alarm(2) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | CONFORMING TO | NOTES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

ALARM(2)                  Linux Programmer's Manual                 ALARM(2)

NAME top

       alarm - set an alarm clock for delivery of a signal

SYNOPSIS top

       #include <unistd.h>

       unsigned int alarm(unsigned int seconds);

DESCRIPTION top

       alarm() arranges for a SIGALRM signal to be delivered to the calling
       process in seconds seconds.

       If seconds is zero, any pending alarm is canceled.

       In any event any previously set alarm() is canceled.

RETURN VALUE top

       alarm() returns the number of seconds remaining until any previously
       scheduled alarm was due to be delivered, or zero if there was no
       previously scheduled alarm.

CONFORMING TO top

       POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008, SVr4, 4.3BSD.

NOTES top

       alarm() and setitimer(2) share the same timer; calls to one will
       interfere with use of the other.

       Alarms created by alarm() are preserved across execve(2) and are not
       inherited by children created via fork(2).

       sleep(3) may be implemented using SIGALRM; mixing calls to alarm()
       and sleep(3) is a bad idea.

       Scheduling delays can, as ever, cause the execution of the process to
       be delayed by an arbitrary amount of time.

SEE ALSO top

       gettimeofday(2), pause(2), select(2), setitimer(2), sigaction(2),
       signal(2), timer_create(2), timerfd_create(2), sleep(3), time(7)

COLOPHON top

       This page is part of release 5.08 of the Linux man-pages project.  A
       description of the project, information about reporting bugs, and the
       latest version of this page, can be found at
       https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

Linux                            2017-05-03                         ALARM(2)

Pages that refer to this page: tload(1) , fork(2) , getitimer(2) , seccomp(2) , setitimer(2) , signal(2) , syscalls(2) , sleep(3) , ualarm(3) , usleep(3) , systemd.exec(5) , signal(7) , signal-safety(7) , time(7)