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        Real Time Clock (RTC) Drivers for Linux

        =======================================

When Linux developers talk about a "Real Time Clock", they usually mean

something that tracks wall clock time and is battery backed so that it

works even with system power off.  Such clocks will normally not track

the local time zone or daylight savings time -- unless they dual boot

with MS-Windows -- but will instead be set to Coordinated Universal Time

(UTC, formerly "Greenwich Mean Time").

The newest non-PC hardware tends to just count seconds, like the time(2)

system call reports, but RTCs also very commonly represent time using

the Gregorian calendar and 24 hour time, as reported by gmtime(3).

Linux has two largely-compatible userspace RTC API families you may

need to know about:

    *   /dev/rtc ... is the RTC provided by PC compatible systems,

        so it's not very portable to non-x86 systems.

    *   /dev/rtc0, /dev/rtc1 ... are part of a framework that's

        supported by a wide variety of RTC chips on all systems.

Programmers need to understand that the PC/AT functionality is not

always available, and some systems can do much more.  That is, the

RTCs use the same API to make requests in both RTC frameworks (using

different filenames of course), but the hardware may not offer the

same functionality.  For example, not every RTC is hooked up to an

IRQ, so they can't all issue alarms; and where standard PC RTCs can

only issue an alarm up to 24 hours in the future, other hardware may

be able to schedule one any time in the upcoming century.

        Old PC/AT-Compatible driver:  /dev/rtc

        --------------------------------------

All PCs (even Alpha machines) have a Real Time Clock built into them.

Usually they are built into the chipset of the computer, but some may

actually have a Motorola MC146818 (or clone) on the board. This is the

clock that keeps the date and time while your computer is turned off.

ACPI has standardized that MC146818 functionality, and extended it in

a few ways (enabling longer alarm periods, and wake-from-hibernate).

That functionality is NOT exposed in the old driver.

However it can also be used to generate signals from a slow 2Hz to a

relatively fast 8192Hz, in increments of powers of two. These signals

are reported by interrupt number 8. (Oh! So *that* is what IRQ 8 is

for...) It can also function as a 24hr alarm, raising IRQ 8 when the

alarm goes off. The alarm can also be programmed to only check any

subset of the three programmable values, meaning that it could be set to

ring on the 30th second of the 30th minute of every hour, for example.

The clock can also be set to generate an interrupt upon every clock

update, thus generating a 1Hz signal.

The interrupts are reported via /dev/rtc (major 10, minor 135, read only

character device) in the form of an unsigned long. The low byte contains

the type of interrupt (update-done, alarm-rang, or periodic) that was

raised, and the remaining bytes contain the number of interrupts since

the last read.  Status information is reported through the pseudo-file

/proc/driver/rtc if the /proc filesystem was enabled.  The driver has

built in locking so that only one process is allowed to have the /dev/rtc

interface open at a time.

A user process can monitor these interrupts by doing a read(2) or a

select(2) on /dev/rtc -- either will block/stop the user process until

the next interrupt is received. This is useful for things like

reasonably high frequency data acquisition where one doesn't want to

burn up 100% CPU by polling gettimeofday etc. etc.

At high frequencies, or under high loads, the user process should check

the number of interrupts received since the last read to determine if

there has been any interrupt "pileup" so to speak. Just for reference, a

typical 486-33 running a tight read loop on /dev/rtc will start to suffer

occasional interrupt pileup (i.e. > 1 IRQ event since last read) for

frequencies above 1024Hz. So you really should check the high bytes

of the value you read, especially at frequencies above that of the

normal timer interrupt, which is 100Hz.

Programming and/or enabling interrupt frequencies greater than 64Hz is

only allowed by root. This is perhaps a bit conservative, but we don't want

an evil user generating lots of IRQs on a slow 386sx-16, where it might have

a negative impact on performance. This 64Hz limit can be changed by writing

a different value to /proc/sys/dev/rtc/max-user-freq. Note that the

interrupt handler is only a few lines of code to minimize any possibility

of this effect.

Also, if the kernel time is synchronized with an external source, the

kernel will write the time back to the CMOS clock every 11 minutes. In

the process of doing this, the kernel briefly turns off RTC periodic

interrupts, so be aware of this if you are doing serious work. If you

don't synchronize the kernel time with an external source (via ntp or

whatever) then the kernel will keep its hands off the RTC, allowing you

exclusive access to the device for your applications.

The alarm and/or interrupt frequency are programmed into the RTC via

various ioctl(2) calls as listed in ./include/linux/rtc.h

Rather than write 50 pages describing the ioctl() and so on, it is

perhaps more useful to include a small test program that demonstrates

how to use them, and demonstrates the features of the driver. This is

probably a lot more useful to people interested in writing applications

that will be using this driver.  See the code at the end of this document.

(The original /dev/rtc driver was written by Paul Gortmaker.)

        New portable "RTC Class" drivers:  /dev/rtcN

        --------------------------------------------

Because Linux supports many non-ACPI and non-PC platforms, some of which

have more than one RTC style clock, it needed a more portable solution

than expecting a single battery-backed MC146818 clone on every system.

Accordingly, a new "RTC Class" framework has been defined.  It offers

three different userspace interfaces:

    *   /dev/rtcN ... much the same as the older /dev/rtc interface

    *   /sys/class/rtc/rtcN ... sysfs attributes support readonly

        access to some RTC attributes.

    *   /proc/driver/rtc ... the first RTC (rtc0) may expose itself

        using a procfs interface.  More information is (currently) shown

        here than through sysfs.

The RTC Class framework supports a wide variety of RTCs, ranging from those

integrated into embeddable system-on-chip (SOC) processors to discrete chips

using I2C, SPI, or some other bus to communicate with the host CPU.  There's

even support for PC-style RTCs ... including the features exposed on newer PCs

through ACPI.

The new framework also removes the "one RTC per system" restriction.  For

example, maybe the low-power battery-backed RTC is a discrete I2C chip, but

a high functionality RTC is integrated into the SOC.  That system might read

the system clock from the discrete RTC, but use the integrated one for all

other tasks, because of its greater functionality.

The ioctl() calls supported by /dev/rtc are also supported by the RTC class

framework.  However, because the chips and systems are not standardized,

some PC/AT functionality might not be provided.  And in the same way, some

newer features -- including those enabled by ACPI -- are exposed by the

RTC class framework, but can't be supported by the older driver.

    *   RTC_RD_TIME, RTC_SET_TIME ... every RTC supports at least reading

        time, returning the result as a Gregorian calendar date and 24 hour

        wall clock time.  To be most useful, this time may also be updated.

    *   RTC_AIE_ON, RTC_AIE_OFF, RTC_ALM_SET, RTC_ALM_READ ... when the RTC

        is connected to an IRQ line, it can often issue an alarm IRQ up to

        24 hours in the future.  (Use RTC_WKALM_* by preference.)

    *   RTC_WKALM_SET, RTC_WKALM_RD ... RTCs that can issue alarms beyond

        the next 24 hours use a slightly more powerful API, which supports

        setting the longer alarm time and enabling its IRQ using a single

        request (using the same model as EFI firmware).

    *   RTC_UIE_ON, RTC_UIE_OFF ... if the RTC offers IRQs, it probably

        also offers update IRQs whenever the "seconds" counter changes.

        If needed, the RTC framework can emulate this mechanism.

    *   RTC_PIE_ON, RTC_PIE_OFF, RTC_IRQP_SET, RTC_IRQP_READ ... another

        feature often accessible with an IRQ line is a periodic IRQ, issued

        at settable frequencies (usually 2^N Hz).

In many cases, the RTC alarm can be a system wake event, used to force

Linux out of a low power sleep state (or hibernation) back to a fully

operational state.  For example, a system could enter a deep power saving

state until it's time to execute some scheduled tasks.

Note that many of these ioctls need not actually be implemented by your

driver.  The common rtc-dev interface handles many of these nicely if your

driver returns ENOIOCTLCMD.  Some common examples:

    *   RTC_RD_TIME, RTC_SET_TIME: the read_time/set_time functions will be

        called with appropriate values.

    *   RTC_ALM_SET, RTC_ALM_READ, RTC_WKALM_SET, RTC_WKALM_RD: the

        set_alarm/read_alarm functions will be called.

    *   RTC_IRQP_SET, RTC_IRQP_READ: the irq_set_freq function will be called

        to set the frequency while the framework will handle the read for you

        since the frequency is stored in the irq_freq member of the rtc_device

        structure.  Your driver needs to initialize the irq_freq member during

        init.  Make sure you check the requested frequency is in range of your

        hardware in the irq_set_freq function.  If you cannot actually change

        the frequency, just return -ENOTTY.

If all else fails, check out the rtc-test.c driver!

-------------------- 8< ---------------- 8< -----------------------------

/*

 *      Real Time Clock Driver Test/Example Program

 *

 *      Compile with:

 *                   gcc -s -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes rtctest.c -o rtctest

 *

 *      Copyright (C) 1996, Paul Gortmaker.

 *

 *      Released under the GNU General Public License, version 2,

 *      included herein by reference.

 *

 */

#include 

#include 

#include 

#include 

#include 

#include 

#include 

#include 

#include 

/*

 * This expects the new RTC class driver framework, working with

 * clocks that will often not be clones of what the PC-AT had.

 * Use the command line to specify another RTC if you need one.

 */

static const char default_rtc[] = "/dev/rtc0";

int main(int argc, char **argv)

{

        int i, fd, retval, irqcount = 0;

        unsigned long tmp, data;

        struct rtc_time rtc_tm;

        const char *rtc = default_rtc;

        switch (argc) {

        case 2:

                rtc = argv[1];

                /* FALLTHROUGH */

        case 1:

                break;

        default:

                fprintf(stderr, "usage:  rtctest [rtcdev]\n");

                return 1;

        }

        fd = open(rtc, O_RDONLY);

        if (fd ==  -1) {

                perror(rtc);

                exit(errno);

        }

        fprintf(stderr, "\n\t\t\tRTC Driver Test Example.\n\n");

        /* Turn on update interrupts (one per second) */

        retval = ioctl(fd, RTC_UIE_ON, 0);

        if (retval == -1) {

                if (errno == ENOTTY) {

                        fprintf(stderr,

                                "\n...Update IRQs not supported.\n");

                        goto test_READ;

                }

                perror("RTC_UIE_ON ioctl");

                exit(errno);

        }

        fprintf(stderr, "Counting 5 update (1/sec) interrupts from reading %s:",

                        rtc);

        fflush(stderr);

        for (i=1; i<6; i++) {

                /* This read will block */

                retval = read(fd, &data, sizeof(unsigned long));

                if (retval == -1) {

                        perror("read");

                        exit(errno);

                }

                fprintf(stderr, " %d",i);

                fflush(stderr);

                irqcount++;

        }

        fprintf(stderr, "\nAgain, from using select(2) on /dev/rtc:");

        fflush(stderr);

        for (i=1; i<6; i++) {

                struct timeval tv = {5, 0};     /* 5 second timeout on select */

                fd_set readfds;

                FD_ZERO(&readfds);

                FD_SET(fd, &readfds);

                /* The select will wait until an RTC interrupt happens. */

                retval = select(fd+1, &readfds, NULL, NULL, &tv);

                if (retval == -1) {

                        perror("select");

                        exit(errno);

                }

                /* This read won't block unlike the select-less case above. */

                retval = read(fd, &data, sizeof(unsigned long));

                if (retval == -1) {

                        perror("read");

                        exit(errno);

                }

                fprintf(stderr, " %d",i);

                fflush(stderr);

                irqcount++;

        }

        /* Turn off update interrupts */

        retval = ioctl(fd, RTC_UIE_OFF, 0);

        if (retval == -1) {

                perror("RTC_UIE_OFF ioctl");

                exit(errno);

        }

test_READ:

        /* Read the RTC time/date */

        retval = ioctl(fd, RTC_RD_TIME, &rtc_tm);

        if (retval == -1) {

                perror("RTC_RD_TIME ioctl");

                exit(errno);

        }

        fprintf(stderr, "\n\nCurrent RTC date/time is %d-%d-%d, %02d:%02d:%02d.\n",

                rtc_tm.tm_mday, rtc_tm.tm_mon + 1, rtc_tm.tm_year + 1900,

                rtc_tm.tm_hour, rtc_tm.tm_min, rtc_tm.tm_sec);

        /* Set the alarm to 5 sec in the future, and check for rollover */

        rtc_tm.tm_sec += 5;

        if (rtc_tm.tm_sec >= 60) {

                rtc_tm.tm_sec %= 60;

                rtc_tm.tm_min++;

        }

        if  (rtc_tm.tm_min == 60) {

                rtc_tm.tm_min = 0;

                rtc_tm.tm_hour++;

        }

        if  (rtc_tm.tm_hour == 24)

                rtc_tm.tm_hour = 0;

        retval = ioctl(fd, RTC_ALM_SET, &rtc_tm);

        if (retval == -1) {

                if (errno == ENOTTY) {

                        fprintf(stderr,

                                "\n...Alarm IRQs not supported.\n");

                        goto test_PIE;

                }

                perror("RTC_ALM_SET ioctl");

                exit(errno);

        }

        /* Read the current alarm settings */

        retval = ioctl(fd, RTC_ALM_READ, &rtc_tm);

        if (retval == -1) {

                perror("RTC_ALM_READ ioctl");

                exit(errno);

        }

        fprintf(stderr, "Alarm time now set to %02d:%02d:%02d.\n",

                rtc_tm.tm_hour, rtc_tm.tm_min, rtc_tm.tm_sec);

        /* Enable alarm interrupts */

        retval = ioctl(fd, RTC_AIE_ON, 0);

        if (retval == -1) {

                perror("RTC_AIE_ON ioctl");

                exit(errno);

        }

        fprintf(stderr, "Waiting 5 seconds for alarm...");

        fflush(stderr);

        /* This blocks until the alarm ring causes an interrupt */

        retval = read(fd, &data, sizeof(unsigned long));

        if (retval == -1) {

                perror("read");

                exit(errno);

        }

        irqcount++;

        fprintf(stderr, " okay. Alarm rang.\n");

        /* Disable alarm interrupts */

        retval = ioctl(fd, RTC_AIE_OFF, 0);

        if (retval == -1) {

                perror("RTC_AIE_OFF ioctl");

                exit(errno);

        }

test_PIE:

        /* Read periodic IRQ rate */

        retval = ioctl(fd, RTC_IRQP_READ, &tmp);

        if (retval == -1) {

                /* not all RTCs support periodic IRQs */

                if (errno == ENOTTY) {

                        fprintf(stderr, "\nNo periodic IRQ support\n");

                        goto done;

                }

                perror("RTC_IRQP_READ ioctl");

                exit(errno);

        }

        fprintf(stderr, "\nPeriodic IRQ rate is %ldHz.\n", tmp);

        fprintf(stderr, "Counting 20 interrupts at:");

        fflush(stderr);

        /* The frequencies 128Hz, 256Hz, ... 8192Hz are only allowed for root. */

        for (tmp=2; tmp<=64; tmp*=2) {

                retval = ioctl(fd, RTC_IRQP_SET, tmp);

                if (retval == -1) {

                        /* not all RTCs can change their periodic IRQ rate */

                        if (errno == ENOTTY) {

                                fprintf(stderr,

                                        "\n...Periodic IRQ rate is fixed\n");

                                goto done;

                        }

                        perror("RTC_IRQP_SET ioctl");

                        exit(errno);

                }

                fprintf(stderr, "\n%ldHz:\t", tmp);

                fflush(stderr);

                /* Enable periodic interrupts */

                retval = ioctl(fd, RTC_PIE_ON, 0);

                if (retval == -1) {

                        perror("RTC_PIE_ON ioctl");

                        exit(errno);

                }

                for (i=1; i<21; i++) {

                        /* This blocks */

                        retval = read(fd, &data, sizeof(unsigned long));

                        if (retval == -1) {

                                       perror("read");

                                       exit(errno);

                        }

                        fprintf(stderr, " %d",i);

                        fflush(stderr);

                        irqcount++;

                }

                /* Disable periodic interrupts */

                retval = ioctl(fd, RTC_PIE_OFF, 0);

                if (retval == -1) {

                        perror("RTC_PIE_OFF ioctl");

                        exit(errno);

                }

        }

done:

        fprintf(stderr, "\n\n\t\t\t *** Test complete ***\n");

        close(fd);

        return 0;

}