zx_channel_call

Summary

Send a message to a channel and await a reply.

Declaration

#include <zircon/syscalls.h>

zx_status_t zx_channel_call(zx_handle_t handle,
                            uint32_t options,
                            zx_instant_mono_t deadline,
                            const zx_channel_call_args_t* args,
                            uint32_t* actual_bytes,
                            uint32_t* actual_handles);

Description

zx_channel_call() is like a combined zx_channel_write(), zx_object_wait_one(), and zx_channel_read(), with the addition of a feature where a transaction id at the front of the message payload bytes is used to match reply messages with send messages, enabling multiple calling threads to share a channel without any additional userspace bookkeeping.

The write and read phases of this operation behave like zx_channel_write() and zx_channel_read() with the difference that their parameters are provided via the zx_channel_call_args_t structure.

The first four bytes of the written and read back messages are treated as a transaction ID of type zx_txid_t. The kernel generates a txid for the written message, replacing that part of the message as read from userspace. The kernel generated txid will be between 0x80000000 and 0xFFFFFFFF, and will not collide with any txid from any other zx_channel_call() in progress against this channel endpoint. If the written message has a length of fewer than four bytes, an error is reported.

When the outbound message is written, simultaneously an interest is registered for inbound messages of the matching txid.

deadline may be automatically adjusted according to the job's timer slack policy.

While the slack-adjusted deadline has not passed, if an inbound message arrives with a matching txid, instead of being added to the tail of the general inbound message queue, it is delivered directly to the thread waiting in zx_channel_call().

If such a reply arrives after the slack-adjusted deadline has passed, it will arrive in the general inbound message queue, cause ZX_CHANNEL_READABLE to be signaled, etc.

Inbound messages that are too large to fit in rd_num_bytes and rd_num_handles are discarded and ZX_ERR_BUFFER_TOO_SMALL is returned in that case.

As with zx_channel_write(), the handles in handles are always consumed by zx_channel_call() and no longer exist in the calling process.

ZX_CHANNEL_WRITE_USE_IOVEC option

When the ZX_CHANNEL_WRITE_USE_IOVEC option is specified, wr_bytes is interpreted as an array of zx_channel_iovec_t, specifying slices of bytes to sequentially copy to the message in order. num_wr_bytes specifies the number of zx_channel_iovec_t array elements in wr_bytes.

typedef struct zx_channel_iovec {
  const void* buffer;      // User-space bytes.
  uint32_t capacity;       // Number of bytes.
  uint32_t reserved;       // Reserved.
} zx_channel_iovec_t;

There can be at most ZX_CHANNEL_MAX_MSG_IOVEC or 8192 zx_channel_iovec_t elements of the wr_bytes array with the sum of capacity across all zx_channel_iovec_t not exceeding ZX_CHANNEL_MAX_MSG_BYTES or 65536 bytes. buffer need not be aligned and it may only be NULL if capacity is zero. reserved must be set to zero.

Either all zx_channel_iovec_t are copied and the message is sent, or none are copied and the message is not sent. Usage for sending handles is unchanged.

Rights

handle must be of type ZX_OBJ_TYPE_CHANNEL and have ZX_RIGHT_READ and have ZX_RIGHT_WRITE.

All wr_handles of args must have ZX_RIGHT_TRANSFER.

Return value

zx_channel_call() returns ZX_OK on success and the number of bytes and count of handles in the reply message are returned via actual_bytes and actual_handles, respectively.

Errors

ZX_ERR_BAD_HANDLE handle is not a valid handle, any element in handles is not a valid handle, or there are duplicates among the handles in the handles array.

ZX_ERR_WRONG_TYPE handle is not a channel handle.

ZX_ERR_INVALID_ARGS any of the provided pointers are invalid or null, or wr_num_bytes is less than four, or options is nonzero. If the ZX_CHANNEL_WRITE_USE_IOVEC option is specified, ZX_ERR_INVALID_ARGS will be produced if the buffer field contains an invalid pointer or if the reserved field is non-zero.

ZX_ERR_ACCESS_DENIED handle does not have ZX_RIGHT_WRITE or any element in handles does not have ZX_RIGHT_TRANSFER.

ZX_ERR_PEER_CLOSED The other side of the channel was closed or became closed while waiting for the reply.

ZX_ERR_CANCELED handle was invalidated (e.g., closed) while waiting for a reply.

ZX_ERR_NO_MEMORY Failure due to lack of memory. There is no good way for userspace to handle this (unlikely) error. In a future build this error will no longer occur.

ZX_ERR_OUT_OF_RANGE wr_num_bytes or wr_num_handles are larger than the largest allowable size for channel messages. If the ZX_CHANNEL_WRITE_USE_IOVEC option is specified, ZX_ERR_OUT_OF_RANGE will be produced if num_bytes is larger than ZX_CHANNEL_MAX_MSG_IOVEC or the sum of the iovec capacities exceeds ZX_CHANNEL_MAX_MSG_BYTES.

ZX_ERR_BUFFER_TOO_SMALL rd_num_bytes or rd_num_handles are too small to contain the reply message.

ZX_ERR_NOT_SUPPORTED one of the handles in handles was handle (the handle to the channel being written to).

Notes

The facilities provided by zx_channel_call() can interoperate with message dispatchers using zx_channel_read() and zx_channel_write() directly, provided the following rules are observed:

  1. A server receiving synchronous messages via zx_channel_read() should ensure that the txid of incoming messages is reflected back in outgoing responses via zx_channel_write() so that clients using zx_channel_call() can correctly route the replies.

  2. A client sending messages via zx_channel_write() that will be replied to should ensure that it uses txids between 0 and 0x7FFFFFFF only, to avoid colliding with other threads communicating via zx_channel_call().

If a zx_channel_call() returns due to ZX_ERR_TIMED_OUT, if the server eventually replies, at some point in the future, the reply could match another outbound request (provided about 2^31 zx_channel_call()s have happened since the original request. This syscall is designed around the expectation that timeouts are generally fatal and clients do not expect to continue communications on a channel that is timing out.

See also