backend

The behavior with larger values is unspecified by the Single Unix Spec.
It appears that BSD-derived kernels report EINVAL, although Linux does not.
If waiting for longer intervals is desired, the calling code has to do
something to limit the delay; we can't portably fix it here since "long"
may not be any wider than "int" in the first place.

Part of response to bug #7670, though this change doesn't fix that
(in fact, it converts the problem from an ERROR into an Assert failure).
No back-patch since it's just an assertion addition.