Hi, I have a problem implementing poll method. I have written a driver for MPEG encoder card. The user-space SDK needs to be able to wait for a certain event that is reported by the interrupt handler. I have done it using ioctl method, like this: u32 timeout=milliseconds * HZ / 1000; set_bit(0, &dev->fintwait); if(test_bit(0, &dev->fintwait)) { interruptible_sleep_on_timeout(&dev->interrupt_queue,timeout); if (signal_pending(current)) { printk(KERN_ERR "optenc: IntWait restarted by signal\n"); return -ERESTARTSYS; } if(test_bit(0, &dev->fintwait)) { printk(KERN_ERR "optenc: intwait timeout\n"); ..//returns wait timeout } else { ...//returns wait OK } } //returns wait OK The interrupt handler wakes up the queue and updates dev->fintwait like this: clear_bit(0, &dev->fintwait); wake_up_interruptible(&dev->interrupt_queue); It worked very well for me. I wanted to implement the same wait using the poll method. So, my poll function looks like this: unsigned int optenc_poll(struct file *filp, poll_table *wait_table) { unsigned int mask = 0; struct mydev *dev = filp->private_data; set_bit(0, &dev->fintwait); if(test_bit(0, &dev->fintwait)) { poll_wait(filp, &dev->interrupt_queue, wait_table); if(test_bit(0, &dev->fintwait)) return mask; else { mask |= POLLIN |POLLRDNORM; return mask; } } else { mask |= POLLIN |POLLRDNORM; return mask; } } Seems straightforward and the same thing as above. But, I have the following problems: a) I have a lot of calls with wait_table = NULL and poll_wait does not block. I always do select on one file descriptor only and I never use zero timeout, so I do not understand the reason for it. b) Even when wait_table is not NULL, poll_wait returns before (!!) interrupt handler wakes up the queue. I have checked it with printk. It always like this: set_bit poll_wait poll_wait returns and test_bit is true wake_up and clear_bit It is like poll_wait does not seem to block and I have spurious calles with wait_table == NULL. Any ideas? Just to verify, the user-space wait function looks like this : BOOL Wait(int timeout) { fd_set set; struct timeval tv; int retval; FD_ZERO(&set); FD_SET(fd, &set); tv.tv_sec = timeout/1000; tv.tv_usec = (timeout%1000)*1000; int rc=select(fd+1, &set, NULL, NULL, &tv); if(rc == -1) { PERROR("select"); return FALSE; } if(rc == 1) return TRUE; else return FALSE; } I use 2.4.18-pre7ac1 and I have also checked stock RedHat's 2.4.9-34.