POSIX Asynchronous I/O

POSIX asynchronous I/O is performed using aiocb structures. An aiocb control block identifies each asynchronous I/O request and contains all of the controlling information. A control block can be used for only one request at a time. A control block can be reused after its request has been completed.

A typical POSIX asynchronous I/O operation is initiated by a call to aio_read(3RT) or aio_write(3RT). Either polling or signals can be used to determine the completion of an operation. If signals are used for completing operations, each operation can be uniquely tagged. The tag is then returned in the si_value component of the generated signal. See the siginfo(3HEAD) man page.

aio_read

aio_read(3RT) is called with an asynchronous I/O control block to initiate a read operation.

aio_write

aio_write(3RT) is called with an asynchronous I/O control block to initiate a write operation.

aio_return, aio_error

aio_return(3RT) and aio_error(3RT) are called to obtain return and error values, respectively, after an operation is known to have completed.

aio_cancel

aio_cancel(3RT) is called with an asynchronous I/O control block to cancel pending operations. aio_cancel can be used to cancel a specific request, if a request is specified by the control block. aio_cancel can also cancel all of the requests that are pending for the specified file descriptor.

aio_fsync

aio_fsync(3RT) queues an asynchronous fsync(3C) or fdatasync(3RT) request for all of the pending I/O operations on the specified file.

aio_suspend

aio_suspend(3RT) suspends the caller as though one or more of the preceding asynchronous I/O requests had been made synchronously.