socket(7) Miscellaneous Information 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 inter-
face. The BSD compatible sockets are the uniform interface between the
user process and the network protocol stacks in the kernel. The proto-
col 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 re-
spective 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 ac-
cepted, and accept(2) is used to get a new socket with a new incoming
connection. socketpair(2) returns two connected anonymous sockets (im-
plemented 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 se-
lect(2) wait for arriving data or a readiness to send data. In addi-
tion, 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) re-
turns the remote socket address. getsockopt(2) and setsockopt(2) are
used to set or get socket layer or protocol options. 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 connection.
Seeking, or calling pread(2) or pwrite(2) with a nonzero position is not
supported on sockets.
It is possible to do nonblocking I/O on sockets by setting the O_NON-
BLOCK flag on a socket file descriptor using fcntl(2). Then all opera-
tions 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 do-
main-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 particu-
lar 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 mis-
matches in calls to the sockets API.
In addition, the sockets API provides the data type struct sock-
addr_storage. This type is suitable to accommodate all supported do-
main-specific socket address structures; it is large enough and is
aligned properly. (In particular, it is large enough to hold IPv6
socket addresses.) 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 connections with listen(2). The value 0 indi-
cates 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 in-
coming 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 returned. 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, de-
fined 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 ex-
tended versions may be called on the same socket, but the previ-
ous 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 ex-
tended 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 receive packets).
The BPF program must return an index between 0 and N-1 represent-
ing 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 sockets). 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_AT-
TACH_FILTER and SO_ATTACH_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 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 IFNAMSIZ. If a socket is
bound to an interface, only packets received from that particular
interface are processed by the socket. Note that this works only
for some socket types, particularly AF_INET sockets. 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 getsockopt(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 argu-
ment.
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 compatibility 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-tuple) arrive on the single RX queue that is asso-
ciated with a particular CPU, the typical 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 provides 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 associ-
ated 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 map-
ping between an 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 integer 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. Otherwise, the call returns im-
mediately 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 associ-
ated with the socket. These filters include any set using the
socket options SO_ATTACH_FILTER, SO_ATTACH_BPF, SO_ATTACH_REUSE-
PORT_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 descrip-
tor to an unprivileged process via a UNIX domain socket.
Once the SO_LOCK_FILTER option has been enabled, attempts to
change or remove the filter 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 without netfilter or for
packet filtering. Setting this option requires the CAP_NET_ADMIN
or CAP_NET_RAW (since Linux 5.17) 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 during receiving.
SO_PASSCRED
Enable or disable the receiving of the SCM_CREDENTIALS control
message. For more information, see unix(7).
SO_PASSSEC
Enable or disable the receiving of the SCM_SECURITY control mes-
sage. For more information, see unix(7).
SO_PEEK_OFF (since Linux 3.4)
This option, which is currently supported only for unix(7) sock-
ets, 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 po-
sition in the queued data, so that a subsequent peek will re-
trieve 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 details, 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 de-
pending on the selected device queueing discipline. Setting a
priority outside the range 0 to 6 requires the CAP_NET_ADMIN ca-
pability.
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 over-
head) 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 mini-
mum (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 ini-
tialized to 1. SO_SNDLOWAT is not changeable on Linux (setsock-
opt(2) fails with the error ENOPROTOOPT). SO_RCVLOWAT is change-
able only since Linux 2.4.
Before Linux 2.6.28 select(2), poll(2), and epoll(7) did not re-
spect the SO_RCVLOWAT setting on Linux, and indicated a socket as
readable when even a single byte of data was available. A subse-
quent 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 er-
ror. 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 connect(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 effect for system calls that perform socket
I/O (e.g., accept(2), connect(2), 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 possible to bind to this port for any local ad-
dress. 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 address. 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 binding
to the same address must have the same effective UID. This op-
tion 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 provides improved load
distribution as compared to traditional techniques such using a
single accept(2)ing thread that distributes connections, or hav-
ing multiple threads that compete to accept(2) from the same
socket.
For UDP sockets, the use of this option can provide better dis-
tribution of incoming datagrams to multiple processes (or
threads) as compared to the traditional technique of having mul-
tiple 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 creation.
SO_SELECT_ERR_QUEUE (since Linux 3.10)
When this option is set on a socket, an error condition on a
socket causes notification not only via the exceptfds set of se-
lect(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 con-
dition occurred only via the readfds and writefds sets of se-
lect(2). The option was added to allow monitoring for error con-
ditions 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 notifications is no longer nec-
essary. This option is nevertheless retained for backwards com-
patibility.
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 mini-
mum (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 mes-
sage. 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 con-
trol messages.
A socket cannot mix SO_TIMESTAMP and SO_TIMESTAMPNS: the two
modes are mutually exclusive.
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 con-
trolled 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 op-
tion.
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 spec-
ified 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 se-
lect(2) in the signal handler to find out which socket the event oc-
curred on. An alternative (in Linux 2.2) is to set a real-time signal
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 disap-
peared 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 mes-
sages caused by external 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 op-
tions 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) re-
turns -1 with errno set to ENOENT).
SIOCSPGRP
Set the process or process group that is to receive SIGIO or SIG-
URG signals when I/O becomes possible or urgent data is avail-
able. The argument is a pointer to a pid_t. For further de-
tails, 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 synony-
mous 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_RCV-
TIMEO and SO_SNDTIMEO are supported since Linux 2.3.41. Earlier, time-
outs 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 in-
visible, 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), address_families(7), capabilities(7), ddp(7), ip(7),
ipv6(7), packet(7), tcp(7), udp(7), unix(7), tcpdump(8)
Linux man-pages 6.9.1 2024-05-02 socket(7)
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