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28 .\" @(#)intro.2 8.5 (Berkeley) 2/27/95
29 .\" $FreeBSD: src/lib/libc/sys/intro.2,v 1.48 2007/01/09 00:28:14 imp Exp $
30 .\" $DragonFly: src/lib/libc/sys/intro.2,v 1.7 2007/04/11 09:12:08 swildner Exp $
37 .Nd introduction to system calls and error numbers
43 This section provides an overview of the system calls,
44 their error returns, and other common definitions and concepts.
46 .\".Sy System call restart
50 Nearly all of the system calls provide an error number referenced via
51 the external identifier
53 This identifier is defined in
57 .Dl extern __thread int errno;
58 .Dl static __inline int * __error(void);
59 .Dl #define errno (* __error())
61 This means there exists a thread-local
63 variable, though it is shadowed by the inline
65 function to allow compilation of source code which
66 erroneously itself declares
70 which collides with the thread-local declaration.
73 function returns a pointer the thread specific
78 it will compile to a no-op, effectively producing
79 the same code as if the define wouldn't exist.
81 When a system call detects an error,
82 it returns an integer value
83 indicating failure (usually -1)
87 (This allows interpretation of the failure on receiving
88 a -1 and to take action accordingly.)
89 Successful calls never set
91 once set, it remains until another error occurs.
92 It should only be examined after an error.
93 Note that a number of system calls overload the meanings of these
94 error numbers, and that the meanings must be interpreted according
95 to the type and circumstances of the call.
97 The following is a complete list of the errors and their
101 .It Er 0 Em "Undefined error: 0" .
103 .It Er 1 EPERM Em "Operation not permitted" .
104 An attempt was made to perform an operation limited to processes
105 with appropriate privileges or to the owner of a file or other
107 .It Er 2 ENOENT Em "No such file or directory" .
108 A component of a specified pathname did not exist, or the
109 pathname was an empty string.
110 .It Er 3 ESRCH Em "No such process" .
111 No process could be found corresponding to that specified by the given
113 .It Er 4 EINTR Em "Interrupted system call" .
114 An asynchronous signal (such as
118 was caught by the process during the execution of an interruptible
120 If the signal handler performs a normal return, the
121 interrupted system call will seem to have returned the error condition.
122 .It Er 5 EIO Em "Input/output error" .
123 Some physical input or output error occurred.
124 This error will not be reported until a subsequent operation on the same file
125 descriptor and may be lost (over written) by any subsequent errors.
126 .It Er 6 ENXIO Em "Device not configured" .
127 Input or output on a special file referred to a device that did not
129 made a request beyond the limits of the device.
130 This error may also occur when, for example,
131 a tape drive is not online or no disk pack is
133 .It Er 7 E2BIG Em "Argument list too long" .
134 The number of bytes used for the argument and environment
135 list of the new process exceeded the current limit
139 .It Er 8 ENOEXEC Em "Exec format error" .
140 A request was made to execute a file
141 that, although it has the appropriate permissions,
142 was not in the format required for an
144 .It Er 9 EBADF Em "Bad file descriptor" .
145 A file descriptor argument was out of range, referred to no open file,
146 or a read (write) request was made to a file that was only open for
149 .It Er 10 ECHILD Em "\&No child processes" .
154 function was executed by a process that had no existing or unwaited-for
156 .It Er 11 EDEADLK Em "Resource deadlock avoided" .
157 An attempt was made to lock a system resource that
158 would have resulted in a deadlock situation.
159 .It Er 12 ENOMEM Em "Cannot allocate memory" .
160 The new process image required more memory than was allowed by the hardware
161 or by system-imposed memory management constraints.
162 A lack of swap space is normally temporary; however,
163 a lack of core is not.
164 Soft limits may be increased to their corresponding hard limits.
165 .It Er 13 EACCES Em "Permission denied" .
166 An attempt was made to access a file in a way forbidden
167 by its file access permissions.
168 .It Er 14 EFAULT Em "Bad address" .
169 The system detected an invalid address in attempting to
170 use an argument of a call.
171 .It Er 15 ENOTBLK Em "Block device required" .
172 A block device operation was attempted on a non-block device or file.
173 .It Er 16 EBUSY Em "Device busy" .
174 An attempt to use a system resource which was in use at the time
175 in a manner which would have conflicted with the request.
176 .It Er 17 EEXIST Em "File exists" .
177 An existing file was mentioned in an inappropriate context,
178 for instance, as the new link name in a
181 .It Er 18 EXDEV Em "Cross-device link" .
182 A hard link to a file on another file system
184 .It Er 19 ENODEV Em "Operation not supported by device" .
185 An attempt was made to apply an inappropriate
186 function to a device,
188 trying to read a write-only device such as a printer.
189 .It Er 20 ENOTDIR Em "Not a directory" .
190 A component of the specified pathname existed, but it was
191 not a directory, when a directory was expected.
192 .It Er 21 EISDIR Em "Is a directory" .
193 An attempt was made to open a directory with write mode specified.
194 .It Er 22 EINVAL Em "Invalid argument" .
195 Some invalid argument was supplied.
197 specifying an undefined signal to a
203 .It Er 23 ENFILE Em "Too many open files in system" .
204 Maximum number of file descriptors allowable on the system
205 has been reached and a requests for an open cannot be satisfied
206 until at least one has been closed.
207 .It Er 24 EMFILE Em "Too many open files" .
208 (As released, the limit on the number of
209 open files per process is 64.)
212 system call will obtain the current limit.
213 .It Er 25 ENOTTY Em "Inappropriate ioctl for device" .
214 A control function (see
216 was attempted for a file or
217 special device for which the operation was inappropriate.
218 .It Er 26 ETXTBSY Em "Text file busy" .
219 The new process was a pure procedure (shared text) file
220 which was open for writing by another process, or
221 while the pure procedure file was being executed an
223 call requested write access.
224 .It Er 27 EFBIG Em "File too large" .
225 The size of a file exceeded the maximum.
226 .It Er 28 ENOSPC Em "No space left on device" .
229 to an ordinary file, the creation of a
230 directory or symbolic link, or the creation of a directory
231 entry failed because no more disk blocks were available
232 on the file system, or the allocation of an inode for a newly
233 created file failed because no more inodes were available
235 .It Er 29 ESPIPE Em "Illegal seek" .
238 system call was issued on a socket, pipe or
240 .It Er 30 EROFS Em "Read-only file system" .
241 An attempt was made to modify a file or directory
242 on a file system that was read-only at the time.
243 .It Er 31 EMLINK Em "Too many links" .
244 Maximum allowable hard links to a single file has been exceeded (limit
245 of 32767 hard links per file).
246 .It Er 32 EPIPE Em "Broken pipe" .
247 A write on a pipe, socket or
249 for which there is no process
251 .It Er 33 EDOM Em "Numerical argument out of domain" .
252 A numerical input argument was outside the defined domain of the mathematical
254 .It Er 34 ERANGE Em "Result too large" .
255 A numerical result of the function was too large to fit in the
256 available space (perhaps exceeded precision).
257 .It Er 35 EAGAIN Em "Resource temporarily unavailable" .
258 This is a temporary condition and later calls to the
259 same routine may complete normally.
260 .It Er 36 EINPROGRESS Em "Operation now in progress" .
261 An operation that takes a long time to complete (such as
264 was attempted on a non-blocking object (see
266 .It Er 37 EALREADY Em "Operation already in progress" .
267 An operation was attempted on a non-blocking object that already
268 had an operation in progress.
269 .It Er 38 ENOTSOCK Em "Socket operation on non-socket" .
271 .It Er 39 EDESTADDRREQ Em "Destination address required" .
272 A required address was omitted from an operation on a socket.
273 .It Er 40 EMSGSIZE Em "Message too long" .
274 A message sent on a socket was larger than the internal message buffer
275 or some other network limit.
276 .It Er 41 EPROTOTYPE Em "Protocol wrong type for socket" .
277 A protocol was specified that does not support the semantics of the
278 socket type requested.
279 For example, you cannot use the
285 .It Er 42 ENOPROTOOPT Em "Protocol not available" .
286 A bad option or level was specified in a
291 .It Er 43 EPROTONOSUPPORT Em "Protocol not supported" .
292 The protocol has not been configured into the
293 system or no implementation for it exists.
294 .It Er 44 ESOCKTNOSUPPORT Em "Socket type not supported" .
295 The support for the socket type has not been configured into the
296 system or no implementation for it exists.
297 .It Er 45 EOPNOTSUPP Em "Operation not supported" .
298 The attempted operation is not supported for the type of object referenced.
299 Usually this occurs when a file descriptor refers to a file or socket
300 that cannot support this operation,
301 for example, trying to
303 a connection on a datagram socket.
304 .It Er 46 EPFNOSUPPORT Em "Protocol family not supported" .
305 The protocol family has not been configured into the
306 system or no implementation for it exists.
307 .It Er 47 EAFNOSUPPORT Em "Address family not supported by protocol family" .
308 An address incompatible with the requested protocol was used.
309 For example, you should not necessarily expect to be able to use
314 .It Er 48 EADDRINUSE Em "Address already in use" .
315 Only one usage of each address is normally permitted.
317 .It Er 49 EADDRNOTAVAIL Em "Cannot assign requested address" .
318 Normally results from an attempt to create a socket with an
319 address not on this machine.
320 .It Er 50 ENETDOWN Em "Network is down" .
321 A socket operation encountered a dead network.
322 .It Er 51 ENETUNREACH Em "Network is unreachable" .
323 A socket operation was attempted to an unreachable network.
324 .It Er 52 ENETRESET Em "Network dropped connection on reset" .
325 The host you were connected to crashed and rebooted.
326 .It Er 53 ECONNABORTED Em "Software caused connection abort" .
327 A connection abort was caused internal to your host machine.
328 .It Er 54 ECONNRESET Em "Connection reset by peer" .
329 A connection was forcibly closed by a peer.
331 results from a loss of the connection on the remote socket
332 due to a timeout or a reboot.
333 .It Er 55 ENOBUFS Em "\&No buffer space available" .
334 An operation on a socket or pipe was not performed because
335 the system lacked sufficient buffer space or because a queue was full.
336 .It Er 56 EISCONN Em "Socket is already connected" .
339 request was made on an already connected socket; or,
344 request on a connected socket specified a destination
345 when already connected.
346 .It Er 57 ENOTCONN Em "Socket is not connected" .
347 An request to send or receive data was disallowed because
348 the socket was not connected and (when sending on a datagram socket)
349 no address was supplied.
350 .It Er 58 ESHUTDOWN Em "Cannot send after socket shutdown" .
351 A request to send data was disallowed because the socket
352 had already been shut down with a previous
355 .It Er 60 ETIMEDOUT Em "Operation timed out" .
360 request failed because the connected party did not
361 properly respond after a period of time.
363 period is dependent on the communication protocol.)
364 .It Er 61 ECONNREFUSED Em "Connection refused" .
365 No connection could be made because the target machine actively
367 This usually results from trying to connect
368 to a service that is inactive on the foreign host.
369 .It Er 62 ELOOP Em "Too many levels of symbolic links" .
370 A path name lookup involved more than 32
373 .It Er 63 ENAMETOOLONG Em "File name too long" .
374 A component of a path name exceeded
376 characters, or an entire
380 (See also the description of
384 .It Er 64 EHOSTDOWN Em "Host is down" .
385 A socket operation failed because the destination host was down.
386 .It Er 65 EHOSTUNREACH Em "No route to host" .
387 A socket operation was attempted to an unreachable host.
388 .It Er 66 ENOTEMPTY Em "Directory not empty" .
389 A directory with entries other than
393 was supplied to a remove directory or rename call.
394 .It Er 67 EPROCLIM Em "Too many processes" .
395 .It Er 68 EUSERS Em "Too many users" .
396 The quota system ran out of table entries.
397 .It Er 69 EDQUOT Em "Disc quota exceeded" .
400 to an ordinary file, the creation of a
401 directory or symbolic link, or the creation of a directory
402 entry failed because the user's quota of disk blocks was
403 exhausted, or the allocation of an inode for a newly
404 created file failed because the user's quota of inodes
406 .It Er 70 ESTALE Em "Stale NFS file handle" .
407 An attempt was made to access an open file (on an
410 which is now unavailable as referenced by the file descriptor.
411 This may indicate the file was deleted on the
414 other catastrophic event occurred.
415 .It Er 72 EBADRPC Em "RPC struct is bad" .
418 information was unsuccessful.
419 .It Er 73 ERPCMISMATCH Em "RPC version wrong" .
422 on the remote peer is not compatible with
424 .It Er 74 EPROGUNAVAIL Em "RPC prog. not avail" .
425 The requested program is not registered on the remote host.
426 .It Er 75 EPROGMISMATCH Em "Program version wrong" .
427 The requested version of the program is not available
430 .It Er 76 EPROCUNAVAIL Em "Bad procedure for program" .
433 call was attempted for a procedure which does not exist
434 in the remote program.
435 .It Er 77 ENOLCK Em "No locks available" .
436 A system-imposed limit on the number of simultaneous file
438 .It Er 78 ENOSYS Em "Function not implemented" .
439 Attempted a system call that is not available on this
441 .It Er 79 EFTYPE Em "Inappropriate file type or format" .
442 The file was the wrong type for the operation, or a data file had
444 .It Er 80 EAUTH Em "Authentication error" .
445 Attempted to use an invalid authentication ticket to mount a
448 .It Er 81 ENEEDAUTH Em "Need authenticator" .
449 An authentication ticket must be obtained before the given
451 file system may be mounted.
452 .It Er 82 EIDRM Em "Identifier removed" .
453 An IPC identifier was removed while the current process was waiting on it.
454 .It Er 83 ENOMSG Em "No message of desired type" .
455 An IPC message queue does not contain a message of the desired type, or a
456 message catalog does not contain the requested message.
457 .It Er 84 EOVERFLOW Em "Value too large to be stored in data type" .
458 A numerical result of the function was too large to be stored in the caller
460 .It Er 85 ECANCELED Em "Operation canceled" .
461 The scheduled operation was canceled.
462 .It Er 86 EILSEQ Em "Illegal byte sequence" .
463 While decoding a multibyte character the function came along an
464 invalid or an incomplete sequence of bytes or the given wide
465 character is invalid.
466 .It Er 87 ENOATTR Em "Attribute not found" .
467 The specified extended attribute does not exist.
468 .It Er 88 EDOOFUS Em "Programming error" .
469 A function or API is being abused in a way which could only be detected
475 Each active process in the system is uniquely identified by a non-negative
476 integer called a process ID.
477 The range of this ID is from 0 to 99999.
478 .It Parent process ID
479 A new process is created by a currently active process (see
481 The parent process ID of a process is initially the process ID of its creator.
482 If the creating process exits,
483 the parent process ID of each child is set to the ID of a system process,
486 Each active process is a member of a process group that is identified by
487 a non-negative integer called the process group ID.
489 ID of the group leader.
490 This grouping permits the signaling of related
493 and the job control mechanisms of
496 A session is a set of one or more process groups.
497 A session is created by a successful call to
499 which causes the caller to become the only member of the only process
500 group in the new session.
502 A process that has created a new session by a successful call to
504 is known as a session leader.
505 Only a session leader may acquire a terminal as its controlling terminal (see
507 .It Controlling process
508 A session leader with a controlling terminal is a controlling process.
509 .It Controlling terminal
510 A terminal that is associated with a session is known as the controlling
511 terminal for that session and its members.
512 .It "Terminal Process Group ID"
513 A terminal may be acquired by a session leader as its controlling terminal.
514 Once a terminal is associated with a session, any of the process groups
515 within the session may be placed into the foreground by setting
516 the terminal process group ID to the ID of the process group.
517 This facility is used
518 to arbitrate between multiple jobs contending for the same terminal;
523 .It "Orphaned Process Group"
524 A process group is considered to be
526 if it is not under the control of a job control shell.
527 More precisely, a process group is orphaned
528 when none of its members has a parent process that is in the same session
530 but is in a different process group.
531 Note that when a process exits, the parent process for its children
534 which is in a separate session.
535 Not all members of an orphaned process group are necessarily orphaned
536 processes (those whose creating process has exited).
537 The process group of a session leader is orphaned by definition.
538 .It "Real User ID and Real Group ID"
539 Each user on the system is identified by a positive integer
540 termed the real user ID.
542 Each user is also a member of one or more groups.
543 One of these groups is distinguished from others and
544 used in implementing accounting facilities.
546 integer corresponding to this distinguished group is termed
549 All processes have a real user ID and real group ID.
550 These are initialized from the equivalent attributes
551 of the process that created it.
552 .It "Effective User Id, Effective Group Id, and Group Access List"
553 Access to system resources is governed by two values:
554 the effective user ID, and the group access list.
555 The first member of the group access list is also known as the
557 (In POSIX.1, the group access list is known as the set of supplementary
558 group IDs, and it is unspecified whether the effective group ID is
559 a member of the list.)
561 The effective user ID and effective group ID are initially the
562 process's real user ID and real group ID respectively.
564 may be modified through execution of a set-user-ID or set-group-ID
565 file (possibly by one its ancestors) (see
567 By convention, the effective group ID (the first member of the group access
568 list) is duplicated, so that the execution of a set-group-ID program
569 does not result in the loss of the original (real) group ID.
571 The group access list is a set of group IDs
572 used only in determining resource accessibility.
574 are performed as described below in ``File Access Permissions''.
575 .It "Saved Set User ID and Saved Set Group ID"
576 When a process executes a new file, the effective user ID is set
577 to the owner of the file if the file is set-user-ID, and the effective
578 group ID (first element of the group access list) is set to the group
579 of the file if the file is set-group-ID.
580 The effective user ID of the process is then recorded as the saved set-user-ID,
581 and the effective group ID of the process is recorded as the saved set-group-ID.
582 These values may be used to regain those values as the effective user
583 or group ID after reverting to the real ID (see
585 (In POSIX.1, the saved set-user-ID and saved set-group-ID are optional,
586 and are used in setuid and setgid, but this does not work as desired
589 A process is recognized as a
591 process and is granted special privileges if its effective user ID is 0.
593 An integer assigned by the system when a file is referenced
598 or when a socket is created by
603 which uniquely identifies an access path to that file or socket from
604 a given process or any of its children.
606 Names consisting of up to
608 characters may be used to name
609 an ordinary file, special file, or directory.
611 These characters may be arbitrary eight-bit values,
621 Note that it is generally unwise to use
628 file names because of the special meaning attached to these characters
632 .Dv NUL Ns -terminated
633 character string starting with an
636 followed by zero or more directory names separated
637 by slashes, optionally followed by a file name.
638 The total length of a path name must be less than
641 (On some systems, this limit may be infinite.)
643 If a path name begins with a slash, the path search begins at the
646 Otherwise, the search begins from the current working directory.
647 A slash by itself names the root directory.
649 pathname refers to the current directory.
651 A directory is a special type of file that contains entries
652 that are references to other files.
653 Directory entries are called links.
654 By convention, a directory
655 contains at least two links,
664 Dot refers to the directory itself and
665 dot-dot refers to its parent directory.
666 .It "Root Directory and Current Working Directory"
667 Each process has associated with it a concept of a root directory
668 and a current working directory for the purpose of resolving path
670 A process's root directory need not be the root
671 directory of the root file system.
672 .It File Access Permissions
673 Every file in the file system has a set of access permissions.
674 These permissions are used in determining whether a process
675 may perform a requested operation on the file (such as opening
677 Access permissions are established at the
678 time a file is created.
679 They may be changed at some later time
684 File access is broken down according to whether a file may be: read,
685 written, or executed.
686 Directory files use the execute
687 permission to control if the directory may be searched.
689 File access permissions are interpreted by the system as
690 they apply to three different classes of users: the owner
691 of the file, those users in the file's group, anyone else.
692 Every file has an independent set of access permissions for
693 each of these classes.
694 When an access check is made, the system
695 decides if permission should be granted by checking the access
696 information applicable to the caller.
698 Read, write, and execute/search permissions on
699 a file are granted to a process if:
701 The process's effective user ID is that of the super-user.
703 even the super-user cannot execute a non-executable file.)
705 The process's effective user ID matches the user ID of the owner
706 of the file and the owner permissions allow the access.
708 The process's effective user ID does not match the user ID of the
709 owner of the file, and either the process's effective
710 group ID matches the group ID
711 of the file, or the group ID of the file is in
712 the process's group access list,
713 and the group permissions allow the access.
715 Neither the effective user ID nor effective group ID
716 and group access list of the process
717 match the corresponding user ID and group ID of the file,
718 but the permissions for ``other users'' allow access.
720 Otherwise, permission is denied.
721 .It Sockets and Address Families
722 A socket is an endpoint for communication between processes.
723 Each socket has queues for sending and receiving data.
725 Sockets are typed according to their communications properties.
726 These properties include whether messages sent and received
727 at a socket require the name of the partner, whether communication
728 is reliable, the format used in naming message recipients, etc.
730 Each instance of the system supports some
731 collection of socket types; consult
733 for more information about the types available and
736 Each instance of the system supports some number of sets of
737 communications protocols.
738 Each protocol set supports addresses of a certain format.
739 An Address Family is the set of addresses for a specific group of protocols.
740 Each socket has an address
741 chosen from the address family in which the socket was created.