Hello I'm testing a web server nginx for films sharing in my LAN. And I've got some interesting results. When I tried to download film or another big file via gigabit link, I've got sendfile block with nonblocking socket. Strace log in attach. Some commens #enabling nonblock on fd 3 20:51:20 ioctl(3, FIONBIO, [1]) = 0 #normal nonblocking sendfile, asked 2147480274 bytes, sent 236164 bytes, so nonblocking works 20:51:20 sendfile(3, 8, [847150], 2147480274) = 236164 #sendfile 390 M, 6 seconds 20:51:22 sendfile(3, 8, [102578266], 2147481510) = 390115144 #sendfile 1000 M, 15 seconds 20:51:40 sendfile(3, 8, [1303409692], 2147482596) = 1008100764 #sendfile ~2G, 30 seconds 20:51:55 sendfile(3, 8, [2312288408], 1982678888) = 1982678888 As I see, nonblocking mode is enabled - sendfile sends less than asked. But 2G via single 30 seconds sendfile call - this is blocking call. How can I avoid that? I prefer sendfile as fastest way to send file content to network socket. The problem with sendfile block on nonblocking socket has place only when I'm using network connection, that is faster than my hard disk, for example gigabit NIC or localhost. When I use 100Mbit NIC, which is slower, than my hard disk, I got small and fast sendfile calls without blocking. My kernel is Linux 2.6.20.3-grsec x86_64. I verified that also on 2.6.18 - same results. Please advise. ps: I've did same tests with lighttpd's sendfile and got same results - block on nonblocking socket, when network is faster than disk. Thank you, Alex