INTRO(2)

NAME
intro, errno - introduction to system calls and error numbers

SYNOPSIS
#include <errno.h>

DESCRIPTION
This section provides an overview of the system calls, their error returns, and other common definitions and concepts.

DIAGNOSTICS
Nearly all of the system calls provide an error number in the external variable errno.

When a system call detects an error, it returns an integer value indicating failure (usually -1) and sets the variable errno accordingly. (This allows interpretation of the failure on receiving a -1 and to take action accordingly.) Successful calls never set errno; once set, it remains until another error occurs. It should only be examined after an error has been reported, because otherwise a leftover value from some previous error may be found instead. ( Many library functions that are not system calls also set errno on return, in the same fashion. In these cases a nonzero value may be left in errno even upon successful return if some internal action failed.)

The manual page for each system call will list some of the common errno codes that system call can return, but that should not be considered an exhaustive list, i.e. a properly written program should be able to gracefully recover from any error that a system call might return. Documenting all the error codes that a system call can return in a more specification-like manner would take more resources than this project has available.

Note also that a number of system calls overload the meanings of these error numbers, and that in these cases the meanings must be interpreted according to the type and circumstances of the call.

The following is a list of the errors and their names as given in <errno.h>.

0 OK Error 0.
    Not used. (The symbol "OK" is only used inside the kernel source.)

1 EPERM Operation not permitted.
    An attempt was made to perform an operation limited to processes with appropriate privileges or to the owner of a file or other resources.

2 ENOENT No such file or directory.
    A component of a specified pathname did not exist, or the pathname was an empty string.

3 ESRCH No such process.
    No process could be found corresponding to that specified by the given process ID. It Er 4 EINTR Em "Interrupted function call" . An asynchronous signal (such as SIGINT or SIGQUIT) was caught by the process during the execution of an interruptible function. If the signal handler performs a normal return, the interrupted function call will seem to have returned the error condition.

5 EIO Input/output error.
    Some physical input or output error occurred. This error will not be reported until a subsequent operation on the same file descriptor and may be lost (over written) by any subsequent errors.

6 ENXIO Device not configured.
    Input or output on a special file referred to a device that did not exist, or made a request beyond the limits of the device. This error may also occur when, for example, a tape drive is not online or no disk pack is loaded on a drive.

7 E2BIG Arg list too long.
    The number of bytes used for the argument and environment list of the new process exceeded the current limit of 262144 bytes (ARG_MAX in <limits.h>).

8 ENOEXEC Exec format error.
    A request was made to execute a file that, although it has the appropriate permissions, was not in the format required for an executable file.

9 EBADF Bad file descriptor.
    A file descriptor argument was out of range, referred to no open file, or a read(2) (or write(2)) request was made to a file that was only open for writing (or reading).

10 ECHILD No child processes.
    A wait(2) or waitpid(2) function was executed by a process that had no existing or unwaited-for child processes.

11 EAGAIN Resource temporarily unavailable.
    This is a temporary condition and later calls to the same routine may complete normally.

12 ENOMEM Cannot allocate memory.
    The new process image required more memory than was allowed by the hardware or by system-imposed memory management constraints. Soft limits may be increased to their corresponding hard limits.

13 EACCES Permission denied.
    An attempt was made to access a file in a way forbidden by its file access permissions.

14 EFAULT Bad address.
    The system detected an invalid address in attempting to use an argument of a call. The reliable detection of this error cannot be guaranteed and when not detected may result in the generation of a signal, indicating an address violation, which is sent to the process.

15 ENOTBLK Block device required.
    A block device operation was attempted on a non-block device or file.

16 EBUSY Resource busy.
    An attempt to use a system resource which was in use at the time in a manner which would have conflicted with the request.

17 EEXIST File exists.
    An existing file was mentioned in an inappropriate context, for instance, as the new link name in a link(2) function.

18 EXDEV Improper link.
    A hard link to a file on another file system was attempted.

19 ENODEV Operation not supported by device.
    An attempt was made to apply an inappropriate function to a device, for example, trying to read a write-only device such as a printer.

20 ENOTDIR Not a directory.
    A component of the specified pathname existed, but it was not a directory, when a directory was expected.

21 EISDIR Is a directory.
    An attempt was made to open a directory with write mode specified.

22 EINVAL Invalid argument.
    Some invalid argument was supplied. (For example, specifying an undefined signal to a signal(3) or kill(2) function).

23 ENFILE Too many open files in system.
    Maximum number of file descriptors allowable on the system has been reached and a requests for an open cannot be satisfied until at least one has been closed.

24 EMFILE Too many open files.
    As released, the limit on the number of open files per process is 64. The getrlimit(2) call with the RLIMIT_NOFILE resource will obtain the current limit.

25 ENOTTY Inappropriate ioctl for device.
    A control function (see ioctl(2)) was attempted for a file or special device for which the operation was inappropriate. Attempt to execute a program that is open for writing. Obsolete under MINIX 3.

27 EFBIG File too large.
    The size of a file exceeded the maximum. (The system-wide maximum file size is 2147483648 (2GB) bytes. Each file system may impose a lower limit for files contained within it).

28 ENOSPC Device out of space.
    A write(2) 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 were available on the file system, or the allocation of an inode for a newly created file failed because no more inodes were available on the file system.

29 ESPIPE Illegal seek.
    An lseek(2) function was issued on a socket, pipe or FIFO.

30 EROFS Read-only file system.
    An attempt was made to modify a file or directory was made on a file system that was read-only at the time.

31 EMLINK Too many links.
    The number of hard links to a single file has exceeded the maximum. (The system-wide maximum number of hard links is 32767. Each file system may impose a lower limit for files contained within it).

32 EPIPE Broken pipe.
    A write on a pipe, socket or FIFO for which there is no process to read the data.

33 EDOM Numerical argument out of domain.
    A numerical input argument was outside the defined domain of the mathematical function.

34 ERANGE Result too large or too small.
    The result of the function is too large or too small to be represented in the available space.

35 EDEADLK Resource deadlock avoided.
    An attempt was made to lock a system resource that would have resulted in a deadlock situation.

36 ENAMETOOLONG File name too long.
    A component of a path name exceeded (NAME_MAX) characters, or an entire path name exceeded 255 (PATH_MAX) characters.

37 ENOLCK No locks available.
    A system-imposed limit on the number of simultaneous file locks was reached.

38 ENOSYS Function not implemented.
    Attempted a system call that is not available on this system.

39 ENOTEMPTY Directory not empty.
    A directory with entries other than ‘’. and ‘..’ was supplied to a remove directory or rename call.

40 ELOOP Too many levels of symbolic links.
    A path name lookup involved more than 16 (SYMLOOP_MAX) symbolic links.

41 ERESTART Service restarted.

43 ERESTART Identifier removed.
    An IPC identifier was removed while the current process was waiting on it.

44 EILSEQ Illegal byte sequence.
    A wide character/multibyte character encoding error occurred.

45 EFTYPE Inappropriate file type or format.
    Attempted a file operation on a file of a type for which it was invalid.

46 EOVERFLOW Value too large to be stored in data type.
    A numerical result of the function was too large to be stored in the caller-provided space.

50 EPACKSIZE Invalid packet size.

51 ENOBUFS No buffer space available.
    An operation on a socket or pipe was not performed because the system lacked sufficient buffer space or because a queue was full.

53 EBADMODE Bad mode in ioctl.

54 EWOULDBLOCK Would block.

55 ENETUNREACH Network is unreachable.
    A socket operation was attempted to an unreachable network.

56 EHOSTUNREACH No route to host.
    A socket operation was attempted to an unreachable host.

57 EISCONN Socket is already connected.
    A connect(2) request was made on an already connected socket; or, a sendto(2) or sendmsg(2) request on a connected socket specified a destination when already connected.

58 EADDRINUSE Address already in use.
    Only one usage of each address is normally permitted.

59 ECONNREFUSED Connection refused.
    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.

60 ECONNRESET Connection reset by peer.
    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.

61 ETIMEDOUT Operation timed out.
    A connect(2) or send(2) request failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time. (The timeout period is dependent on the communication protocol).

62 EURG Urgent data present.

63 ENOURG No urgent data present.

64 ENOTCONN Socket is not connected.
    An request to send or receive data was disallowed because the socket was not connected and (when sending on a datagram socket) no address was supplied.

65 ESHUTDOWN Cannot send after socket shutdown.
    A request to send data was disallowed because the socket had already been shut down with a previous shutdown(2) call.

66 ENOCONN No such connection.

67 EAFNOSUPPORT Address family not supported by protocol family.
    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.

68 EPROTONOSUPPORT Protocol not supported.
    The protocol has not been configured into the system or no implementation for it exists.

69 EPROTOTYPE Protocol wrong type for socket.
    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.

70 EINPROGRESS Operation now in progress.
    An operation that takes a long time to complete (such as a connect(2)) was attempted on a non-blocking object (see fcntl(2)).

71 EADDRNOTAVAIL Cannot assign requested address.
    Normally results from an attempt to create a socket with an address not on this machine.

72 EALREADY Operation already in progress.
    An operation was attempted on a non-blocking object that already had an operation in progress.

73 EMSGSIZE Message too long.
    A message sent on a socket was larger than the internal message buffer or some other network limit.

74 ENOTSOCK Socket operation on non-socket.
    Self-explanatory.

75 ENOPROTOOPT Protocol option not available.
    A bad option or level was specified in a getsockopt(2) or setsockopt(2) call.

76 EOPNOTSUPP Operation not supported (has alias ENOTSUP).
    The attempted operation is not supported for the type of object referenced. Usually this occurs when a file descriptor refers to a file or socket that cannot support this operation, for example, trying to accept a connection on a datagram socket.

77 ENETDOWN Network is down.
    A socket operation encountered a dead network.

78 EPFNOSUPPORT Protocol family not supported.
    A socket operation specified an unsupported protocol family.

79 EDESTADDRREQ Destination address required.
    A required address was omitted from an operation on a socket.

80 EHOSTDOWN Host is down.
    The destination host has been determined to be down or disconnected.

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 1 to 29999.

Parent process ID
    A new process is created by a currently active process; (see fork(2)). The parent process ID of a process is initially the process ID of its creator. If the creating process exits, the parent process ID of each child is set to the ID of init, init(8).

Process Group
    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 termios(4) ).

Session
    A session is a set of one or more process groups. A session is created by a successful call to setsid(2), which causes the caller to become the only member of the only process group in the new session.

Session leader
    A process that has created a new session by a successful call to setsid(2), is known as a session leader. Only a session leader may acquire a terminal as its controlling terminal (see termios(4)).

Controlling process
    A session leader with a controlling terminal is a controlling process.

Controlling terminal
    A terminal that is associated with a session is known as the controlling terminal for that session and its members.

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 Group Access List
    Access to system resources is governed by two values: the effective user ID and the group access list. (In POSIX.1, the group access list is known as the set of supplementary group IDs, and it is unspecified whether the effective group ID is a member of the 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

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

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 60 (NAME_MAX) 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 (NUL) and the ASCII code for ‘/’ (slash). (The parity bit, bit 7, 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.

Pathname
    A path name is a NUL-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 255 (PATH_MAX) 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. An empty string is not a valid pathname.

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. (Note: even the super-user cannot execute a non-executable file).

    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)