INTRO(2)

NAME
intro - introduction to system calls and error numbers

SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/errno.h>

DESCRIPTION
This section describes all of the system calls. Most of these calls have one or more error returns. An error condition is indicated by an otherwise impossible return value. This is almost always -1; the individual descriptions specify the details. Note that a number of system calls overload the meanings of these error numbers, and that the meanings must be interpreted according to the type and circumstances of the call.

As with normal arguments, all return codes and values from functions are of type integer unless otherwise noted. An error number is also made available in the external variable errno, which is not cleared on successful calls. Thus errno should be tested only after an error has occurred.

The following is a complete list of the errors and their names as given in <sys/errno.h>. Unused. Typically this error indicates an attempt to modify a file in some way forbidden except to its owner or super-user. It is also returned for attempts by ordinary users to do things allowed only to the super-user. This error occurs when a file name is specified and the file should exist but doesn't, or when one of the directories in a path name does not exist. The process or process group whose number was given does not exist, or any such process is already dead. An asynchronous signal (such as interrupt or quit) that the user has elected to catch occurred during a system call. If execution is resumed after processing the signal and the system call is not restarted, it will appear as if the interrupted system call returned this error condition. Some physical I/O error occurred during a read or write. This error may in some cases occur on a call following the one to which it actually applies. I/O on a special file refers to a subdevice that does not exist, or beyond the limits of the device. It may also occur when, for example, an illegal tape drive unit number is selected or a disk pack is not loaded on a drive. An argument list longer than 20480 bytes (or the current limit, NCARGS in <sys/param.h>) is presented to execve. A request is made to execute a file that, although it has the appropriate permissions, does not start with a valid magic number, (see a.out(5)). Either a file descriptor refers to no open file, or a read (resp. write) request is made to a file that is open only for writing (resp. reading). Wait and the process has no living or unwaited-for children. In a fork, the system's process table is full or the user is not allowed to create any more processes. During an execve or break, a program asks for more core or swap space than the system is able to supply, or a process size limit would be exceeded. A lack of swap space is normally a temporary condition; however, a lack of core is not a temporary condition; the maximum size of the text, data, and stack segments is a system parameter. Soft limits may be increased to their corresponding hard limits. An attempt was made to access a file in a way forbidden by the protection system. The system encountered a hardware fault in attempting to access the arguments of a system call. A plain file was mentioned where a block device was required, e.g., in mount. An attempt to mount a device that was already mounted or an attempt was made to dismount a device on which there is an active file (open file, current directory, mounted-on file, or active text segment). A request was made to an exclusive access device that was already in use. An existing file was mentioned in an inappropriate context, e.g., link. A hard link to a file on another device was attempted. An attempt was made to apply an inappropriate system call to a device, e.g., to read a write-only device, or the device is not configured by the system. A non-directory was specified where a directory is required, for example, in a path name or as an argument to chdir. An attempt to write on a directory. Some invalid argument: dismounting a non-mounted device, mentioning an unknown signal in signal, or some other argument inappropriate for the call. Also set by math functions, (see math(3)). The system's table of open files is full, and temporarily no more opens can be accepted. As released, the limit on the number of open files per process is 64. Getdtablesize(2) will obtain the current limit. Customary configuration limit on most other UNIX systems is 20 per process. The file mentioned in an ioctl is not a terminal or one of the devices to which this call applies. An attempt to execute a pure-procedure program that is currently open for writing. Also an attempt to open for writing a pure-procedure program that is being executed. The size of a file exceeded the maximum (about 2.1E9 bytes). A write to an ordinary file, the creation of a directory or symbolic link, or the creation of a directory entry failed because no more disk blocks are available on the file system, or the allocation of an inode for a newly created file failed because no more inodes are available on the file system. An lseek was issued to a socket or pipe. This error may also be issued for other non-seekable devices. An attempt to modify a file or directory was made on a device mounted read-only. An attempt to make more than 32767 hard links to a file. A write on a pipe or socket for which there is no process to read the data. This condition normally generates a signal; the error is returned if the signal is caught or ignored. The argument of a function in the math package (3M) is out of the domain of the function. The value of a function in the math package (3M) is unrepresentable within machine precision. An operation that would cause a process to block was attempted on an object in non-blocking mode (see fcntl(2)). An operation that takes a long time to complete (such as a connect(2)) was attempted on a non-blocking object (see fcntl(2)). An operation was attempted on a non-blocking object that already had an operation in progress. Self-explanatory. A required address was omitted from an operation on a socket. A message sent on a socket was larger than the internal message buffer or some other network limit. A protocol was specified that does not support the semantics of the socket type requested. For example, you cannot use the ARPA Internet UDP protocol with type SOCK_STREAM. A bad option or level was specified in a getsockopt(2) or setsockopt(2) call. The protocol has not been configured into the system or no implementation for it exists. The support for the socket type has not been configured into the system or no implementation for it exists. For example, trying to accept a connection on a datagram socket. The protocol family has not been configured into the system or no implementation for it exists. An address incompatible with the requested protocol was used. For example, you shouldn't necessarily expect to be able to use NS addresses with ARPA Internet protocols. Only one usage of each address is normally permitted. Normally results from an attempt to create a socket with an address not on this machine. A socket operation encountered a dead network. A socket operation was attempted to an unreachable network. The host you were connected to crashed and rebooted. A connection abort was caused internal to your host machine. A connection was forcibly closed by a peer. This normally results from a loss of the connection on the remote socket due to a timeout or a reboot. An operation on a socket or pipe was not performed because the system lacked sufficient buffer space or because a queue was full. A connect request was made on an already connected socket; or, a sendto or sendmsg request on a connected socket specified a destination when already connected. An request to send or receive data was disallowed because the socket is not connected and (when sending on a datagram socket) no address was supplied. A request to send data was disallowed because the socket had already been shut down with a previous shutdown(2) call. A connect or send request failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time. (The timeout period is dependent on the communication protocol.) No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it. This usually results from trying to connect to a service that is inactive on the foreign host. A path name lookup involved more than 8 symbolic links. A component of a path name exceeded 255 (MAXNAMELEN) characters, or an entire path name exceeded 1023 (MAXPATHLEN-1) characters. A socket operation failed because the destination host was down. A socket operation was attempted to an unreachable host. A directory with entries other than “.” and “..” was supplied to a remove directory or rename call. A write to an ordinary file, the creation of a directory or symbolic link, or the creation of a directory entry failed because the user's quota of disk blocks was exhausted, or the allocation of an inode for a newly created file failed because the user's quota of inodes was exhausted. A client referenced a an open file, when the file has been deleted. An attempt was made to remotely mount a file system into a path which already has a remotely mounted component. A request for a file lock would have caused a deadlock; the situation was detected and the lock call aborted. There are no more locks available. The system lock table is full. An attempt was made to receive a message of a type that does not exist on the specified message queue; see msgop(2). This error is returned to processes that resume execution due to the removal of an identifier from the IPC system's name space (see msgctl(2), semctl(2), and shmctl(2)). The filename of a shared library holds a copy of the version information stored within it. This error is generated if the two differ. The process does not have permission to use the shared library referenced by the file it is trying to exec (possibly the execute permission). The system imposes a (configurable) limit on the maximum nesting of shared libraries. As released this limit is 4. The shared library required to exec an image cannot be found. A shared library does not have the correct format.

DEFINITIONS

Process ID
    Each active process in the system is uniquely identified by a positive integer called a process ID. The range of this ID is from 0 to 30000.

Parent process ID
    A new process is created by a currently active process; (see fork(2)). The parent process ID of a process is the process ID of its creator.

Process Group ID
    Each active process is a member of a process group that is identified by a positive integer called the process group ID. This is the process ID of the group leader. This grouping permits the signaling of related processes (see killpg(2)) and the job control mechanisms of csh(1).

Tty Group ID
    Each active process can be a member of a terminal group that is identified by a positive integer called the tty group ID. This grouping is used to arbitrate between multiple jobs contending for the same terminal; (see csh(1) and tty(4)).

Real User ID and Real Group ID
    Each user on the system is identified by a positive integer termed the real user ID.

    Each user is also a member of one or more groups. One of these groups is distinguished from others and used in implementing accounting facilities. The positive integer corresponding to this distinguished group is termed the real group ID.

    All processes have a real user ID and real group ID. These are initialized from the equivalent attributes of the process that created it.

Effective User Id, Effective Group Id, and Access Groups
    Access to system resources is governed by three values: the effective user ID, the effective group ID, and the group access list.

    The effective user ID and effective group ID are initially the process's real user ID and real group ID respectively. Either may be modified through execution of a set-user-ID or set-group-ID file (possibly by one its ancestors) (see execve(2)).

    The group access list is an additional set of group ID's used only in determining resource accessibility. Access checks are performed as described below in ``File Access Permissions''.

Super-user
    A process is recognized as a super-user process and is granted special privileges if its effective user ID is 0.

Special Processes
    The processes with a process ID's of 0, 1, and 2 are special. Process 0 is the scheduler. Process 1 is the initialization process init, and is the ancestor of every other process in the system. It is used to control the process structure. Process 2 is the paging daemon.

Descriptor
    An integer assigned by the system when a file is referenced by open(2) or dup(2), or when a socket is created by pipe(2), socket(2) or socketpair(2), which uniquely identifies an access path to that file or socket from a given process or any of its children.

File Name
    Names consisting of up to 255 (MAXNAMELEN) characters may be used to name an ordinary file, special file, or directory.

    These characters may be selected from the set of all ASCII character excluding 0 (null) and the ASCII code for / (slash). (The parity bit, bit 8, must be 0.)

    Note that it is generally unwise to use *, ?, [ or ] as part of file names because of the special meaning attached to these characters by the shell.

Path Name
    A path name is a null-terminated character string starting with an optional slash (/), followed by zero or more directory names separated by slashes, optionally followed by a file name. The total length of a path name must be less than 1024 (MAXPATHLEN) characters.

    If a path name begins with a slash, the path search begins at the root directory. Otherwise, the search begins from the current working directory. A slash by itself names the root directory. A null pathname refers to the current directory.

Directory
    A directory is a special type of file that contains entries that are references to other files. Directory entries are called links. By convention, a directory contains at least two links, . and .., referred to as dot and dot-dot respectively. Dot refers to the directory itself and dot-dot refers to its parent directory.

Root Directory and Current Working Directory
    Each process has associated with it a concept of a root directory and a current working directory for the purpose of resolving path name searches. A process's root directory need not be the root directory of the root file system.

File Access Permissions
    Every file in the file system has a set of access permissions. These permissions are used in determining whether a process may perform a requested operation on the file (such as opening a file for writing). Access permissions are established at the time a file is created. They may be changed at some later time through the chmod(2) call.

    File access is broken down according to whether a file may be: read, written, or executed. Directory files use the execute permission to control if the directory may be searched.

    File access permissions are interpreted by the system as they apply to three different classes of users: the owner of the file, those users in the file's group, anyone else. Every file has an independent set of access permissions for each of these classes. When an access check is made, the system decides if permission should be granted by checking the access information applicable to the caller.

    Read, write, and execute/search permissions on a file are granted to a process if:

    The process's effective user ID is that of the super-user.

    The process's effective user ID matches the user ID of the owner of the file and the owner permissions allow the access.

    The process's effective user ID does not match the user ID of the owner of the file, and either the process's effective group ID matches the group ID of the file, or the group ID of the file is in the process's group access list, and the group permissions allow the access.

    Neither the effective user ID nor effective group ID and group access list of the process match the corresponding user ID and group ID of the file, but the permissions for ``other users'' allow access.

    Otherwise, permission is denied.

Sockets and Address Families

    A socket is an endpoint for communication between processes. Each socket has queues for sending and receiving data.

    Sockets are typed according to their communications properties. These properties include whether messages sent and received at a socket require the name of the partner, whether communication is reliable, the format used in naming message recipients, etc.

    Each instance of the system supports some collection of socket types; consult socket(2) for more information about the types available and their properties.

    Each instance of the system supports some number of sets of communications protocols. Each protocol set supports addresses of a certain format. An Address Family is the set of addresses for a specific group of protocols. Each socket has an address chosen from the address family in which the socket was created.

SEE ALSO
intro(3), perror(3)