SOCKET(7)



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 in-
       terface.  The BSD compatible sockets are the uniform interface  between
       the  user  process  and the network protocol stacks in the kernel.  The
       protocol modules are grouped into 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  select(2)  wait for arriving data or a readiness to send data.  In
       addition, the standard I/O operations like write(2),  writev(2),  send-
       file(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
       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  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 repre-
              senting 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  speci-
              fied  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-termi-
              nated 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  pro-
              gram.   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 op-
              tion.  Linux 2.0 also enabled BSD bug-to-bug  compatibility  op-
              tions  (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 op-
              tion 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 pack-
              ets for the same 4-tuple) arrive on the single RX queue that  is
              associated with a particular CPU, the typical use case is to em-
              ploy 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_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 re-
              turns 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  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_AD-
              MIN 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 off-
              set" 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 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_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
              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
              changeable 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
              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 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  time-
              out  is set to zero (the default), then the operation will never
              timeout.  Timeouts only have effect for system calls  that  per-
              form   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 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 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  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
              condition occurred only via the readfds and writefds sets of se-
              lect(2).  The option was added to  allow  monitoring  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 notifications is  no
              longer  necessary.   This  option  is  nevertheless retained for
              backwards compatibility.

       SO_SNDBUF
              Sets or gets the maximum socket send buffer in bytes.  The  ker-
              nel 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
              control 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
       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 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 buf-
              fer.

       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 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
              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 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), packet(7), tcp(7), udp(7), unix(7), tcpdump(8)

COLOPHON
       This  page  is  part of release 5.07 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                             2020-04-11                         SOCKET(7)

Man(1) output converted with man2html
list of all man pages