path: root/man7/socket.7

'\" t
.\" Don't change the first line, it tells man that we need tbl.
.\" This man page is Copyright (C) 1999 Andi Kleen <ak@muc.de>.
.\" and copyright (c) 1999 Matthew Wilcox. 
.\" Permission is granted to distribute possibly modified copies
.\" of this page provided the header is included verbatim,
.\" and in case of nontrivial modification author and date
.\" of the modification is added to the header.
.\"
.\" 2002-10-30, Michael Kerrisk, mtk16@ext.canterbury.ac.nz
.\"	Added description of SO_ACCEPTCONN
.\" 2004-05-20, aeb, added SO_RCVTIMEO/SO_SNDTIMEO text.
.\" Modified, 27 May 2004, Michael Kerrisk <mtk16@ext.canterbury.ac.nz>
.\"     Added notes on capability requirements
.\"	A few small grammar fixes
.\" 
.\" FIXME: probably all PF_* shouls be AF_* in this page, since
.\"        POSIX only specifies the latter values.
.\"
.TH SOCKET 7 2004-05-27 "Linux 2.6.6" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
.SH NAME
socket - Linux socket interface
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B #include <sys/socket.h>
.br
.IB mysocket " = socket(int " socket_family ", int " socket_type ", int " protocol );

.SH DESCRIPTION
This manual page describes the Linux networking socket layer user 
interface. The BSD compatible sockets
are the uniform interface
between the user process and the network protocol stacks in the kernel.
The protocol modules are grouped into 
.I protocol families
like
.BR PF_INET ", " PF_IPX ", " PF_PACKET
and
.I socket types
like
.B SOCK_STREAM
or
.BR SOCK_DGRAM .
See 
.BR socket (2)
for more information on families and types.

.SH "SOCKET LAYER FUNCTIONS"
These functions are used by the user process to send or receive packets and 
to do other socket operations. For more information see their respective
manual pages.

.BR socket (2)
creates a socket,
.BR connect (2)
connects a socket to a remote socket address,
the 
.BR bind (2)
function binds a socket to a local socket address,
.BR listen (2)
tells the socket that new connections shall be accepted, and
.BR accept (2)
is used to get a new socket with a new incoming connection.
.BR socketpair (2)
returns two connected anonymous sockets (only implemented for a few
local families like
.BR PF_UNIX )
.PP
.BR send (2),
.BR sendto (2),
and
.BR sendmsg (2)
send data over a socket, and
.BR recv (2),
.BR recvfrom (2),
.BR recvmsg (2)
receive data from a socket.
.BR poll (2)
and
.BR select (2)
wait for arriving data or a readiness to send data.
In addition, the standard I/O operations like 
.BR write (2),
.BR writev (2),
.BR sendfile (2),
.BR read (2),
and  
.BR readv (2) 
can be used to read and write data.
.PP
.BR getsockname (2)
returns the local socket address and
.BR getpeername (2)
returns the remote socket address.
.BR getsockopt (2)
and
.BR setsockopt (2)
are used to set or get socket layer or protocol options. 
.BR ioctl (2)
can be used to set or read some other options.
.PP
.BR close (2)
is used to close a socket.
.BR shutdown (2)
closes parts of a full duplex socket connection. 
.PP
Seeking, or calling 
.BR pread (2) 
or 
.BR pwrite (2)
with a non-zero position is not supported on sockets.
.PP
It is possible to do non-blocking IO on sockets by setting the 
.B O_NONBLOCK
flag on a socket file descriptor using
.BR fcntl (2).
Then all operations that would block will (usually)
return with
.B EAGAIN 
(operation should be retried later);
.BR connect (2) 
will return 
.B EINPROGRESS
error. 
The user can then wait for various events via
.BR poll (2)
or
.BR select (2). 
.PP
.TS
tab(:) allbox;
c s s
l l l.
I/O events
Event:Poll flag:Occurrence
Read:POLLIN:T{
New data arrived. 
T}
Read:POLLIN:T{
A connection setup has been completed
(for connection-oriented sockets)
T}
Read:POLLHUP:T{
A disconnection request has been initiated by the other end. 
T}
Read:POLLHUP:T{
A connection is broken (only for connection-oriented protocols). 
When the socket is written
.B SIGPIPE 
is also sent.
T}
Write:POLLOUT:T{
Socket has enough send buffer space for writing new data.
T}
Read/Write:T{
POLLIN|
.br
POLLOUT
T}:T{
An outgoing
.BR connect (2)
finished.
T}
Read/Write:POLLERR:An asynchronous error occurred.
Read/Write:POLLHUP:The other end has shut down one direction.
Exception:POLLPRI:T{
Urgent data arrived.  
.B SIGURG
is sent then.
T}
.\" XXX not true currently
.\" It is no I/O event when the connection
.\" is broken from the local end using 
.\" .BR shutdown (2)
.\" or 
.\" .BR close (2)
.\" .
.TE

.PP
An alternative to poll/select  
is to let the kernel inform the application about events
via a
.B SIGIO
signal. For that the
.B FASYNC
flag must be set on a socket file descriptor 
via
.BR fcntl (2)
and a valid signal handler for 
.B SIGIO
must be installed via 
.BR sigaction (2). 
See the
.I SIGNALS
discussion below.
.SH "SOCKET OPTIONS"
These socket options can be set by using
.BR setsockopt (2)
and read with 
.BR getsockopt (2)
with the socket level set to 
.B SOL_SOCKET 
for all sockets:
.TP
.B SO_KEEPALIVE
Enable sending of keep-alive messages on connection-oriented sockets. Expects
an integer boolean flag. 
.TP
.B SO_OOBINLINE
If this option is enabled, out-of-band data is directly placed into the receive
data stream. Otherwise out-of-band data is only passed when the 
.B MSG_OOB 
flag is set during receiving. 
.\" don't document it because it can do too much harm.
.\".B SO_NO_CHECK
.TP
.BR SO_RCVLOWAT " and " SO_SNDLOWAT
Specify the minimum number of bytes in the buffer until the socket layer
will pass the data to the protocol 
.RB ( SO_SNDLOWAT ) 
or the user on receiving 
.RB ( SO_RCVLOWAT ).
These two values are not changeable in Linux and their argument size
is always fixed
to 1 byte. 
.B getsockopt 
is able to read them; 
.B setsockopt 
will always return
.BR ENOPROTOOPT .  
.TP
.BR SO_RCVTIMEO " and " SO_SNDTIMEO
.\" Not implemented in 2.0.
.\" Implemented in 2.1.11 for getsockopt: always return a zero struct.
.\" Implemented in 2.3.41 for setsockopt, and actually used.
Specify the receiving or sending timeouts until reporting an error.
The parameter is a struct timeval.
If an input or output function blocks for this period of time, and
data has been sent or received, the return value of that function
will be the amount of data transferred; if no data has been transferred
and the timeout has been reached then -1 is returned with
.I errno
set to EAGAIN or EWOULDBLOCK
.\" in fact to EAGAIN
just as if the socket was specified to be nonblocking.
If the timeout is set to zero (the default)
then the operation will never timeout.
.TP
.B SO_BSDCOMPAT
Enable BSD bug-to-bug compatibility. This is used only by the UDP
protocol module and scheduled to be removed in future.  
If enabled ICMP errors received for a UDP socket will not be passed
to the user program. Linux 2.0 also enabled BSD bug-to-bug compatibility 
options (random header changing, skipping of the broadcast flag) for raw
sockets with this option, but that has been removed in Linux 2.2. It is
better to fix the user programs than to enable this flag.
.TP
.B SO_PASSCRED
Enable or disable the receiving of the
.B SCM_CREDENTIALS
control message. For more information see 
.BR unix (7). 
.TP
.B SO_PEERCRED
Return the credentials of the foreign process connected to this socket. 
Only useful for 
.B PF_UNIX 
sockets; see 
.BR unix (7). 
Argument is a
.B ucred 
structure. Only valid as a 
.BR getsockopt .
.TP
.B SO_BINDTODEVICE
Bind this socket to a particular device like \(lqeth0\(rq,
as specified in the passed interface name. If the
name is an empty string or the option length is zero, the socket device
binding is removed. The passed option is a variable-length null terminated
interface name string with the maximum size of 
.BR IFNAMSIZ .
If a socket is bound to an interface,
only packets received from that particular interface are processed by the 
socket. Note that this only works for some socket types, particularly
.B AF_INET
sockets. It is not supported for packet sockets (use normal 
.BR bind (8)
there).
.TP
.B SO_DEBUG 
Enable socket debugging. Only allowed for processes with the
.B CAP_NET_ADMIN
capability or an effective user id of 0.
.TP
.B SO_REUSEADDR
Indicates that the rules used in validating addresses supplied in a 
.BR bind (2) 
call should allow reuse of local addresses. For
.B PF_INET
sockets this
means that a socket may bind, except when there
is an active listening socket bound to the address.
When the listening socket is bound to
.B INADDR_ANY
with a specific port then it is not possible
to bind to this port for any local address.
.TP
.B SO_TYPE
Gets the socket type as an integer (like 
.BR SOCK_STREAM ). 
Can only be read
with 
.BR getsockopt . 
.\" SO_ACCEPTCONN is in SUSv3, and its origin is explained in 
.\" W R Stevens, UNPv1
.TP
.B SO_ACCEPTCONN
Returns a value indicating whether or not this socket has been marked
to accept connections with
.BR listen ().
The value 0 indicates that this is not a listening socket,
the value 1 indicates that this is a listening socket.
Can only be read
with 
.BR getsockopt . 
.TP
.B SO_DONTROUTE
Don't send via a gateway, only send to directly connected hosts.
The same effect can be achieved by setting the 
.B MSG_DONTROUTE
flag on a socket 
.BR send (2)
operation. Expects an integer boolean flag. 
.TP
.B SO_BROADCAST
Set or get the broadcast flag. When enabled, datagram sockets
receive packets sent to a broadcast address and they are allowed to send 
packets to a broadcast address.
This option has no effect on stream-oriented sockets.
.TP
.B SO_SNDBUF 
Sets or gets the maximum socket send buffer in bytes.  The default value is set
by the 
.B wmem_default 
sysctl and the maximum allowed value is set by the 
.B wmem_max
sysctl.   
.TP
.B SO_RCVBUF
Sets or gets the maximum socket receive buffer in bytes. The default value is
set by the 
.B rmem_default 
sysctl and the maximum allowed value is set by the 
.B rmem_max
sysctl.   
.TP
.B SO_LINGER
Sets or gets the 
.B SO_LINGER 
option. The argument is a 
.B linger 
structure.
.PP
.RS
.nf
.ta 4n 10n 22n
struct linger {
	int	l_onoff;	/* linger active */
	int	l_linger;	/* how many seconds to linger for */
};
.ta
.fi
.RE
.IP
When enabled, a 
.BR close (2)
or
.BR shutdown (2)
will not return until all queued messages for the socket have been
successfully sent or the linger timeout has been reached. Otherwise,
the call returns immediately and the closing is done in the background.
When the socket is closed as part of
.BR exit (2),
it always lingers in the background.
.TP
.B SO_PRIORITY
Set the protocol-defined priority for all packets to be sent on this socket.
Linux uses this value to order the networking queues: packets with a higher
priority may be processed first depending on the selected device queueing 
discipline. For
.BR ip (7),
this also sets the IP type-of-service (TOS) field for outgoing packets.  
Setting a priority outside the range 0 to 6 requires the
.B CAP_NET_ADMIN
capability.
.TP
.B SO_ERROR
Get and clear the pending socket error. Only valid as a 
.BR getsockopt .
Expects an integer. 
.SH SIGNALS
When writing onto a connection-oriented socket that has been shut down
(by the local or the remote end) 
.B SIGPIPE
is sent to the writing process and 
.B EPIPE
is returned. 
The signal is not sent when the write call
specified the
.B MSG_NOSIGNAL 
flag.
.PP
When requested with the 
.B FIOSETOWN 
fcntl or 
.B SIOCSPGRP 
ioctl,
.B SIGIO 
is sent when an I/O event occurs. It is possible to use
.BR poll (2)
or 
.BR select (2)
in the signal handler to find out which socket the event occurred on.
An alternative (in Linux 2.2) is to set a realtime signal using the
.B F_SETSIG
fcntl; the handler of the real time signal will be called with
the file descriptor in the
.I si_fd
field of its 
.IR siginfo_t .
See 
.BR fcntl (2)
for more information.
.PP
Under some circumstances (e.g. multiple processes accessing a single socket),
the condition that caused the
.B SIGIO
may have already disappeared when the process reacts to the signal.
If this happens, the process should wait again because Linux will resend the
signal later.
.\" .SH ANCILLARY MESSAGES
.SH SYSCTLS
The core socket networking sysctls can be accessed using the 
.B /proc/sys/net/core/* 
files or with the 
.BR sysctl (2) 
interface. 
.TP
.B rmem_default
contains the default setting in bytes of the socket receive buffer.
.TP
.B rmem_max
contains the maximum socket receive buffer size in bytes which a user may
set by using the 
.B SO_RCVBUF
socket option. 
.TP
.B wmem_default
contains the default setting in bytes of the socket send buffer.
.TP
.B wmem_max
contains the maximum socket send buffer size in bytes which a user may
set by using the 
.B SO_SNDBUF
socket option. 
.TP
.BR message_cost " and " message_burst 
configure the token bucket filter used to load limit warning messages
caused by external network events.
.TP
.B netdev_max_backlog 
Maximum number of packets in the global input queue.
.TP
.B optmem_max
Maximum length of ancillary data and user control data like the iovecs 
per socket.  
.\" netdev_fastroute is not documented because it is experimental
.SH IOCTLS
These ioctls can be accessed using 
.BR ioctl (2):

.RS
.nf
.IB error " = ioctl(" ip_socket ", " ioctl_type ", " &value_result ");"
.fi
.RE

.TP
.B SIOCGSTAMP
Return a 
.B struct timeval 
with the receive timestamp of the last packet passed to the user. This is useful
for accurate round trip time measurements. See 
.BR setitimer (2) 
for a description of 
.BR "struct timeval" .
.\"
.TP
.BR SIOCSPGRP
Set the process or process group to send 
.B SIGIO
or 
.B SIGURG
signals 
to when an
asynchronous I/O operation has finished or urgent data is available.
The argument is a pointer to a 
.BR pid_t . 
If the argument is positive, send the signals to that process.  If the
argument is negative, send the signals to the process group with the id
of the absolute value of the argument.
The process may only choose itself or its own process group to receive
signals unless it has the
.B CAP_KILL
capability or an effective UID of 0.
.TP
.B FIOASYNC
Change the
.B O_ASYNC
flag to enable or disable asynchronous IO mode of the socket. Asynchronous IO
mode means that the
.B SIGIO 
signal or the signal set with 
.B F_SETSIG
is raised when a new I/O event occurs.
.IP
Argument is an integer boolean flag. 
.\"
.TP
.BR SIOCGPGRP
Get the current process or process group that receives
.B SIGIO 
or 
.B SIGURG
signals, 
or 0
when none is set.  
.PP
Valid fcntls:
.TP
.BR FIOGETOWN 
The same as the SIOCGPGRP ioctl.
.TP
.BR FIOSETOWN
The same as the SIOCSPGRP ioctl
.SH NOTES
Linux assumes that half of the send/receive buffer is used for internal
kernel structures; thus the sysctls are twice what can be observed
on the wire.

Linux will only allow port re-use with the SO_REUSEADDR option
when this option was set both in the previous program that performed
a bind() to the port and in the program that wants to re-use the port.
This differs from some implementations (e.g., FreeBSD)
where only the later program needs to set the SO_REUSEADDR option.
Typically this difference is invisible, since, for example, a server
program is designed to always set this option.
.SH BUGS
The 
.B CONFIG_FILTER 
socket options 
.B SO_ATTACH_FILTER 
and 
.B SO_DETACH_FILTER 
are 
not documented. The suggested interface to use them is via the libpcap
library.
.SH VERSIONS
.B SO_BINDTODEVICE 
was introduced in Linux 2.0.30. 
.B SO_PASSCRED 
is new in Linux 2.2.
The sysctls are new in Linux 2.2.
.B SO_RCVTIMEO
and
.B SO_SNDTIMEO
are supported since Linux 2.3.41. Earlier, timeouts were fixed to
a protocol specific setting, and could not be read or written.
.\" .SH AUTHORS
.\" This man page was written by Andi Kleen.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR getsockopt (2),
.BR setsockopt (2),
.BR socket (2),
.BR capabilities (7),
.BR ddp (7),
.BR ip (7),
.BR packet (7)