer available in the kernel pool. The application must re-register the given buffer again when it is ready to recycle it (eg has completed using it). Available since 5.7. .PP .I ioprio specifies the I/O priority. See .BR ioprio_get (2) for a description of Linux I/O priorities. .I fd specifies the file descriptor against which the operation will be performed, with the exception noted above. If the operation is one of .B IORING_OP_READ_FIXED or .BR IORING_OP_WRITE_FIXED , .I addr and .I len must fall within the buffer located at .I buf_index in the fixed buffer array. If the operation is either .B IORING_OP_READV or .BR IORING_OP_WRITEV , then .I addr points to an iovec array of .I len entries. .IR rw_flags , specified for read and write operations, contains a bitwise OR of per-I/O flags, as described in the .BR preadv2 (2) man page. The .I fsync_flags bit mask may contain either 0, for a normal file integrity sync, or .B IORING_FSYNC_DATASYNC to provide data sync only semantics. See the descriptions of .B O_SYNC and .B O_DSYNC in the .BR open (2) manual page for more information. The bits that may be set in .I poll_events are defined in \fI\fP, and documented in .BR poll (2). .I user_data is an application-supplied value that will be copied into the completion queue entry (see below). .I buf_index is an index into an array of fixed buffers, and is only valid if fixed buffers were registered. .I personality is the credentials id to use for this operation. See .BR io_uring_register(2) for how to register personalities with io_uring. If set to 0, the current personality of the submitting task is used. .PP Once the submission queue entry is initialized, I/O is submitted by placing the index of the submission queue entry into the tail of the submission queue. After one or more indexes are added to the queue, and the queue tail is advanced, the .BR io_uring_enter (2) system call can be invoked to initiate the I/O. Completions use the following data structure: .PP .in +4n .EX /* * IO completion data structure (Completion Queue Entry) */ struct io_uring_cqe { __u64 user_data; /* sqe->data submission passed back */ __s32 res; /* result code for this event */ __u32 flags; }; .EE .in .PP .I user_data is copied from the field of the same name in the submission queue entry. The primary use case is to store data that the application will need to access upon completion of this particular I/O. The .I flags is used for certain commands, like .B IORING_OP_POLL_ADD or in conjunction with .B IOSQE_BUFFER_SELECT , see those entries. .I res is the operation-specific result, but io_uring-specific errors (e.g. flags or opcode invalid) are returned through this field. They are described in section .B CQE ERRORS. .PP For read and write opcodes, the return values match .I errno values documented in the .BR preadv2 (2) and .BR pwritev2 (2) man pages, with .I res holding the equivalent of .I -errno for error cases, or the transferred number of bytes in case the operation is successful. Hence both error and success return can be found in that field in the CQE. For other request types, the return values are documented in the matching man page for that type, or in the opcodes section above for io_uring-specific opcodes. .PP .SH RETURN VALUE .BR io_uring_enter () returns the number of I/Os successfully consumed. This can be zero if .I to_submit was zero or if the submission queue was empty. Note that if the ring was created with .B IORING_SETUP_SQPOLL specified, then the return value will generally be the same as .I to_submit as submission happens outside the context of the system call. The errors related to a submission queue entry will be returned through a completion queue entry (see section .B CQE ERRORS), rather than through the system call itself. Errors that occur not on behalf of a submission queue entry are returned via the system call directly. On such an error, -1 is returned and .I errno is set appropriately. .PP .SH ERRORS These are the errors returned by .BR io_uring_enter () system call. .TP .B EAGAIN The kernel was unable to allocate memory for the request, or otherwise ran out of resources to handle it. The application should wait for some completions and try again. .TP .B EBADF .I fd is not a valid file descriptor. .TP .B EBADFD .I fd is a valid file descriptor, but the io_uring ring is not in the right state (enabled). See .BR io_uring_register (2) for details on how to enable the ring. .TP .B EBUSY The application is attempting to overcommit the number of requests it can have pending. The application should wait for some completions and try again. May occur if the application tries to queue more requests than we have room for in the CQ ring, or if the application attempts to wait for more events without having reaped the ones already present in the CQ ring. .TP .B EINVAL Some bits in the .I flags argument are invalid. .TP .B EFAULT An invalid user space address was specified for the .I sig argument. .TP .B ENXIO The io_uring instance is in the process of being torn down. .TP .B EOPNOTSUPP .I fd does not refer to an io_uring instance. .TP .B EINTR The operation was interrupted by a delivery of a signal before it could complete; see .BR signal(7). Can happen while waiting for events with .B IORING_ENTER_GETEVENTS. .SH CQE ERRORS These io_uring-specific errors are returned as a negative value in the .I res field of the completion queue entry. .TP .B EACCES The .I flags field or .I opcode in a submission queue entry is not allowed due to registered restrictions. See .BR io_uring_register (2) for details on how restrictions work. .TP .B EBADF The .I fd field in the submission queue entry is invalid, or the .B IOSQE_FIXED_FILE flag was set in the submission queue entry, but no files were registered with the io_uring instance. .TP .B EFAULT buffer is outside of the process' accessible address space .TP .B EFAULT .B IORING_OP_READ_FIXED or .B IORING_OP_WRITE_FIXED was specified in the .I opcode field of the submission queue entry, but either buffers were not registered for this io_uring instance, or the address range described by .I addr and .I len does not fit within the buffer registered at .IR buf_index . .TP .B EINVAL The .I flags field or .I opcode in a submission queue entry is invalid. .TP .B EINVAL The .I buf_index member of the submission queue entry is invalid. .TP .B EINVAL The .I personality field in a submission queue entry is invalid. .TP .B EINVAL .B IORING_OP_NOP was specified in the submission queue entry, but the io_uring context was setup for polling .RB ( IORING_SETUP_IOPOLL was specified in the call to io_uring_setup). .TP .B EINVAL .B IORING_OP_READV or .B IORING_OP_WRITEV was specified in the submission queue entry, but the io_uring instance has fixed buffers registered. .TP .B EINVAL .B IORING_OP_READ_FIXED or .B IORING_OP_WRITE_FIXED was specified in the submission queue entry, and the .I buf_index is invalid. .TP .B EINVAL .BR IORING_OP_READV , .BR IORING_OP_WRITEV , .BR IORING_OP_READ_FIXED , .B IORING_OP_WRITE_FIXED or .B IORING_OP_FSYNC was specified in the submission queue entry, but the io_uring instance was configured for IOPOLLing, or any of .IR addr , .IR ioprio , .IR off , .IR len , or .I buf_index was set in the submission queue entry. .TP .B EINVAL .B IORING_OP_POLL_ADD or .B IORING_OP_POLL_REMOVE was specified in the .I opcode field of the submission queue entry, but the io_uring instance was configured for busy-wait polling .RB ( IORING_SETUP_IOPOLL ), or any of .IR ioprio , .IR off , .IR len , or .I buf_index was non-zero in the submission queue entry. .TP .B EINVAL .B IORING_OP_POLL_ADD was specified in the .I opcode field of the submission queue entry, and the .I addr field was non-zero. .TP .B EOPNOTSUPP .I opcode is valid, but not supported by this kernel. .TP .B EOPNOTSUPP .B IOSQE_BUFFER_SELECT was set in the .I flags field of the submission queue entry, but the .I opcode doesn't support buffer selection.