poll_timeout_us_atomic(9)

📦 version 7.3.1, in nixpkgs unstable

💅 poll_timeout_us_atomic(9) — Kernel API Manual

okay bestie, welcome to the atomic polling macro page ✨ this one lives in the Kernel API Manual and it's genuinely one of those "small but mighty" situations, iykyk 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

poll_timeout_us_atomic — literally does what it says on the tin: it periodically polls and performs an operation until a condition is met or a timeout occurs 🎀 no cap, that's the whole gig.

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

poll_timeout_us_atomic (op , cond , delay_us , timeout_us ,
       delay_before_op );

yes bestie, five arguments, all of them important, we do not skip a single one 💅

🌸 ARGUMENTS 🌸

  • op — the Operation. this is the thing you actually want to do over and over until the universe cooperates ✨
  • cond — the Break condition. the second this is true, we're out, we're done, we're going home 🏃‍♀️💨
  • delay_us — the Time to udelay between operations, measured in us (0 means tight-looping 🌀). and like... please read the udelay function description for details and limitations, fr fr, it's not optional reading 🙈
  • timeout_us — the Timeout in us. and <rainbow>0 means never timeout</rainbow> 👑 which like, bold of you, but slay.
  • delay_before_op — if it is true, delay delay_us before the operation 🎀 (yes, before. the vibe check happens first.)

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

the way this macro is so iconic: it does not rely on timekeeping 🕐✨ Hence it is safe to call even when timekeeping is suspended — which is huge for you atomic girlies. the trade-off? at the expense of an underestimation of wall clock time 😭 but honestly bestie, it's rather minimal with a non-zero delay_us, so like, barely a situation.

and when available, you'll probably want to use one of the specialized macros defined below rather than this macro directly 🫶 this one is the main character, but the specialists are the whole friend group.

💀 RETURN 💀

  • 0 on success 🎉
  • -ETIMEDOUT upon a timeout 😔 (it tried, it really did)

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

go check out the Kernel file ./include/linux/iopoll.h — that's where the whole squad lives:

ok that's the page!! sourced from ./include/linux, dated October 2026, and it's the poll_timeout_us_atomic(9) manual page — go poll something responsibly bestie 💜🧚⭐
📦 where this page comes from