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SOCKET(7)                             Linux Programmer's Manual                            SOCKET(7)



NAME
       socket - Linux socket interface

SYNOPSIS
       #include <sys/socket.h>

       sockfd = socket(int socket_family, int socket_type, int protocol);

DESCRIPTION
       This manual page describes the Linux networking socket layer user interface.  The BSD compat‐
       ible sockets are the uniform interface between the user  process  and  the  network  protocol
       stacks  in  the  kernel.   The  protocol  modules  are grouped into protocol families such as
       AF_INET, AF_IPX, and AF_PACKET, and socket types such  as  SOCK_STREAM  or  SOCK_DGRAM.   See
       socket(2) for more information on families and types.

   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.

       socket(2) creates a socket, connect(2) connects a socket to  a  remote  socket  address,  the
       bind(2)  function  binds  a socket to a local socket address, listen(2) tells the socket that
       new connections shall be accepted, and accept(2) is used to get a new socket with a  new  in‐
       coming  connection.   socketpair(2) returns two connected anonymous sockets (implemented only
       for a few local families like AF_UNIX)

       send(2), sendto(2), and sendmsg(2)  send  data  over  a  socket,  and  recv(2),  recvfrom(2),
       recvmsg(2)  receive  data  from  a socket.  poll(2) and select(2) wait for arriving data or a
       readiness to send data.  In addition, the standard I/O operations like  write(2),  writev(2),
       sendfile(2), read(2), and readv(2) can be used to read and write data.

       getsockname(2)  returns the local socket address and getpeername(2) returns the remote socket
       address.  getsockopt(2) and setsockopt(2) are used to set or get socket layer or protocol op‐
       tions.  ioctl(2) can be used to set or read some other options.

       close(2) is used to close a socket.  shutdown(2) closes parts of a full-duplex socket connec‐
       tion.

       Seeking, or calling pread(2) or pwrite(2) with a nonzero position is not supported  on  sock‐
       ets.

       It  is  possible  to do nonblocking I/O on sockets by setting the O_NONBLOCK flag on a socket
       file descriptor using fcntl(2).  Then all operations that would block will  (usually)  return
       with  EAGAIN  (operation  should be retried later); connect(2) will return EINPROGRESS error.
       The user can then wait for various events via poll(2) or select(2).

       ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
       │                            I/O events                              │
       ├───────────┬───────────┬────────────────────────────────────────────┤
       │Event      │ Poll flag │ Occurrence                                 │
       ├───────────┼───────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────┤
       │Read       │ POLLIN    │ New data arrived.                          │
       ├───────────┼───────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────┤
       │Read       │ POLLIN    │ A connection setup has been completed (for │
       │           │           │ connection-oriented sockets)               │
       ├───────────┼───────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────┤
       │Read       │ POLLHUP   │ A disconnection request has been initiated │
       │           │           │ by the other end.                          │
       ├───────────┼───────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────┤
       │Read       │ POLLHUP   │ A connection is broken (only  for  connec‐ │
       │           │           │ tion-oriented protocols).  When the socket │
       │           │           │ is written SIGPIPE is also sent.           │
       ├───────────┼───────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────┤
       │Write      │ POLLOUT   │ Socket has enough send  buffer  space  for │
       │           │           │ writing new data.                          │
       ├───────────┼───────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────┤
       │Read/Write │ POLLIN |  │ An outgoing connect(2) finished.           │
       │           │ POLLOUT   │                                            │
       ├───────────┼───────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────┤
       │Read/Write │ POLLERR   │ An asynchronous error occurred.            │
       ├───────────┼───────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────┤
       │Read/Write │ POLLHUP   │ The other end has shut down one direction. │
       ├───────────┼───────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────┤
       │Exception  │ POLLPRI   │ Urgent data arrived.  SIGURG is sent then. │
       └───────────┴───────────┴────────────────────────────────────────────┘
       An  alternative  to  poll(2)  and select(2) is to let the kernel inform the application about
       events via a SIGIO signal.  For that the O_ASYNC flag must be set on a socket file descriptor
       via  fcntl(2)  and  a valid signal handler for SIGIO must be installed via sigaction(2).  See
       the Signals discussion below.

   Socket address structures
       Each socket domain has its own format for socket addresses, with  a  domain-specific  address
       structure.   Each of these structures begins with an integer "family" field (typed as sa_family_t) that indicates the type of the address structure.   This  allows  the  various  system
       calls  (e.g.,  connect(2),  bind(2),  accept(2),  getsockname(2),  getpeername(2)), which are
       generic to all socket domains, to determine the domain of a particular socket address.

       To allow any type of socket address to be passed to interfaces in the sockets API,  the  type
       struct  sockaddr  is defined.  The purpose of this type is purely to allow casting of domain-
       specific socket address types to a "generic" type, so as to  avoid  compiler  warnings  about
       type mismatches in calls to the sockets API.

       In  addition,  the  sockets API provides the data type struct sockaddr_storage.  This type is
       suitable to accommodate all supported domain-specific socket address structures; it is  large
       enough  and  is aligned properly.  (In particular, it is large enough to hold IPv6 socket ad‐
       dresses.)  The structure includes the following field, which can be used to identify the type
       of socket address actually stored in the structure:

               sa_family_t ss_family;

       The  sockaddr_storage  structure is useful in programs that must handle socket addresses in a
       generic way (e.g., programs that must deal with both IPv4 and IPv6 socket addresses).

   Socket options
       The socket options listed below can be set by using setsockopt(2) and read with getsockopt(2)
       with the socket level set to SOL_SOCKET for all sockets.  Unless otherwise noted, optval is a
       pointer to an int.

       SO_ACCEPTCONN
              Returns a value indicating whether or not this socket has been marked to  accept  con‐
              nections  with  listen(2).  The value 0 indicates that this is not a listening socket,
              the value 1 indicates that this is a listening socket.  This socket  option  is  read-
              only.

       SO_ATTACH_FILTER (since Linux 2.2), SO_ATTACH_BPF (since Linux 3.19)
              Attach  a classic BPF (SO_ATTACH_FILTER) or an extended BPF (SO_ATTACH_BPF) program to
              the socket for use as a filter of incoming packets.  A packet will be dropped  if  the
              filter  program  returns zero.  If the filter program returns a nonzero value which is
              less than the packet's data length, the packet will be truncated  to  the  length  re‐
              turned.   If the value returned by the filter is greater than or equal to the packet's
              data length, the packet is allowed to proceed unmodified.

              The argument for SO_ATTACH_FILTER is a sock_fprog structure,  defined  in  <linux/filter.h>:

                  struct sock_fprog {
                      unsigned short      len;
                      struct sock_filter *filter;
                  };

              The argument for SO_ATTACH_BPF is a file descriptor returned by the bpf(2) system call
              and must refer to a program of type BPF_PROG_TYPE_SOCKET_FILTER.

              These options may be set multiple times for a given socket, each  time  replacing  the
              previous  filter program.  The classic and extended versions may be called on the same
              socket, but the previous filter will always be replaced such that a socket  never  has
              more than one filter defined.

              Both  classic  and  extended  BPF  are  explained in the kernel source file Documentation/networking/filter.txt

       SO_ATTACH_REUSEPORT_CBPF, SO_ATTACH_REUSEPORT_EBPF
              For use with the SO_REUSEPORT option, these options allow the user to  set  a  classic
              BPF  (SO_ATTACH_REUSEPORT_CBPF)  or an extended BPF (SO_ATTACH_REUSEPORT_EBPF) program
              which defines how packets are assigned to the sockets in the reuseport group (that is,
              all  sockets  which  have SO_REUSEPORT set and are using the same local address to re‐
              ceive packets).

              The BPF program must return an index between 0 and N-1 representing the  socket  which
              should receive the packet (where N is the number of sockets in the group).  If the BPF
              program returns an invalid index,  socket  selection  will  fall  back  to  the  plain
              SO_REUSEPORT mechanism.

              Sockets  are  numbered in the order in which they are added to the group (that is, the
              order of bind(2) calls for UDP sockets or the order of listen(2) calls for  TCP  sock‐
              ets).   New  sockets  added to a reuseport group will inherit the BPF program.  When a
              socket is removed from a reuseport group (via close(2)), the last socket in the  group
              will be moved into the closed socket's position.

              These  options may be set repeatedly at any time on any socket in the group to replace
              the current BPF program used by all sockets in the group.

              SO_ATTACH_REUSEPORT_CBPF takes the same argument type as SO_ATTACH_FILTER  and  SO_AT‐‐
              TACH_REUSEPORT_EBPF takes the same argument type as SO_ATTACH_BPF.

              UDP  support  for  this feature is available since Linux 4.5; TCP support is available
              since Linux 4.6.

       SO_BINDTODEVICE
              Bind this socket to a particular device like “eth0”, as specified in the passed inter‐
              face  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 in‐
              terface name string with the maximum size of IFNAMSIZ.  If a socket is bound to an in‐
              terface, only packets received from that particular interface  are  processed  by  the
              socket.   Note  that this works only for some socket types, particularly AF_INET sock‐
              ets.  It is not supported for packet sockets (use normal bind(2) there).

              Before Linux 3.8, this socket option could be set, but could not retrieved  with  get‐‐
              sockopt(2).   Since Linux 3.8, it is readable.  The optlen argument should contain the
              buffer size available to receive the device name and is  recommended  to  be  IFNAMSIZ
              bytes.  The real device name length is reported back in the optlen argument.

       SO_BROADCAST
              Set  or  get  the  broadcast flag.  When enabled, datagram sockets are allowed to send
              packets to a broadcast address.  This option has no effect on stream-oriented sockets.

       SO_BSDCOMPAT
              Enable BSD bug-to-bug compatibility.  This is used by the UDP protocol module in Linux
              2.0  and 2.2.  If enabled, ICMP errors received for a UDP socket will not be passed to
              the user program.  In later kernel versions, support for this option has  been  phased
              out:  Linux  2.4  silently  ignores  it,  and  Linux  2.6  generates  a kernel warning
              (printk()) if a program uses this option.  Linux 2.0 also enabled BSD bug-to-bug  com‐
              patibility  options  (random  header changing, skipping of the broadcast flag) for raw
              sockets with this option, but that was removed in Linux 2.2.

       SO_DEBUG
              Enable socket debugging.  Allowed only for processes with the CAP_NET_ADMIN capability
              or an effective user ID of 0.

       SO_DETACH_FILTER (since Linux 2.2), SO_DETACH_BPF (since Linux 3.19)
              These  two  options, which are synonyms, may be used to remove the classic or extended
              BPF program attached to a socket with either SO_ATTACH_FILTER or  SO_ATTACH_BPF.   The
              option value is ignored.

       SO_DOMAIN (since Linux 2.6.32)
              Retrieves  the  socket  domain as an integer, returning a value such as AF_INET6.  See
              socket(2) for details.  This socket option is read-only.

       SO_ERROR
              Get and clear the pending socket error.  This socket option is read-only.  Expects  an
              integer.

       SO_DONTROUTE
              Don't  send via a gateway, send only to directly connected hosts.  The same effect can
              be achieved by setting the MSG_DONTROUTE flag on a socket send(2) operation.   Expects
              an integer boolean flag.

       SO_INCOMING_CPU (gettable since Linux 3.19, settable since Linux 4.4)
              Sets or gets the CPU affinity of a socket.  Expects an integer flag.

                  int cpu = 1;
                  setsockopt(fd, SOL_SOCKET, SO_INCOMING_CPU, &cpu,
                             sizeof(cpu));

              Because  all  of the packets for a single stream (i.e., all packets for the same 4-tu‐
              ple) arrive on the single RX queue that is associated with a particular CPU, the typi‐
              cal  use  case is to employ one listening process per RX queue, with the incoming flow
              being handled by a listener on the same CPU that is handling the RX queue.  This  pro‐
              vides optimal NUMA behavior and keeps CPU caches hot.

       SO_INCOMING_NAPI_ID (gettable since Linux 4.12)
              Returns  a system-level unique ID called NAPI ID that is associated with a RX queue on
              which the last packet associated with that socket is received.

              This can be used by an application to split the incoming flows  among  worker  threads
              based on the RX queue on which the packets associated with the flows are received.  It
              allows each worker thread to be associated with a NIC HW receive queue and service all
              the  connection requests received on that RX queue.  This mapping between a app thread
              and a HW NIC queue streamlines the flow of data from the NIC to the application.

       SO_KEEPALIVE
              Enable sending of keep-alive messages on connection-oriented sockets.  Expects an  in‐
              teger boolean flag.

       SO_LINGER
              Sets or gets the SO_LINGER option.  The argument is a linger structure.

                  struct linger {
                      int l_onoff;    /* linger active */
                      int l_linger;   /* how many seconds to linger for */
                  };

              When  enabled, a close(2) or shutdown(2) will not return until all queued messages for
              the socket have been successfully sent or the linger timeout has been reached.  Other‐
              wise,  the  call  returns immediately and the closing is done in the background.  When
              the socket is closed as part of exit(2), it always lingers in the background.

       SO_LOCK_FILTER
              When set, this option will prevent changing the filters associated  with  the  socket.
              These  filters  include  any  set  using  the  socket options SO_ATTACH_FILTER, SO_AT‐‐
              TACH_BPF, SO_ATTACH_REUSEPORT_CBPF, and SO_ATTACH_REUSEPORT_EBPF.

              The typical use case is for a privileged process to set up a raw socket (an  operation
              that  requires  the  CAP_NET_RAW  capability),  apply  a  restrictive  filter, set the
              SO_LOCK_FILTER option, and then either drop its privileges or pass the socket file de‐
              scriptor to an unprivileged process via a UNIX domain socket.

              Once the SO_LOCK_FILTER option has been enabled, attempts to change or remove the fil‐
              ter attached to a socket, or to disable the SO_LOCK_FILTER option will fail  with  the
              error EPERM.

       SO_MARK (since Linux 2.6.25)
              Set  the  mark for each packet sent through this socket (similar to the netfilter MARK
              target but socket-based).  Changing the mark can be used for mark-based routing  with‐
              out netfilter or for packet filtering.  Setting this option requires the CAP_NET_ADMIN
              capability.

       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 passed only when the MSG_OOB flag is set dur‐
              ing receiving.

       SO_PASSCRED
              Enable or disable the receiving of the SCM_CREDENTIALS control message.  For more  in‐
              formation see unix(7).

       SO_PASSSEC
              Enable  or disable the receiving of the SCM_SECURITY control message.  For more infor‐
              mation see unix(7).

       SO_PEEK_OFF (since Linux 3.4)
              This option, which is currently supported only for unix(7) sockets, sets the value  of
              the "peek offset" for the recv(2) system call when used with MSG_PEEK flag.

              When  this  option  is  set to a negative value (it is set to -1 for all new sockets),
              traditional behavior is provided: recv(2) with the MSG_PEEK flag will peek  data  from
              the front of the queue.

              When the option is set to a value greater than or equal to zero, then the next peek at
              data queued in the socket will occur at the byte offset specified by the option value.
              At  the  same  time, the "peek offset" will be incremented by the number of bytes that
              were peeked from the queue, so that a subsequent peek will return the next data in the
              queue.

              If  data  is  removed  from  the front of the queue via a call to recv(2) (or similar)
              without the MSG_PEEK flag, the "peek offset" will be decreased by the number of  bytes
              removed.   In  other  words,  receiving  data without the MSG_PEEK flag will cause the
              "peek offset" to be adjusted to maintain the correct relative position in  the  queued
              data,  so that a subsequent peek will retrieve the data that would have been retrieved
              had the data not been removed.

              For datagram sockets, if the "peek offset" points to the middle of a packet, the  data
              returned will be marked with the MSG_TRUNC flag.

              The  following  example serves to illustrate the use of SO_PEEK_OFF.  Suppose a stream
              socket has the following queued input data:

                  aabbccddeeff

              The following sequence of recv(2) calls would have the effect noted in the comments:

                  int ov = 4;                  // Set peek offset to 4
                  setsockopt(fd, SOL_SOCKET, SO_PEEK_OFF, &ov, sizeof(ov));

                  recv(fd, buf, 2, MSG_PEEK);  // Peeks "cc"; offset set to 6
                  recv(fd, buf, 2, MSG_PEEK);  // Peeks "dd"; offset set to 8
                  recv(fd, buf, 2, 0);         // Reads "aa"; offset set to 6
                  recv(fd, buf, 2, MSG_PEEK);  // Peeks "ee"; offset set to 8

       SO_PEERCRED
              Return the credentials of the peer process connected to this socket.  For further  de‐
              tails, see unix(7).

       SO_PEERSEC (since Linux 2.6.2)
              Return  the security context of the peer socket connected to this socket.  For further
              details, see unix(7) and ip(7).

       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.  Setting a  pri‐
              ority outside the range 0 to 6 requires the CAP_NET_ADMIN capability.

       SO_PROTOCOL (since Linux 2.6.32)
              Retrieves  the  socket protocol as an integer, returning a value such as IPPROTO_SCTP.
              See socket(2) for details.  This socket option is read-only.

       SO_RCVBUF
              Sets or gets the maximum socket receive buffer in  bytes.   The  kernel  doubles  this
              value  (to  allow  space for bookkeeping overhead) when it is set using setsockopt(2),
              and this doubled value is returned by getsockopt(2).  The default value is set by  the
              /proc/sys/net/core/rmem_default  file,  and  the  maximum  allowed value is set by the
              /proc/sys/net/core/rmem_max file.  The minimum (doubled) value for this option is 256.

       SO_RCVBUFFORCE (since Linux 2.6.14)
              Using this socket option, a privileged (CAP_NET_ADMIN) process can  perform  the  same
              task as SO_RCVBUF, but the rmem_max limit can be overridden.

       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 (SO_SNDLOWAT) or the user on receiving (SO_RCVLOWAT).  These  two
              values  are  initialized  to 1.  SO_SNDLOWAT is not changeable on Linux (setsockopt(2)
              fails with the error ENOPROTOOPT).  SO_RCVLOWAT is changeable only since Linux 2.4.

              Before Linux 2.6.28 select(2), poll(2), and epoll(7) did not respect  the  SO_RCVLOWAT
              setting  on  Linux, and indicated a socket as readable when even a single byte of data
              was available.  A subsequent read from the socket would then block  until  SO_RCVLOWAT
              bytes  are available.  Since Linux 2.6.28, select(2), poll(2), and epoll(7) indicate a
              socket as readable only if at least SO_RCVLOWAT bytes are available.

       SO_RCVTIMEO and SO_SNDTIMEO
              Specify the receiving or sending timeouts until reporting an error.  The argument 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 errno set to EAGAIN or EWOULDBLOCK, or EINPROGRESS (for  con‐‐
              nect(2)) 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.  Timeouts only have  ef‐
              fect  for  system  calls  that perform socket I/O (e.g., read(2), recvmsg(2), send(2),
              sendmsg(2)); timeouts have no effect for select(2), poll(2), epoll_wait(2), and so on.

       SO_REUSEADDR
              Indicates that the rules used in validating  addresses  supplied  in  a  bind(2)  call
              should  allow  reuse of local addresses.  For AF_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 INADDR_ANY with a specific port then it is not possi‐
              ble to bind to this port for any local address.  Argument is an integer boolean flag.

       SO_REUSEPORT (since Linux 3.9)
              Permits multiple AF_INET or AF_INET6 sockets to be bound to an  identical  socket  ad‐
              dress.   This  option must be set on each socket (including the first socket) prior to
              calling bind(2) on the socket.  To prevent port hijacking, all of the processes  bind‐
              ing to the same address must have the same effective UID.  This option can be employed
              with both TCP and UDP sockets.

              For TCP sockets, this option allows accept(2) load distribution  in  a  multi-threaded
              server  to be improved by using a distinct listener socket for each thread.  This pro‐
              vides improved load distribution as compared to traditional techniques  such  using  a
              single  accept(2)ing  thread  that distributes connections, or having multiple threads
              that compete to accept(2) from the same socket.

              For UDP sockets, the use of this option can provide better  distribution  of  incoming
              datagrams  to multiple processes (or threads) as compared to the traditional technique
              of having multiple processes compete to receive datagrams on the same socket.

       SO_RXQ_OVFL (since Linux 2.6.33)
              Indicates that an unsigned 32-bit value ancillary message (cmsg) should be attached to
              received  skbs  indicating  the number of packets dropped by the socket since its cre‐
              ation.

       SO_SELECT_ERR_QUEUE (since Linux 3.10)
              When this option is set on a socket, an error condition on a socket  causes  notifica‐
              tion  not  only via the exceptfds set of select(2).  Similarly, poll(2) also returns a
              POLLPRI whenever an POLLERR event is returned.

              Background: this option was added when waking up on an error condition  occurred  only
              via  the  readfds and writefds sets of select(2).  The option was added to allow moni‐
              toring for error conditions via the exceptfds argument without  simultaneously  having
              to  receive  notifications  (via  readfds)  for regular data that can be read from the
              socket.  After changes in Linux 4.16, the use of this flag to achieve the desired  no‐
              tifications  is  no  longer necessary.  This option is nevertheless retained for back‐
              wards compatibility.

       SO_SNDBUF
              Sets or gets the maximum socket send buffer in bytes.  The kernel doubles  this  value
              (to allow space for bookkeeping overhead) when it is set using setsockopt(2), and this
              doubled value is  returned  by  getsockopt(2).   The  default  value  is  set  by  the
              /proc/sys/net/core/wmem_default  file  and  the  maximum  allowed  value is set by the
              /proc/sys/net/core/wmem_max file.  The minimum (doubled)  value  for  this  option  is
              2048.

       SO_SNDBUFFORCE (since Linux 2.6.14)
              Using  this  socket  option, a privileged (CAP_NET_ADMIN) process can perform the same
              task as SO_SNDBUF, but the wmem_max limit can be overridden.

       SO_TIMESTAMP
              Enable or disable the receiving of the SO_TIMESTAMP control  message.   The  timestamp
              control  message  is sent with level SOL_SOCKET and a cmsg_type of SCM_TIMESTAMP.  The
              cmsg_data field is a struct timeval indicating the reception time of the  last  packet
              passed to the user in this call.  See cmsg(3) for details on control messages.

       SO_TIMESTAMPNS (since Linux 2.6.22)
              Enable  or disable the receiving of the SO_TIMESTAMPNS control message.  The timestamp
              control message is sent with level SOL_SOCKET and a cmsg_type of SCM_TIMESTAMPNS.  The
              cmsg_data  field is a struct timespec indicating the reception time of the last packet
              passed to the user in this call.  The clock used for the timestamp is  CLOCK_REALTIME.
              See cmsg(3) for details on control messages.

              A socket cannot mix SO_TIMESTAMP and SO_TIMESTAMPNS: the two modes are mutually exclu‐
              sive.

       SO_TYPE
              Gets the socket type as an integer (e.g., SOCK_STREAM).  This socket option  is  read-
              only.

       SO_BUSY_POLL (since Linux 3.11)
              Sets  the  approximate  time  in  microseconds to busy poll on a blocking receive when
              there is no data.  Increasing this value requires CAP_NET_ADMIN.  The default for this
              option is controlled by the /proc/sys/net/core/busy_read file.

              The  value  in the /proc/sys/net/core/busy_poll file determines how long select(2) and
              poll(2) will busy poll when they operate on  sockets  with  SO_BUSY_POLL  set  and  no
              events to report are found.

              In  both cases, busy polling will only be done when the socket last received data from
              a network device that supports this option.

              While busy polling may improve latency of some applications, care must be  taken  when
              using it since this will increase both CPU utilization and power usage.

   Signals
       When  writing  onto a connection-oriented socket that has been shut down (by the local or the
       remote end) SIGPIPE is sent to the writing process and EPIPE is returned.  The signal is  not
       sent when the write call specified the MSG_NOSIGNAL flag.

       When  requested  with the FIOSETOWN fcntl(2) or SIOCSPGRP ioctl(2), SIGIO is sent when an I/O
       event occurs.  It is possible to use poll(2) or 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 real-time sig‐
       nal using the F_SETSIG fcntl(2); the handler of the real time signal will be called with  the
       file descriptor in the si_fd field of its siginfo_t.  See fcntl(2) for more information.

       Under  some circumstances (e.g., multiple processes accessing a single socket), the condition
       that caused the 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.

   /proc interfaces
       The   core  socket  networking  parameters  can  be  accessed  via  files  in  the  directory
       /proc/sys/net/core/.

       rmem_default
              contains the default setting in bytes of the socket receive buffer.

       rmem_max
              contains the maximum socket receive buffer size in bytes which a user may set by using
              the SO_RCVBUF socket option.

       wmem_default
              contains the default setting in bytes of the socket send buffer.

       wmem_max
              contains  the  maximum  socket send buffer size in bytes which a user may set by using
              the SO_SNDBUF socket option.

       message_cost and message_burst
              configure the token bucket filter used to load limit warning messages caused by exter‐
              nal network events.

       netdev_max_backlog
              Maximum number of packets in the global input queue.

       optmem_max
              Maximum length of ancillary data and user control data like the iovecs per socket.

   Ioctls
       These operations can be accessed using ioctl(2):

           error = ioctl(ip_socket, ioctl_type, &value_result);

       SIOCGSTAMP
              Return  a  struct  timeval with the receive timestamp of the last packet passed to the
              user.  This is useful for accurate round trip time measurements.  See setitimer(2) for
              a description of struct timeval.  This ioctl should be used only if the socket options
              SO_TIMESTAMP and SO_TIMESTAMPNS are not set on the socket.  Otherwise, it returns  the
              timestamp  of  the last packet that was received while SO_TIMESTAMP and SO_TIMESTAMPNS
              were not set, or it fails if no such packet has been received, (i.e., ioctl(2) returns
              -1 with errno set to ENOENT).

       SIOCSPGRP
              Set  the  process or process group that is to receive SIGIO or SIGURG signals when I/O
              becomes possible or urgent data is available.  The argument is a pointer to  a  pid_t.
              For further details, see the description of F_SETOWN in fcntl(2).

       FIOASYNC
              Change  the  O_ASYNC  flag  to  enable or disable asynchronous I/O mode of the socket.
              Asynchronous I/O mode means that the SIGIO signal or the signal set with  F_SETSIG  is
              raised when a new I/O event occurs.

              Argument  is  an  integer boolean flag.  (This operation is synonymous with the use of
              fcntl(2) to set the O_ASYNC flag.)

       SIOCGPGRP
              Get the current process or process group that receives SIGIO or SIGURG signals,  or  0
              when none is set.

       Valid fcntl(2) operations:

       FIOGETOWN
              The same as the SIOCGPGRP ioctl(2).

       FIOSETOWN
              The same as the SIOCSPGRP ioctl(2).

VERSIONS
       SO_BINDTODEVICE  was introduced in Linux 2.0.30.  SO_PASSCRED is new in Linux 2.2.  The /proc
       interfaces were introduced in Linux 2.2.  SO_RCVTIMEO and  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.

NOTES
       Linux assumes that half of the send/receive buffer is used for  internal  kernel  structures;
       thus the values in the corresponding /proc files are twice what can be observed on the wire.

       Linux  will  allow port reuse only with the SO_REUSEADDR option when this option was set both
       in the previous program that performed a bind(2) to the port and in the program that wants to
       reuse  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.

SEE ALSO
       wireshark(1),  bpf(2),  connect(2),  getsockopt(2),  setsockopt(2),  socket(2),  pcap(3), ad‐‐
       dress_families(7),  capabilities(7),  ddp(7),  ip(7),  ipv6(7),  packet(7),  tcp(7),  udp(7),
       unix(7), tcpdump(8)

COLOPHON
       This  page  is  part  of  release  5.10 of the Linux man-pages project.  A description of the
       project, information about reporting bugs, and the latest version of this page, can be  found
       at https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.



Linux                                        2020-08-13                                    SOCKET(7)
socket
NAME SYNOPSIS
#include
DESCRIPTION
Socket-layer functions Socket address structures Socket options Signals /proc interfaces Ioctls
VERSIONS NOTES SEE ALSO COLOPHON

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